Being Under-appreciated

A little less than two weeks ago, the BYU Cougars took on the Golden Hurricane of the University of Tulsa in the 2011 Armed Forces Bowl.  The game was a hard-fought slugfest between two equally-matched opponents.  Near the end of the game, BYU drove down the field and scored a touchdown on a fake spike, Dan Marino style to win the game.

The official MVP as well as the Player of the Game awarded by ESPN went to wide receiver Cody Hoffman, who caught all 3 touchdown passes for BYU in the game.  Though Hoffman's performance was impressive, I wouldn't have given him the MVP.  The commentators for the game suggested that they might vote for Matt Reynolds for MVP after an impressive block that he made late in the first half to set up Hoffman's first touchdown pass.  While I think that offensive lineman are among the most underrated and under-appreciated players on the gridiron, I still would have given the MVP to another player for his outstanding performance.

That man's name is Riley Stephenson.  He wears number 99 and punts for BYU.  Yes, I would have given the game MVP to the punter. (As a side note, that's a sharp-looking suit.)

Punting is probably the most underrated and under-appreciated position in football (with the possible exception of long-snapping, though it's pretty much the same idea).  No one likes to punt.  Teams would much rather keep their offense on the field and continue trying to score.  In leagues with less maturity and less defense, punting is rare and teams almost always elect to go for it on 4th down.  However, punting is also key to the game of gridiron football.  Especially when a team is in its own territory, punting puts more distance between the opposing team and their end zone.  If a coach has any faith in his defense, he will usually elect to punt the ball away when his team is on its own side of the 50.  If he doesn't have any faith in his defense, it's going to be a long game, either way.  Coaches will tell you that field position is important in any football game.  It is universally better to start at your own 45 than at your own 5 yard line.  The closer a team is backed up to its own goal line, the more conservative play calling usually is.  On complicated plays, it's too easy to get tackled for a loss and give up a safety or cough up the ball for an easy touchdown.  Winning the field position battle helps a team win the game.

In the 2011 Armed Forces Bowl, Riley Stephenson had an exceptional game punting the football.  BYU sent him out onto the field to punt 8 times throughout the game.  Of those 8 kicks, none were brought out to the 20 on a touchback, 7 of them landed inside the Tulsa 20 yard line, and 3 made their way inside their 10 yard line.  Riley only had one non-amazing kick all game: a 36-yarder that went out of bounds at the Tulsa 42 yard line.  Even that kick didn't look all that bad.

The biggest risk in punting is that the punt returner will be able to make a play and carry the ball for a large gain or even a touchdown.  However, a punt is not really returnable if it hangs up in the air long enough for the coverage team to get down the field and get in the face of the returner or if it goes out of bounds before it can be fielded.  This is the part of Riley Stephenson's punting game that impressed me the most in the Armed Forces Bowl.  Of his 8 punts, 7 were not returned and either went out of bounds or were downed by the BYU punt coverage team.  The one that was returned was a poor decision by the return man inasmuch as he only made it 1 yard before being hit by a BYU defender and fumbling the ball.  This fumble was recovered by BYU and led to the Cougars' only touchdown in the first half.

I relate to Riley Stephenson and punters in general because I'm a civil engineer.  If you live in something that's not a naturally-occurring cave, you're the beneficiary of the work of multiple civil engineers all at once and you probably never recognized it.  Civil engineers design structures like buildings and bridges so that they don't fall down and kill you.  They design the drinking water and sewer systems that keep you from contracting dysentery.  They design roads and traffic signals to be as stupid-proof as possible to try to keep idiots from running into and killing you on the roadways.  They (hopefully) even analyze the dirt underneath a structure so that it doesn't get reclaimed by its mother Earth.  And you know who gets credit for all of it?  The architect (and maybe a little bit the construction crew... maybe).  Yes, the nancy with an art degree who does nothing but make the building look pretty gets all the credit.

So, thank you Riley Stephenson, for your MVP-worthy punting performance and helping the BYU Cougars to a 3rd consecutive bowl victory.  Few others seem to appreciate it, but I know I do, because I'm in the same boat.

