Some popcorn guidance

As the holidays come upon us this year, thoughts inevitably turn to one way that we celebrate and spend time with loved ones: eating good food. It's also a time when lots of people are trying to make every dollar count.

This season make homemade popcorn. If you can splurge, make caramel popcorn. You will save money by making it yourself. The one thing I'd recommend is to not scrimp on the kernel quality. Unlike other goods that you can substitute an off-brand without noticeable difference, with popcorn you can tell. Get jolly time popcorn, the kernels get so big it's crazy.

The almond experiment

Steve Jobs is now famous for saying that consumers don't know what they want until they are shown. This same principle is equally true for food.

I am spending a lot of time at home working. This means that whenever I have a craving during the day, I'm covered. This post is in no way meant to brag, but our home is filled with good snacks to choose from, including mucho candy. While you can usually find me munching on some pretzel m&ms, lately I've switched things up. Every time I want to grab some candy, I instead go for the plain almonds. It doesn't seem like that glamorous a snack, but every time I go almond, I find that I really did want to eat almonds. Not to mention, I feel healthier too.

So my take home is that your brain can deceive you in what you want to be eating.

The Dude Guy

When I was around 10 years old, my brothers and I found ourselves searching for things to do in the summer time. With the help of our dad, we eventually hatched a most brilliant plan to set up a candy stand. In my opinion, the candy stand launched each of our young work ethics. One day, business was good, and then all of a sudden a jeep shows up. Out jumps this guy in his 20s without a shirt and a long blond pony-tail. He ordered some candy from us and then paid with a $20. The only to this order was that we didn't have that kind of change. We scrambled to give him all the change we could, pouring $7 of coins into a cup for him. His cheerful response, "Dude!" started an instantaneous friendship between us. From then on, this guy would drive past and he always enthusiastically honked at us as he drove past and we'd all yell out "Dude!" This dude was far less worried about getting his money's worth for his purchase. He probably cared more about just taking from life what life would give him. We fast forward a couple decades. The Aimers and I just had a little trip to Maine. Maine is a really great place, in case you are not familiar. As hectic and as crazy as Boston is, Maine is equally relaxed and laid back. I think our hike guide was the epitome of Maine. This guy Bryan graduated in Geology a few years back and rather than sell out to corporate America and "make rich people richer," he decided to keep doing what he loved, being a guide in West Forks, Maine. And this guy was good. He was smart, interesting, and very personable. In my opinion, this guy could be making a lot of money if he wanted. But we found out that the rafting business and tourism in general in Maine is not doing very well right now, so this guy was literally scraping by. It struck me that he didn't seem concerned about that at all. He instead seemed completely at ease about it. He constantly reassured us that we didn't need to rush on our hike, but that we should take our time. My favorite part of the hike was Bryan's comment at the end on how nice of a hike it was, especially at the summit where we could just "chill." The comment showed that he genuinely loved his job and was content with life. I like a lot of types of personality, but I have an especially soft spot in my heart for people who are totally chill about life.

A Thai restaurant you can't not try

The first time I went to a Thai restaurant was surprisingly only about two years ago. My love for the food took off instantaneously. Maybe I have Thai in my blood somewhere in the lineage. Two days ago, I went with a friend to Aiyara Thai Cuisine in American Fork. It was the best Thai food I've ever had. I ordered this super creamy coconut, lemon grass chicken soup. It was amazing. I also had this green curry chicken dish. I was in heaven. To top it all off, we had a mango sticky rice dish with ice cream on top. I didn't know anything could taste so good. And it couldn't be that bad for me, with dairy, fruit and grains included, right? If you are in Utah, or frequent the state every once in a while, you need to try this restaurant out. It's kind of secluded, so you may not find it just browsing for restaurants. But here's the address. Find it and eat there. It's very affordable. 224 East Main Street American Fork, UT 84003 (801) 756-4775 www.aiyarathai.net/

Limitless

Tonight was movie night featuring Limitless. The film was interesting, action-packed, and had some really unique cinematography. It's got Russian, which always makes a movie just a little bit better. Plus, it's got Robert De Niro. What's not to like about Robert De Niro? I would really recommend the movie. It's at the RedBox and on iTunes. ;)

If you haven't heard of the movie, the plot focuses on this kind of deadbeat guy who gets a hold of a drug NZT, which makes his brain function at full capacity. Can you imagine all your neuronal synapses connecting like a perfectly lubed machine? Or everything that you have learned (even subconsciously) at your disposal when you need it most?

