The Algorithm

In order to solidify one's place in nerd history, one has to make a few things part of his/her everyday life. One of these is to try to quantify just about anything, regardless of how effectively it can truly be quantified. Another of these is to have a dysfunctional dating life such that one would be just as inclined to stay at home on Saturday nights and play MMORPGs than socialize with the opposite sex.

So naturally, last Saturday night I was sitting around in my Animal House pajamas when I got a brilliant idea. I would make an algorithm to quantify what sort of women I'm attracted to. Could this actually be useful? Perhaps. While I was at BYU, I often ended up not going on dates because of the paradox of choice, among ...many... other things. The algorithm could give a hierarchy to queue, such that I might know who I should take out. I don't claim that it will actually work out that way, but at least it's a nice thought.

So, here it is:

R = 0 For S > B

where

and

A = Attractiveness

P = Subjective Physical Attractiveness on a 1-10 scale
IQ = Intelligence Quotient
σE = Deviation of Eccentricities
σEM = My Deviation of Eccentricities
T = Testimony Factor, 1-10 scale
C = Charity Factor, 1-10 scale
R = Responsibility Factor, 1-10 scale
B = Perception of Time Spent in Constructive Activity (B stands for 'Books'), Percent
Tw = Perception of Time Spent in Things that Look like Constructive Activity but Aren't (Tw stands for 'Twilight'), Percent
S = Perception of Time Spent in non-Constructive Activity (S stands for 'Shopping'), Percent
H = Humor Factor, 1-10 scale
FG = Pro 2nd Amendment, 1-10 scale
AR = Reciprocal Attraction, 1-10 scale

There are six separate pieces to this equation that all deserve to be looked at in more detail.

Emotional Stability, ES

The two sigma (σ) terms in the equation represent the number of standard deviations away from average the mental and emotional eccentricities of me and a prospective partner would be. In practice, this serves as the personality term of the equation. If I think that I and a prospective partner is way different from me, I could make the difference in sigma terms as high as 6, lowering the overall attractiveness. If I think that someone is similar to me in a way that would be conducive to a relationship, I could make the difference in sigmas zero, so that the 'Big 3' term wouldn't be divided up at all.

The Big 3 Parameter, 2P(IQ-70)/ES

The 'Big 3' represents the three points of most emphasis when looking for a date: looks, brains, and personality. This parameter can vary anywhere from 0 to 1200, making it approximately 46% of the equation.

The Spirituality Parameter, 8T*C

This parameter is a simple product of my perceptions of testimony and charity. I've expressed my desire to end up with a woman who has a testimony and who lives according to that testimony in the past. Any woman who's a member of the church will probably end up with at least 7s in both testimony and charity unless I know she's involved in sketchy activity. Variance of 0 to 800, 31% of the total.

The (Anal) Retentiveness Parameter, R(B-T-S)*H/25

Basically, I want a woman who's responsible, but knows how to laugh at things when they're funny. Through much of my life, I've noticed that there are often women who read and women who go shopping. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with shopping, I'm just making an analogy to priorities between something I find constructive, like reading and something I find mostly non-constructive, like shopping. In the world of books, there's also crap that looks good, but really isn't at its core, like Twilight. The same applies to life. As a side note, everyone needs to have non-constructive activity once in a while in order to remain sane. This isn't reflected in the equation and is one of its weaknesses. In order to keep the term from going negative (and thus punishing for humor) R is taken to zero when S exceeds B. I should also mention that this factor tends to not favor younger women, who don't look as responsible as their older counterparts, even though they could have been just as responsible at the same age. I considered using an age correction factor, but decided against it. Variance of 0-400, 15% of the total.

The Gun Factor, FG

I like firearms, and I wish everyone else did too. Especially for women in this day and age, knowledge of how to use a gun is a valuable tool that could save one's life. I have to bump down women who don't feel this way a notch, especially when their reasoning is something naïve like "Guns kill people." Variance of 0 to 100, 4% of the total.

Reciprocal Attraction, AR

People are generally more fond of people who like them. I'm not sure this needs any more explanation than that. Variance of 0 to 100, 4% of the total.