I Demand a Manual Recount of Your Blessings

You know those corny things where people make a list of their blessings on their blag?  Yeah, this is one of those things.  I took the title from my recollection of a Jay Leno joke from the 2000 US Presidential Election:

"George W. Bush sits down with his family to Thanksgiving dinner.  They sit around the table and start counting their blessings.  Then, all of the sudden, Al Gore breaks down the door with his lawyers at his back, pounds his fist down on the table and says..."

...wait for it...

"'I demand a manual recount of your blessings!'"

I thought it was pretty clever.

So, today I was thinking about how I've seemed to be so much luckier than my dad in most things in my life so far.  Then I started thinking about how I'm a pretty lucky guy in general.  That led me to think that, as a man who esteems himself to be a Christian, I shouldn't consider myself lucky as much as I should consider myself blessed (though you can't totally discount pure happenstance).  So, here we go:

• I left my car unattended for three weeks and the only difference in it compared to when I left was a spider web that had been spun on the passenger-side mirror.
• I have a car that's paid for in its entirety and is warrantied bumper-to-bumper for the next 4 years.
• Today, I traveled over 1300 miles in under 12 hours for less than $250.
• Oregon State University pays me $1700 a month (before taxes) to get a master's degree and occasionally grade a few assignments.
• Speaking of Al Gore, I have a blazing-fast internet connection that gives me access to endless concourses of information, both of a factual and social nature.
• Though it may appear to be in decline, I live in a point on the time-space continuum that's among the most prosperous in human history.
• I have a bachelor's degree from a highly-respected institution of higher education.
• My parents cared enough about me to teach me many of the important skills to a prosperous life in this world.
• I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I have a testimony of the Gospel of Christ.
• I'm pretty smart, but sufficiently humble that I can recognize when people are smarter and/or more knowledgeable than me. (barely)
• Today, I wore a pair of 95-dollar shoes that were made by small children in a sweatshop in China.
• There are still single women who flirt with me every now and then.
• Duct tape.
• Knowledge that God did not abandon us to find our own way and let nature take its course, but continues to reveal the right way through prophets.
• BYU football just wrapped up another 10-win season.
• Despite its flaws and the raging viral infection currently wrecking havoc on my upper respiratory system, my body works pretty well, for the most part.
• I have really good hand-eye coordination.  That's why they call me The Hands.
• There are pills you can take that mostly negate the effects of a lack of vegetables in your diet.
• Antiseptic mouthwash does wonders.
• I've had the opportunity to learn another language (mostly) and have been able to keep it bouncing around in my head with relatively little outside practice.
• I can read and write in both languages that I speak.
• There's a postal system that will take some crap that you wrote and, for 42 cents, send it to some random dude in Wyoming within 3 days.  (Thank you Jon Stewart)
• People who have come before me have refined the body of knowledge on clay and stone and steel so that I could understand what I do now.
• Someone thought up glasses for vision correction and someone else thought up sunglasses for light dimming.
• I have a telephone that fits in my pocket.
• I have a calculator that also fits in my pocket (kind of) that does calculus and matrix algebra, graphs functions in 2- and 3-space, and adds.
• Drafting erasers for when I royally screw up engineering calculations.
• An outright unhealthy abundance of food.
• Clean drinking water that's piped to a tap in your house, essentially for free.
• A Savior who lived a life that was beyond reproach from God, suffered incomprehensible pain, and died so that I and 15 billion of my closest friends and family can by happy for the rest of eternity.
• And, undoubtedly, many more.

The Problem

Based on whatever knowledge you have of my life, you might have already formulated some ideas on why it lacks romance and/or spousage.  Based solely on what you read in this blag, you can justifiably come to the conclusion that I have a few emotional issues.  However, the more distance I put between myself and my mother, both temporally and spatially, the less of a problem this really is.  You might also come to the conclusion that I'm somewhat passive around women.  This is also much less true than it used to be.  At age 16, I wanted nothing to do with girls and they pretty much reciprocated that desire.  However, at 23, I'm much more comfortable around women than I've been before.  I've also come to the conclusion that I'm less approachable to women because of my size (~6'2" and 250 lbs) and the Native American blood that gives me something of a disapproving scowl on my face even when I'm not unhappy.  You could also think that I might have trouble finding a woman who's as smart as me, who gets my sense of humor, etc.  The list goes on and on.