The reason why I loved this movie is the same reason why I love any movie. It allowed me to escape reality but connect truth from this imaginary film into my real life. It absolutely fascinates me to think about someone condensing the pain of learning into one productive learning session. I guess I like the concept of operating at maximum capacity. Haven't you ever had your brain on super-productive mode? Or been able to complete a giant list of tasks in a short amount of time? Have you ever felt like you were on top of the world? The life of the party? All your jokes were funny and all your conversation was interesting? Okay, these last items don't happen too often to me. But I do get little brief glimpses of them.

Lately I've been trying to figure out why people have only glimpses of their brains operating at 100%. The majority of the time, your brain seems to be in "blah" mode. I've noticed for me one reason is that it allows me to be humble. I am a creature that needs to be forced into humility. It is then that I realize that I'm not better than other people. In fact, I'm more willing to interact and reach out to people when I am in a humble state, potentially building them up. I found it interesting that the movie only focused on the glamorous components of using your brain, like knowledge, power, money, without touching on the virtues that the brain can learn. Isn't it true that the brain can digest the benefits of living the precepts of wise leaders throughout the ages? Food for thought.

My other reason for why we are so designed sounds like a good reason, but I don't know if it's true, so I'm interested in what you have to say. Maybe life is more rewarding when you experience what you can't have. You see that elusive destination, but at the same time you are so far from it that it ain't even funny. We as humans need to be ever-progressing. We can't just reach a level and be content. That's why the Matrix initially failed. That's why we play RPGs. Have kids. Coach. It's fun to see the progress in ourselves and in others, but if there's a point where we have "made it," that becomes boring. That's all I've got for now, my brain is now dead.

August is the month of stories

In order to share a story, you have to be in the right mood. I think I've finally gotten into the right mood for this story. It all started yesterday...

I have temporarily moved back home to Orem, Utah to work for Novarad while the Aimers is gearing up for the school year in Boston. Living at home has taken some major adjustment on my part. Life is better elsewhere, but this situation will pay some bills.

Anyway, a couple days ago I drove my dad's Dodge Spirit to work. I am not too used to living in Happy Valley, so notwithstanding the fact that no one in their right mind would ever try and break into that car, out of habit I locked the car doors. But before I locked the last door, I made sure that the key I had could open up the door. After all, I wouldn't want to lock myself out of the car. Sure enough, the lock opened up the door and everything was fine.

The next day (yesterday), I drove my brother's Cavalier to work. It is a nicer car, but not nice enough to attract criminal conduct. After pulling up to the parking lot, I rolled up the windows and locked all the doors. This time, however, I did not check to see if the key I had would unlock the door. That minor detail would prove to be significantly important.

At lunch, I went out to the car to grab my peanut butter and honey sandwich. I put the key in the car and twist. Or, I should say, I tried to twist, but it wasn't twisting. I feared that I locked myself out of the car, but for good measure go to the passenger door and try. No twisting. I checked every door in hopes that I had forgotten to lock one. No such luck. I was locked out.

My brother confirmed my fears. Apparently, Race has one of those crazy cars that has a different key for the engine than the doors and trunk. His door and trunk key was inside the car. After a couple phone calls, I found out I could get a replacement key for $25, provided I show the dealership documentation with the VIN and my name on it. The problem was that I didn't have said documentation, Race would forget to call the bank to fax the dealership said documentation, and even if said documentation was received, I needed to be Race Ostler to pick up the key. It was too bad that he was going boating right as I called too.

So I decided to not worry about it during my lunch break. I went hungry and relied on a very kind fellow-employee that I got to know through my wife last year and very coincidentally started working with. He gave me a ride home and I was determined to get the key situation ironed out later. But my dad wanted to do it the next morning, so I waited.

When I was in high school, my buddy Ray used to lock his keys in his car so often that he would have a system to breaking into his car. Hey would pry the door open a little bit, shove his wallet in the pried area towards the top of the door, and then get out a hanger that he kept under his frame. If the lock was right, you could put a hook in at the end, put the hook under the locking mechanism, pull up and it would unlock.

I thought that I could do what he did and avoid paying fees and cutting bureaucratic red tape. Race had locks that appeared to be manipulatable by a hanger hook so the next day (today), my dad and I packed plenty of hangers and headed to where the locked up car was.