The theoretical total of this equation comes out to 2600 points, though that would be ridiculous, just like scoring a 0 would be ridiculous. Most women will probably come out to somewhere between 850 and 1750, though I don't know for sure because I haven't really tried it out much yet. However, I have tried it out, so here are some case studies.

Case Studies

The first evaluation is a woman (yes, she is real... as far as I know) who I find very attractive physically, mentally, and emotionally. This woman manages to remind me of my good qualities without really showing my bad ones. In short, she's a gem. We'll call this woman 'Exhibit B' for anonymity's sake.

Exhibit B

The next is of a woman who exemplifies the Everclean song, "Sweet Spirit" with tragic precision. She's a great person, but I could literally find nothing, from head to toe, that I found physically attractive about her, and trust me, I tried.

Sweet Spirit

This next one is a younger woman I met my senior year at BYU. She's weird, but in a similar way to me. She had great priorities and a sneaky sense of humor, though she ignored me about half the time, so I'm not sure how that would have worked out. We'll call her 'Princess Zelda.'

Princess Zelda

Now, I'm sure you'd love to know how fiancées 1 and 2 stack up. So here you go.

Fiancée #1 (Clearly thinking with the wrong head)

Fiancée #2 (Might have killed me in my sleep if we got married)

So that's how it works. As a footnote to this blag post, I'd like to mention that I developed this algorithm primarily with the goal of picking out dates and bringing order to the queue rather than picking a spouse. Personally, there's one big thing that's missing from this methodology that would be key to picking a spouse and that's sanity. The ES factor helps quantify it, but if fiancée #2 was to be truly rated on sanity, she's go from 1429 to -138 instantaneously. I like quantifying things, but I think picking the one should be a separate deal.

So here's to me (maybe) having a semi-functional relationship with women. Cheers!

.edu

In my blag post titled, "The Economic Recovery Plan," I talked briefly about property tax and education reform and promised that there would be a post dedicated to this topic in the near future. Well today's you're lucky day folks! I realize that my opinions on education may upset educators and progressive liberals of all sorts. However, I believe that, in order to right the US economy, we need to have some changes to our primary and secondary education system.

First of all, allow me to say that I do not advocate much in the way of cuts to the education system across the country. However, I do believe that there are some decisive changes that need to be made in order to make the system more efficient and get more value for the tax dollars spent.

Part of the cause of the housing crisis in the United States is that school districts funding is based largely on the value of the homes in the area. Higher home values means higher property taxes, which means more funding for local schools. Thus, educators and everyone close to the education system have been trying to push property values up. This, combined with I-bankers' casino-like gambling in the housing market, lead to a huge housing boom. Sadly, this sort of boom is always followed by a bust, which meant a sudden and dramatic drop in housing values and the associated property tax revenue.

Coming up with a solution to the property tax problem alone is a conundrum. Is there really any other parameter under which property taxes can be calculated and collected, or would property taxes have to be abandoned and their revenue replaced by hikes in other taxes? The best alternate system that I can think of is basing property taxes on the number of people inhabiting each acre of land with respect to the population density of the surrounding area with separate rates for areas deemed rural, suburban, and urban. However, in the end, I'm not sure that this would be better than just throwing out property taxes and raising income and sales taxes to compensate. I just couldn't tell you for sure.

Regardless of what method of taxation was used, the proportion of wealth taken in by the states cannot continue to increase with respect to income. For years, states have taken in billions more dollars to try to help fund public eduction while the nation's infrastructure rots to nothingness (said the civil engineer). I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it doesn't matter how well kids know their multiplication tables when they're dying of Giardia or Cholera because the state chose more money for education over a drinking water treatment plant. While it's working out alright for now, the track we're on is just not sustainable.