I do not consider any of these 'typical' issues to be the biggest problem between me and women.  This biggest problem is that both they and I move.  In the last five years, between Denver, Provo, and Corvallis, I've probably moved 7 times.  Some of those were very temporary, but there has been large uncertainty about exactly where I would be in the not-so-distant future.

For the sake of completeness, let's first discuss long-distance relationships: they don't work.

Now moving on, from about February of '10 to September of '10, I met 3 women that I could have definitely seen myself marrying.  Two of these were in Provo before I graduated and one was in Denver after I moved back in with parents.  In all three cases, I had no idea where I was going to be living a year from the date I met them.

In the case of both the women in Provo, I was getting ready to close out my time as an undergrad student and didn't really know what I was going to do afterward.  During this time, I just wasn't concerned with women because I had more pressing issues like how I was going to eat in 6 months' time.  I still held the delusion that I was going to find a job somewhere in industry, which wasn't the case.  In addition, asking a women whom you only met 3 months ago to move with you is asking a lot, even when you're 100% certain about the location.  When you have no idea where you're planning on moving, it's just downright socially unacceptable. 

In the case of the third woman, I was still totally uncertain about where I was going to be in a year's time.  I had not yet started applying for grad schools, though it was apparent that that would at least be a backup plan.  I was still not particularly concerned with women until about April of '11 for the same reasons as before I graduated from college.  By the time my future became secure enough to feel comfortable dating again, I knew that I was going to be moving to Oregon in the fall and didn't really feel the need to ask any woman to move with me.

A component of these conundra is the fact that, in 2012, women can easily lead their own lives.  In 1952, it was likely that many women were basically just waiting around for a husband.  In 1972, there was still a statistically significant chance that a woman (especially a Mormon) would not be doing much in preparation for marriage.  In 2012, more women go to college than men.  (This is largely a racial issue, but that's a post for another day.)  Women have plans for their lives like work, school, or a mission that they don't necessarily want to drop just to follow a potential spouse around.  This is another reason that it's harder to get married now than when your bishop got married.

As I move forward, I have the better part of a year and a half in Oregon before my future will, again, become uncertain.  If I find a woman who I want to marry, I have enough time to court her an build a relationship.  The prospects don't necessarily look all that bright at the moment, though I hold out hope.

2011 in Review

In January, I published this post on my blag detailing my hopes and goals for the year 2011.  I'm glad to report that I had a much better 2011 than 2010.  Pretty much every goal or hope that I listed in that post manifested itself.  I didn't find an internship despite the supposed prevalence of geotechnical lab work, but I think I'll make it, somehow.  I also only saw 4 football games in person, but again, I think I'll live.  My 2011 included:

• Receiving funding and enrolling in a master of science program at Oregon State.
• Beginning coursework toward that master's degree.
• Moving to Corvallis, Oregon and living 1,300 miles away from my parents. (Honestly, it's kind of tragic even being back for the holiday break.)
• Acquiring a 2011 Mitsubishi Lancer with 000002 miles on it.
• Turning 23.  This has pretty much been my favorite age so far.
• Being the 1% for Halloween.
• Seeing 4 college football games in person.  
• Seeing BYU play and win in Corvallis.
• Getting a new cell phone.  The old one crapped out maybe a month after that post and my parents got me a new one.  A dumbphone, of course.

With a new year comes new hopes and goals.  Unlike last year, I have a good idea of what my future holds.  I'll be continuing coursework and starting research toward my master's degree.  For 2012, I want to make significant strides in my research, not spend more than two weeks at a time in my parents' house, and see more football games.  In addition to the Oregon State games for the coming year, I'm thinking about heading to Provo for the BYU season opener against Wazzu and/or making a road trip to Boise to see the Cougars take on the Broncos on the Smurf Turf.  I'm thinking that the Mayans just ran out of room on their calendar; 2012 is going to be a good year.

