Why I love Facebook (part II)

Well, look what's in the news today:



You'd think they'd get suspicious with a 16-year-old girl driving around in a BMW (which, by the way, is why drugs are often colloquially referred to as "girl scout cookies.") While I don't condone breaking the law, I do admire the entrepreneurial spirit. What I am wondering, however, is why the heck they had to include the fact that the girl's a cheerleader...if she were on the bowling team, d'ya think the headline would read "bowler gets busted for dealing dope"?

Anyways, time to put internet stalker skills to use:



SCORE!!!



I hope she can hook me up...but then again, I don't think she'll be facebooking in the slammer.




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In case you're a freakin idiot, I'm being sarcastic!

My home away from home...

As I am typing this, I'm sitting in the Clyde Building, home of BYU's college of engineering and technology:



I have (almost) all my classes in here...plus I spend 12.5 hours a week in the computer lab working as a TA. The building was named after W.W. Clyde:



...a wealthy businessman and philanthropist who founded such prominent Utah companies as Geneva Rock, Sunroc and Beehive Insurance. He was also the older brother of George Dewey Clyde, Utah's 10th governor:



That's an interesting historical tidbit that few people know about. Now, the actual college of engineering itself is named for another guy:



His name is Ira A. Fulton, and he is (surprise!) another wealthy businessman/philanthropist. He and his wife Mary Lou donated $50 million to BYU's college of engineering and technology, so they went ahead and named it after him (I'm definitely going to do this too when I'm rich!) Mr. Fulton also donated a hefty sum to the folks down at Arizona State University...and, whaddya know, they have an Ira A. Fulton school of engineering too!

How cool is that?

Church, BYU-style.

I went to Church today.

Our ward (congregation) meets in the Smith Field House, the athletic building which is also home of the weight room and indoor track. When Latter-day Saints gather to worship, the typical service consists of three meetings, each lasting an hour. For our ward, the first meeting is Elders Quorum:



...well, it's the first meeting for the guys. Female church members have their own organization called the Relief Society. That fellow with the purple tie pictured above is our Elders Quorum President. Since our church has no professional clergy, all leadership responsibilities are held by members of the congregation (which can either be male or female, depending on the position.) In a student ward, almost all of these positions, called "callings", are held by students!

Anyways, Elders Quorum is usually boring, but this Sunday it was cool.

The second hour is Sunday school. Let's take a peek inside:



...the lessons given here are quite participatory, so they're more like discussions than lectures. There's always more than one Sunday school class, and you can go to whichever one you want to. Speaking of which, during this hour my roommate Drew teaches the "mission prep" class:



...it's a class geared towards the younger brethren and sisters of the ward who're still preparing to go forth and serve the Lord. Today we talked about Dan Jones, a Welsh missionary who baptized approximately 5,600 people. Wow.

The final (and most important) hour of the service is the sacrament meeting. Here, the whole ward gathers to sing hymns, listen to talks given by designated members of the congregation, and partake of the sacrament (which is similar to communion.)

Our sacrament meeting takes place in a dance hall used by the Cougarettes (BYU's dance team) for practice:



Going to church in a college classroom or lecture hall definitely takes some getting used to...but, I like student wards because every Sunday I get to be surrounded by foxy and righteous women...yeah, you can't see it very well because I was trying to be inconspicuous with my camera and turned the flash off...that's why these photos are blurry.

Church or bust!

Tomorrow is Sunday, and that means we're going to church! Though I'd like to go to a typical LDS chapel:



...the overwhelmingly huge BYU student population makes that an impossibility, even though there's one of these on every street corner in Utah Valley. Instead, we use the buildings on campus as chapels...which is can be neat, and a little awkward if you happen to have classes in the same building your ward meets.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a "BYU church experience" post.

I'm tired. I just did 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups and ran a 5K. Hoo-rah.

Good night.

No way!

Remember the Taco Bell dog!?



Of course you do! He was the greatest marketing prop in television history!