So, without further ado, allow me to unveil my ideas for trimming the fat off education so that (maybe) we could have drinking water, sanitary sewer, and transportation systems that don't suck:

1. Eliminate Bilingual Education Programs. Since I would have already deported the illegal immigrants, this wouldn't be as big of an issue as it might seem. Any child holding citizenship status and not speaking fluent English would be put into a rigorous English immersion program.
2. Reduce the power of teachers' unions and certification boards. The goal of this change would not be to reduce the pay of teachers, who already take in the shorts monetarily. The goal would be to take down the institutions that keep bad teachers in the classroom. In order to create better value for taxpayers, we need to have the most capable teachers, and not just the oldest and most social powerful, in the classroom. Unions and cert. boards are made up, largely, of current teachers, who have their own interests in mind. A set of bad teachers can stay right where they are if they're also on the cert. board by keeping better teachers from becoming certified.
   
3. Change the cert. requirements for teachers. To the chagrin of elementary education majors across the nation, I would remove the requirement of having a bachelor's degree in order to teach elementary and middle school. Before you tell me that that would only reduce the quality of teachers, let me present to you the brilliant, but impossible alternative. I've met a few people, among whom there were plenty of education majors, who graduated from reasonably good colleges still being dumber than a bag of hammers and not knowing the functional differences between there, their, and they're, nor being able to find the People's Republic of China on a map. What the American education system really needs is consistent testing of intelligence and communication skills for teachers. Now, we go on a detour as to why this little slice of reason will never happen. In the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co., a group of black workers sued the power company for which they worked, for using intelligence tests to discriminate against minority workers. The supreme court ruled that, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, companies could not institute any selection criteria, including intelligence testing, that would cause minorities to be less likely to win jobs. (If you don't find this a little ridiculous, you're part of the "Don't confuse me with the facts," problem we have in this country.) This ruling made it functionally illegal for any organization to use intelligence testing as a selection criteria for employment, including certification of teachers. Now just to be clear, I'm not trying to recruit the best and brightest to be teachers. This would be absurd, based on the current salaries of teachers. After all, those who can't do teach. I'm just trying to make sure that we don't keep morons as teachers just because they were the best we had 12 years ago.
4. Remove competitive athletics from government budgets. I like sports as much as the next guy, but much like the Bowl Championship Series of Division I-A football, competitive sports are a large burden on our government-funded education system. All funding for competitive athletics would have to come from approved boosters. Left to its own devices, this system would unduly favor the children of rich parents, who are already over-privileged as it is. However, with this reform, I would also require that all booster contributions be pooled by the state and redistributed based on enrollment. This way, East High School (Denver) would get a similar athletic budget to Cherry Creek High and all other schools of similar size. If a rich family is going to buy new equipment for their son's football team, they're going to also have to buy new equipment for every other school in the state. Also, any program found not properly reporting its booster contributions to the state would have those contributions seized and would not be allowed to play for one full athletic season.
   
5. Open up a can of whoop-@$$ on textbook publishers. Any undergraduate can tell you, "The price of textbooks is too D@mn high!" This would take the form of not only taking measures to reduce prices outright, but also to prevent publishers from coming out with frivolous new editions. Restrictions would be placed on how often publishers could come out with new books, and if there wasn't enough new, groundbreaking material in a new edition, publishers would be required to continue printing the old edition and selling it at the same price.
6. Open up a slightly less intense can of whoop-@$$ on technology companies. In exchange for not having their taxes raised, makers of computers and software would have to supply a certain number of desktops, printers, tablets, etc. to states for use in public schools. Any proceeds collected from the potential tax hike on tech companies would be redistributed to the states for the purpose of funding education.
   
7. Construct schools with a contractual design life. Many school districts are not held accountable for how they use their school buildings and when they replace them. Districts would have to commit to how long they would use a school building. The longer the design life of the building, the more money the district would get from the state in order to build it. The only way that a district could sell a school building short of its legal design life is if the costs of repairing the building, in absolute terms, would be greater than the cost of a new building.

The purpose of these changes would not be to restrict or cut the public education system. My main purpose would be to stabilize the costs to taxpayers in order to help create an environment conducive to economic growth. With the increased tax revenue that would (hopefully) come from economic growth, money could be allocated to other projects, like the infrastructure that's vital to anything remotely resembling our quality of life in the United States. In the long term, I would hope that both the funding for education and other government-funded programs could continue so that we, in the United States, can continue to have the quality of life we enjoy.