Grad School Lessons, Take 1

In addition to teaching me about important technical skills like geotechnical lab work, foundation engineering, and structural seismic design, my first term of grad school has taught me some important life lessons.  Here's a quick summary of each, in no particular order:

• Check out the neighborhood before moving in.  Seriously, if 3/4 of your prospective neighbors speak little or no English, it might be worth it to pay twice as much to live twice as far away from campus.  Here's hoping that my car is still there when I come back from winter break.
• Don't trust other people to do your work.  In two of my classes this term, the homework was assigned as group assignments.  Suffice it to say, I found out why I always did my homework by myself during my undergrad years.  My grades in the two group classes were significantly lower than the one that had individual assignments.  It would have involved a lot more work to do the homework myself, but I think I would have been more satisfied with the results at the end of the term.
• Sometimes you're the dog and sometimes you're the hydrant.  In the seismic design final, I was the hydrant.  Dr. Miller feels that he wants his seismic design classes to learn the codes that govern design of structures.  This would all be well and good if he actually showed his seismic design classes how to use the code.  He told us what was coming, but we were still woefully unprepared because there was little teaching of the code and no assignments based thereon.
• Most people love alcohol more than life itself.  In grad school, most everyone is over 21 and is fully capable of consuming alcohol at any given social event.  Most everyone also exercises this right to the degree that they're pushing the limit of being too impaired to drive, but generally chooses to drive anyway.  I'm seriously thinking about upping the insurance on my car... assuming it's still there at the end of the break.
• People drive like they're impaired even with no help from alcohol.  Everyone in Corvallis drives 20 mph regardless of what the speed limit is.  I don't think the cops even bother setting up speed traps, it's not like they'd be good for anything.  The best one I've seen is a guy who changed his mind as to whether he wanted to turn at a particular intersection about 3 or 4 times and made a swerving half-lane-change for each one right in front of me.  In all fairness, it was right by fraternity row, which leads me to believe he was, indeed, impaired by alcohol.
• It can always get stupider.  I thought BYU CE's undergrad stupid seminar was stupid, then I became acquainted with Oregon State CE's graduate stupid seminar.
• Be grateful for what you have.  BYU's football team had at least a 10-win season every year that I was a student there, and stands a good chance of doing it again this year.  I got used to going to a school with a winning football team and it's kind of tragic that my current school's football team is arguably the worst in its conference. 
• My grades are always lower fall term/semester.  Speaking of football, when several hours of your Saturday are taken up by awesome football action both live and on the TV, it's hard to get any work done.  Winter and spring terms should be easier on my GPA.  Though, next fall I'm going to really need to focus and get it done.

Well, that's pretty much all I've got for now.  I've listed this as 'Take 1' because I assume that I'll have other lessons that I'll learn as grad school progresses. In the mean time, I think this should be sufficient.

Ten Virtuous Ladies

In Sunday School this last weekend, the instructor focused mostly on the first thirteen verses of Matthew 25, more commonly known as the parable of the ten virgins.  If you're not familiar with the story, it goes a little something like this.  There were ten women betrothed to marry a man, and it was their wedding day.  As a side note, polygamy was socially accepted at Jesus' time, but few men could afford it.  I guess women have always been expensive... but I digress.  Five of these women brought their little clay lamps and brought extra fuel oil with them.  The other five didn't bring extra oil and had to go out and buy more. By the time these five got back, the wedding had already started and they had been locked out.

 

This parable is analogous to how well prepared the righteous are to receive Christ at his coming.  All of the women were suitable in the eyes of the man.  Would you really marry someone who you didn't like, even if could have more than one spouse?  So, all of these women were a part of God's kingdom on Earth.  Some just slacked off and weren't prepared when the time came.