The process was not as easy as I had remember it. I could only fit one fold of my wallet in between the door, which didn't give us much wiggle room with the hangers. Tried as we could, we could not get the wires to come through from the top of the door--we had to settle on pushing the wires from the right hand side of the door. This could not give us the right angle. We made hooks into the hangers to latch on to the locking mechanism, but we could hardly touch the locker.

We then made a hanger guider, which was a glorified hanger loop that we threaded the hook through so that we could guide it closer to the locker. This got it much closer. Two times, my dad latched on to the locker, pulled, and moved it a little bit, but not enough to unlock the door. We just could not get a good enough angle from the entire other end of the door.

It was getting hot. I was very grateful that very few people were in the parking lot on a Saturday morning because we must have looked either very ridiculous or very shady. We had been so far unsuccessful at moving a wire to the other end of the door frame, so we decided to switch gears. What if we tied some string to the hook and navigated it over? It was worth a try.

After a quick drive to the nearest Circle K, we were tying waxed mint dental floss to the hanger's end. When that was attached, we shoved it through the usual door part and this time I navigated it to the opposite end of the door, closer to the locker mechanism. From this vantage point, I was able to stabilize the hook. But we didn't have much luck getting the hook coming in at the right angle. We tried, tried, tried and failed, failed, failed.

My dad then had the offball idea of putting a loop of dental floss to the end of the hanger and kind of lassoing the locker mechanism. I knew that idea wouldn't work. It was almost like a joke. So I said, "Okay, let's try it." Miraculously, the loop didn't get caught on anything getting in. I used my floss to guide the hook close and slowly the lasso got closer and closer to its target. Then the lasso closed in around the locker.

At this critical point, I carefully moved my floss to the other end of the door so that both the hook and floss were opposing where the locker had to be pulled to be unlocked. We both pulled. All eyes were on the locker.

The locker pulled back. The loop then fell off the locker. I reached for the door handle, as I couldn't believe that the door was unlocked. The door opened wide. My dad and I burst into laughter. WE COULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT HAD HAPPENED! That was the luckiest, flukiest thing. But it did happen. And I was glad.

We then made it home and Race was outside. He seemed happy to see his car back at home. He tried to show me where the key was that I had locked in the car, but it wasn't there. A little while later, he said, "Trent, here's the key to unlock the car doors. I had it all along."

The likability factor of Lebron James and others

I'm always interested in NBA playoffs. This whole season I have viewed the Miami Heat as overhyped and overrated. The Heat signed all the talent money could buy and still they didn't have the best record in the league. I have viewed Lebron James his whole career similarly as overhyped and overrated. Because of these two points, as you might imagine, I didn't want the Heat to go far in the playoffs. I wanted the 76ers to take them out. I did get some sense of satisfaction that at least it wasn't easy for the Heat to take out the sixers. Then I really wanted my Celts to knock off Lebron, but that obviously didn't happen. Now I'm glad the Bulls worked the Heat in Game 1 (and look to continue throughout the series) and it's made me wonder: What is it about human nature that wants to tear down something that is hyped up?

I watched the movie More than a Game and I'll have to admit that my perception of Lebron changed for the better. In the movie, Lebron comes across as very likable. He's just a kid who grows up just like everyone else, has struggles, and eventually starts succeeding - big time. But even as he is starting to really become famous, people at the same time are starting to tear him down even in his own town. This phenomenon happens with all sorts of types of people from movie stars to musicians to politicians. They are interesting as they rise, then once they are at the top, people crave more interest and so they try and expose faults, making them less likable. But why do we as people want to tear down something that has been propped up?

I think it has to deal with jealousy on our parts. We get happy initially for someone's success. It inspires us that we can also be successful. But then we don't want them to be better than us, we want them to appear more human, so we look for ways to tear them down.

As I mentioned, I am not as anti-Lebron as I was because I want to appreciate his talent. He has already done some incredible things in his career. Think about him with the Cavs. He basically had no one else on his team, and they won 66 games one season, 61 games another season, get to the finals, play in the conference finals. That is impressive. What's funny, is that he follows that up with 58 wins season with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh.

Now that all my teams have been eliminated from the playoffs, I am now throwing my support behind the Mavs. My brother is living in Dallas this summer, so for his sake I am going to be cheering them on.