Unfortunately, the reforms I list in this post are almost as unrealistic as the one that I suggested in the last post, most of them for similar reasons. I can only hope that the feds and states of United States of America can make some priorities that actually contribute to the welfare of its citizens, especially the middle class. Though, I'm pretty sure I'm going to start learning Chinese, just in case.

It Must Be My Birthday!

Over the last 3 days, my homie, Tyler, and I have been in Phoenix (in the middle of July, and yes it is hot) at the MLB All Star Game. Since it was the day after my birthday, my mom got us a pair of tickets on the 3rd base line. We flew out on Monday, saw the game on Tuesday, and now we're back in the Phoenix airport awaiting our returning flight to Denver. It's been a great time.

The only Colorado Rockie elected to the ASG this year was Troy Tulowitzki. We saw him walking in on the red carpet, when they introduced him, and in the game and took a ridiculous quantity of pictures. Also while we were there, I picked up a Troy Tulowitzki NL All Star jersey, which I am currently wearing. It was quite a bit of money ($125), but for an authentic jersey that's actually not too bad. Other souvenirs that I obtained include: an event program, a pair of pins, and a lanyard. I thought about getting a gold-infused Home Run Derby ball, but for $46, I decided to pass on that one.

And the NL won; 5-1. Self, great day(s).

The 3rd Degree

A little while back, I set a goal for myself that I'd like to get another degree in addition to the Master of Science in Civil Engineering that I'm going to get from Oregon State starting in the fall (Go Beavers). I've talked briefly about possibilities for a terminal degree, but I haven't really gone into detail. The way I see it, I have three options: A Ph.D. in civil engineering, a second master's degree in mining engineering, or an MBA.

Piled Higher and Deeper

Long ago, my mother suggested to me that I was too smart for industry and should instead enter into the shiny ivory tower of academia. To a certain degree, she's got a point. Wading through endless concourses of the bullfunky that contractors, governments, and lawyers dish out isn't my favorite part about the civil engineering profession, but I'm pretty sure that I'd still enjoy the heck out of it. However, I've been inspired on multiple occasions by professors who don't actually work that hard and don't make bad money doing it. Professorship is one of the few professions where you're paid basically on your ability to be a genius, which I think suits me pretty well.

My master's degree is going to be in geotechnical engineering, which means that it would save me time and energy to get a Ph.D. in the same. Like most other things, not all geotech grad programs are created equal. There are also some places where I just do not want to live, ever. Inasmuch as Boston, MA and Northern California are two of these, MIT and Cal would not be viable options even though they have insanely good research programs. At this point, the three schools which I would be considering are the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, GA, the University of Texas in Austin, TX, and the newest addition, the University of Illinois in the Urbana-Champaign area of Illinois.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign academic logo.

I've chosen to add the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign because of a textbook that I purchased for the master's coursework that I'll begin at Oregon State. I bought Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice by Karl Terzaghi, Ralph Peck, and Gholamreza Mesri. Terzaghi and Peck especially were at the forefront of the research that became modern soil mechanics and Mesri worked with them in earnest later in their careers. Well, Terzaghi was a guest researcher at the University of Illinois, Peck was a professor there for years before he retired and later kicked the bucket, and Mesri still does some research there at least in some capacity. The University of Illinois has a fantastic geotech group and the civil engineering program overall is ranked 2nd in the nation (behind the aforementioned Cal.)

Before I move on, allow me to say that I'm going to work in industry for several years before I even think about going back to grad school. Even if I can't get a job in geotechnical engineering, I'm still going to find something. I don't care if I have to work 35 hours a week at Taco Bell, I refuse to go back to school immediately following the master's degree. Considering that most of Dr. Benzeley's master's grads had jobs last August when I graduated from BYU, I feel fairly optimistic about my prospects. I also have the goal of getting licensed as an engineer which is probably more important to me than the 3rd degree. In order to get licensed, one has to have at least 5 (or 4 with a master's degree) years of experience working under a licensed engineer. In honesty, it'll probably be another 10 years before this is even applicable, but I have nothing but time to contemplate the future and my career goals, anyway.