Now, this parable is pretty cool, in and of itself, but I wouldn't post this if I didn't think I had something good to add to it.  As a geotechnical engineer, I'm more expert than your average person in just about all things dirt related.  Inasmuch as the lamps that these ladies had were made out of clay, I feel like I can offer some insights.

Individual particles of clay are long and thin and don't necessarily fit together into a uniform structure all that well.  When clay particles are deposited, they don't all lay flat.  Some of them end up standing up on end to a certain degree and creating relatively large voids in the soil structure.  This is called flocculation.  Because of the electrical nature of clays, the presence of salt ions increases the effect, making the soil more flocculated. In addition, clay particles often like to stick together in clumps called "packets" which, again, aren't necessarily uniform and create somewhat larger pores in the clay structure.

A uniform clay structure at the top with a flocculated clay structure in the middle. The bottom picture is a more macroscopic view of clay structure, giving more insight into its porous nature.

In somewhat recent geological history, the holy land and much of the middle east was covered by an ocean.  This is where the limestone that was used to construct the Pyramids of Giza came from.  Thus, many of the clay deposits in the holy land were deposited by oceans.  This gives these clay deposits high salt ion content and a relatively high degree of flocculation.

What it all comes down to is that the clay in Israel is highly porous.  The highly flocculated structure makes pores in the clay through which a fluid like water or oil can flow.  Even though the clay was kind of fired, it still retains these properties, for the most part.

Getting back to the parable of the ten virgins, the five women who didn't bring oil thought that they could make it through the time they had to wait with just the oil they had.  The Bible doesn't mention it specifically, but I think it's quite possible that they thought they could just put out their lamps and wait until they needed them again.  Because of the porous nature of clay in general, and especially the clay in Israel, the oil in their lamps leaked out and they did not have enough when they needed it.  In short, that's not how it works; these ladies still had to pay the piper for their lack of preparedness.

The moral of the story for our lives is that we need to carry extra oil with us, because we could run out unexpectedly.  If we are to be prepared for the Savior when He comes, we must keep more testimony of the gospel with us than we think we need. If you don't have enough with you, you may run out unexpectedly and not have enough time to go find some.  No one knows when He'll come specifically, so really, it's best to have plenty on you at all times.

The Obligatory Google Search Results Post

What brings people who don't know me to this blag?  Well, Google has given me some insights via my Blogger Stats page.  Here are all the search terms that people have typed into Google to end up at this page, whether they meant to, or not.  The search terms will be in all lower case, since that's how Google does things.  Enjoy.

• kathy buck.  Undoubtedly from this post where I thought I had a snowball's chance in heck of getting a job with Bechtel.
• tangled black short hair movie disney.  It took me a while to find a picture of Rapunzel from the movie Tangled after Rider had cut off her hair, so I'm glad some other people could find it here.
• a series of unfortunate dudefests.  Yes!  Someone's looking specifically for my blag.  :)
• "appropriate touching" lds. Not exactly sure which post that would have led to; probably one of the ones on Gary Chapman's love languages and physical touch.
• andra pathakis staley. Someone scouring the internet for Andra.  May have even been Andra herself.  Ring check!
• byu football pictures dennis pita.  And yes, they did actually misspell it "pita."  Dennis PITTA.
• cu boulder 4.0 grading scale.  I'm sad to say that all my posts on grad school probably didn't help anyone who typed this into Google.
• fall walls of jericho.  I'd like to think that this post is making its way around the internet.
• foghorn leghorn "flying".  Undoubtedly from my comparison of Foghorn Leghorn to Swoop in this post.
• lds young women.
• most interesting man in the world cunnilingus.  The query for the most interesting man in the world came from this post... but I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned cunnilingus in this blag... until now.
• a reenactment of a famous collaboration, starring eller.  I'm pretty sure this one wins the award for most random and ridiculous.  I have no idea what this means, and I'm okay with that.
• doyon limited.  Back when I thought Doyon might actually be hiring construction engineers.
• female working out.  Sorry guys, no softcore porn here.
• walls of jericho cross section
• walls of jericho resonance.

Well that was fun.  I now look forward to even more hits from these search terms as a result of mentioning them in the text of this blag.