Anyways, the voice actor for the Taco Bell dog was Carlos Alazraqui:



He's an Argentine-American actor/comedian/voice actor. In addition to the Taco Bell dog, he also provided the voice for Spyro in the Playstation game Spyro the Dragon:



...he also provided the voice of Scooter from Spongebob Squarepants:



...AND he even gave voice to Mr. Weed, Peter's flamboyant homosexual boss in the hit series Family Guy:



Isn't that amazing!? Talk about a diverse resume! This guy is everywhere!

Another year at BYU...

I think this will be a good semester.

I'm done with math. I'm done with physics. I'm done with the all basic engineering classes.

My only challenging course will likely be the aforementioned fluids dynamics class, but I'm enjoying it...so far.

I'm also taking an engineering geology course, environmental biology (it fulfills a GE requirement), computational methods and a long-overdo religion class. All in all, it comes to a total of 15.5 credit hours. Not bad, when you consider I'm also working part time.

I'm having fun with my computational methods class. So far it's been a basic computer class (binary code, FTP, HTML, etc.) I don't see how the class relevant to my major, but it's a prerequisite for all the upper-division classes I'll be taking next semester. My homework due next week will be to design a basic website and publish it on the BYU's network. I spent a good part of this morning putting it together:

http://www.et.byu.edu/~akolkena/

I designed my first website about ten years ago (not unusual for people my age.) I had a blast toying with this one. It's rekindled my love for HTML...though I admit I spent some time banging my head against the desk trying to get that image map to work. Rawr!

Yesterday I hitched a ride with Drew to the MTC (he puts in twenty hours a week teaching Mandarin.) While Drew was out teaching, I hopped on down to the TRC (Teaching Resource Center), a place where Church members can play the role of investigators and have the missionaries practice teaching them in their mission language. I was very impressed with how much Spanish some missionaries had picked up in a mere eight weeks.

I saw many other volunteers at the TRC, including a guy who served with me in Uruguay:



Ian Lefler. I didn't recognize him at first because of the beard. He told me he recently moved to Provo because he's getting married to BYU student next month.

Wow...so many guys from my mission have gotten or are getting married. I need to get with the program. So far I've just been waiting for the Lord to drop her into my lap, but I've gradually come to the realization that's not very likely...even though I worked extra hard on my mission!

How to get a girlfriend at BYU!

So I've begun my third year at BYU. I've got a job, an apartment, and a clear path towards graduation. One thing I'm still lacking: a girlfriend.

What will it take to get all these chicks to recognize my greatness?



Hmmm.

...but of course!



I'll use the Wilk Board:



Everything you want to buy or sell at BYU, you can find on the Wilk Board.

I made an ad of my own:



Pretty sweet, huh? No girl can resist that.

Nothing to do now but lay back and wait for the hotties to come callin':

My new favorite class!

This Fall I'm enrolled in fluid dynamics. From what I've heard, it's one of the more challenging courses in the civil engineering curriculum.

Today we had our first weekly lab, which involved Diet Coke and Mentos:





...our professor Dr. Hotchkiss was on the scene, taking his own pictures and videos. He promised a Big Hunk candy bar to the group with the tallest coke-spire.

Here's my group:

In my own natural habitat....

This morning I received a surprise phone call from a friend. He wanted to know if I was available to help out with a service project in a nearby town. Some group called Habitat for Humanity needed help building a house.

I had nothing to do, so we went.

Springville, Utah lies just south of Provo:



Nice place. I think this is what Provo would look like, were it not for BYU (i.e. a small, agrarian community.)




Some construction worker-type guy was perusing these blueprints. It almost reminded me of AutoCAD...speaking of which, I could definitely see myself doing this kind of work.




Some of us placed the beams, while others nailed down the plywood floorboards.




That's my friend Kevin standing on those beams.




Whoever is lucky enough to live in this house is going to have a great view of the mountains.




After placing the beams in place, we had to nail them from under.


Even I pitched in and helped:



...I wasn't just taking pics!