If I do decide to get a Ph.D., I'm not going to try to matriculate during an economic downturn like right now, where demand for research is low and supply of cheap researchers is high. No, I'm going to try to ride a wave of economic prosperity, when there's plenty of government research money to go around and, comparatively, not a lot of people who want it, because they're all in industry, making money.

As a side note, the PhD webcomic is hilarious. They're also coming out with a movie that'll be screened at university campuses all over the country. Check it out.

More of the Same

At the onset of this blag post, you may or may not have wondered why I would consider getting another master's degree in mining engineering. If you've read this post, you know why, but for the rest of you, allow me to explain. I saw a show on the Discovery Channel a couple years ago about guys who blew up buildings for a living. Needless to say, I found this to be awesome and would not mind pursuing this as a slight career change.

Now, the guys who were on this show had Ph.D.s in mining engineering and had spent most of their years blowing up dirt for mining operations. Considering that I'm getting a master's in geotechnical engineering with a "minor" per se, in structural engineering, learning to blow up dirt and/or buildings would be right up my alley.

The programs that I think would be best for learning how the blow stuff up in a safe and professional manner would be either the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) in Rolla, MO, or the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. There's a guy or two at each of these institutions whose blasting research would pave the way to a prosperous career blowing crap up.

Massive Bullsh*t Ahead

At a time or two, I've thought about getting an MBA in entrepreneurship and/or engineering management and starting my own civil engineering consulting firm. Considering how many engineering firms I've seen close their doors and lay off their staff in the recent months, this isn't at the forefront of my mind. I'm going to keep the door open on this one, but I don't plan on visiting much, or anytime soon. I also have no idea where I'd want to go for it. I've looking into the programs at BYU, Georgia Tech, and Purdue, which would all be options, but really I don't have much preference at this point.

So there you have it. My options and plans for a third piece of paper that I can hang on my office wall, and more opportunities for people to say, "Wow, your* smart!"

* Yes, I did that on purpose.

Justice

Earlier today, a jury of her peers in Florida acquitted Casey Anthony (pictured on the left) of the murder of her nearly 3 year-old daughter, Caylee. Despite the chagrin of many across the country, I believe that the justice system of the United States and Florida reached the proper conclusion.

Before I go any further, allow me to say that, based on my knowledge of her life, Casey Anthony is kind of a despicable person and a burden on our society. She was a terrible mother, a habitual liar, and generally lived a life of deceit and treachery, opportunistically taking what she could from whom she could without remorse. She continued this deception when she was arrested multiple times in connection to the disappearance of her child and the various frauds that she committed in the mean time. There is a chance that she either killed her child, Caylee, or contributed in a significant way to her death, however, this suspicion alone is not enough to put her away for life, or to execute her, as the prosecution was seeking.

The biggest reason that I believe the justice system worked in this case was the evidence. There was no physical evidence that the child was murdered and did not die of natural causes, as Casey Anthony testified. Let's take a brief look at what the prosecution had:

• A hair that may or may not have belonged to Caylee Anthony in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car that may or may not have exhibited post-mortal behavior according to research from the University of Tennessee.
  
• A suspicious smell emanating from the trunk of Casey Anthony's car that was later found to contain a bag of garbage.
• Chemical analysis of the air from the trunk of Casey Anthony's car that found traces of chemicals "Consistent with a decomposition event" and chloroform. As a side note, scientists disagree about the exact chemical nature of air exposed to human decomposition.
• Google searches for "neck breaking," "how to make chloroform," and "death" from Casey Anthony's computer.
• Laundry bags, plastic bags, and duct tape similar to what was found at the crime scene were found in the Anthony home.
• A joke picture of one of Casey Anthony's ex-boyfriends drugging a woman with chloroform.
• Instant messages between Casey Anthony and now ex-boyfriend Tony Rusciano that may or may not have given motive.
• Imprints of old diary entries that spoke of how Casey Anthony was happy with changes in her life that had since been removed from the diary.
  
• A badly decomposed body identified as Caylee Anthony in a plastic bag with duct tape covering the skull in a wooded area near the Anthony home.

Now juxtapose this with what the prosecution didn't have:

• A solid cause of death.
• A murder weapon. (Which would be impossible to identify without a cause of death.)
• A confession.
  
• Any eyewitness accounts.
• Anything connecting Casey Anthony with intentional physical harm of her daughter, Caylee, in her death or at any other time.

Based on the evidence, I believe that Casey Anthony could not be convicted of murder even though she may have done it. Her motivations and alibis are sketchy, but the lack of real, physical evidence means that she should be only convicted on the counts of lying to the police, which she was. If we, as a society, genuinely believe the mantra, "Innocent until proven guilty," then we must consider Casey Anthony innocent, because she has not been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I congratulate the jury on ignoring the sensationalizing of the prosecution and examining the evidence as it really was.

Cases in the past have been successfully tried entirely on circumstantial evidence. However, I believe that this phenomenon is a departure from what the founding fathers of the United States had in mind when they established our legal system. Just because one has the motive and the ability to commit a crime doesn't mean that he or she necessarily will, and thus should not be convicted of that crime. If there is no real, physical evidence that a crime was committed, guilt cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and as stated earlier, the suspect must be released as innocent.

This is where it really helps to be a man or woman of faith. I know that God holds all the possible evidence in the case of Casey Anthony and does not have to rely on a jury of her peers to enact justice. He has seen her works and knows the motivations of her heart, in all their strangeness. If she did truly murder her daughter, she will have to answer for this act and all her other perverse and sinful behavior before God and all others present, and will have to accept the punishments which are just.

At this point, I will leave the judging up to God and hope that Casey Anthony can change her ways before it's temporally and everlastingly too late.

Shamtrak

Let me start off this post by saying that Amtrak sucks. They don't actually go anywhere and do so while moving at a profoundly slow rate of speed. I will be glad to see its demise, which is fast approaching.

So about 6 months ago, I was planning on making a trip to Provo for the BYU engineering and technology career fair and after taking the bus on the previous trip, taking the train seemed like a decent change of pace. Let's just say that I was wrong. Dead wrong. My trip to Provo at the end of January and beginning of February was, by far, the worst travel experience that I've had in my entire life up to this point. If it had been any worse I probably would have gone postal in the middle of the Salt Lake Amtrak station. It was bad.

The ticket-buying experience wasn't too bad; in fact I'd venture to say that it was the best part of this trip. It definitely went downhill after that. About 3 days before I was set to depart, I found out that Union Station in downtown Denver was going to be closing for renovations the day after I left and that my return train was going to show up at some other random place 3 blocks down the road. As it turned out, that really didn't matter.

So, I show up at Union Station about 2 hours before my train was supposed to leave because my dad works downtown and it was fairly convenient for him to drop me off. I sit around and read a book while listening to the announcements that aren't even remotely comprehensible. On a side note, Union Station was an acoustic nightmare, which is probably one of the biggest reasons they needed renovations. Since I had no idea what was going on, I decided that I would go out onto the tracks at about the time my train was supposed to be there. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when I got outside there were no trains or people or signs of life. The best part is that the doors through which I went locked as I left, so I was left to walk around the half-mile back to the front door of Union Station. Keep in mind that this was in late January and it was snowing with gale-force winds blowing snow right into my face.

After making my way back to the front door of the station, I asked one of the attendants what the heck was going on, since my train should have left half an hour ago by that point. He told me that the train was going to be delayed and that it was going to be another 2 hours on the profoundly uncomfortable wooden benches in the station. I decided to take a nap, which actually turned out alright.

So after showing up at 6 am and waiting for about 4.5 hours, my train came, I got on, and we crawled forward at a pace that I could almost have walked. Seriously, until we got out of Denver, we were averaging about 10 mph. Once we got out of Denver, we ramped it up to about 30. If there was any significant opportunity cost to my time, this would have been absolutely unacceptable. The ride itself wasn't too bad, though I didn't really eat anything because the food was so ridiculously expensive, which was probably part of the reason the train went so ridiculously slow. Between the station and the train, I probably slept 17 hours that day.

Then the fun really started.

When the 13-hour journey (literally) had finally run it's course, I got off the train and my friend, Steve picked me up from the train station. I returned to my former home in Sam's Town, and after about 10 minutes of trying to account for my stuff I realized that I had left my new, stainless steel wallet with my driver's license, credit cards, about $200 in cash, and in an incredibly stupid move, my social security card on the train. Somehow, after spending most of 13 hours in a seated daze, I wanted to remove the brick that was poking into my right buttock. This would have worked out just fine if I had put my wallet in the backpack that was sitting in the seat right next to me. But no, I just threw it in the seat right next to the backpack that would have ensured its safe arrival. Clearly not my most intellectually clear moment.

I called the main Amtrak line and then the Salt Lake Amtrak station. They said they'd look for my wallet, but surprise, surprise, they didn't find it. So, at this juncture, I'm 500 miles away from home with no money, having not really eaten much in the last 18 hours. Luckily, the Domino's in this college town was open late and my mom forked out her credit card number, or I would have been on a 4-day involuntary fast.

Oh, but it gets better.

After my dad had express-mailed (for $18) me a big wad of money that I was obligated to pay him back (plus $18), I went to the career fair and didn't find anything, because there are no jobs. At some point during my 4-day stay in Provo, I got a computer-generated voice message from Amtrak telling me that my train back to Denver was still sitting in San Francisco and was going to be delayed indefinitely. This was about when I was contemplating going postal in the Salt Lake Amtrak station.

At this point, I decided that, even if I could eventually get back to Denver on the Amtrak train, I didn't want to endure another 13-hour ordeal with untold horse-puckey throughout. I decided that I'd much rather just eat my Amtrak ticket price and get a flight on Southwest Airlines. (Let that be a lesson to you, kids. Sunk costs are sunk.) The ticket price on such short notice was like 80 or 100 dollars. I really don't remember, but I was definitely willing to pay it to get the heck out of this situation. The only problem was that, since I had lost my wallet, I had no form of government-issued photo identification. If there had been anyone within an arm's reach at this point, I would have strangled them.

This was one of the few times in my life that I was glad I ended up getting engaged to fiancée #2. We had planned on having a reception/ring ceremony in Boston, where she was from, then flying straight to Vancouver, BC, where we would have our honeymoon, then flying back to Salt Lake and starting up school again. Clearly, this didn't work out, but in order to fly from Vancouver, BC to Salt Lake City, UT, one must have a valid passport. In the process of wedding planning, I made my way down to the Utah County clerk's office, completed my passport application, and got my passport about two weeks later (without paying the expedition fee :). With this in mind, I booked a flight out of Salt Lake City and called my dad, who expressed me (for another $18) my passport so that I could get on my flight. I got another computer-generated message and email telling me that my Amtrak train would come a couple days after it was supposed to have come, but I had already made my decision by then.

So all pretty much went according to plan with my flight. Steve again took me to the airport, and I reimbursed him for his time and gas, to the tune to $10. I checked in, showed the gate-rapists my passport, had my junk fondled, got on the plane, and arrived safely back in Denver. As another interesting side note, the entire University of Utah women's basketball team was on this flight with me. Apparently the lower-budget sports don't get charter flights, like football would.

I mention this now, as opposed to 4 months ago, because yesterday (June 30th) I received a flat-rate envelope from FedEx containing a manilla envelope, which contained the five cards that were in my wallet on the Amtrak train. There was no further explanation, but it's fairly obvious what happened. Someone, either a patron or an Amtrak employee, took the cards out of my wallet and stashed them somewhere out of the way, while keeping the wallet and cash that was inside it. This is why there were no fraudulent charges on my credit cards, nor any accounts created in my name. All of my cards were riding around in an Amtrak passenger car until someone was thoroughly cleaning out the car and stumbled upon them.

The moral of the story: Rail is for freight, not passengers. Screw you, Amtrak! I will shortly celebrate your demise.