I'd Rather Be Deriving

Image via Wikipedia(Btw, I tend to sound a little authoritative when I write. :) I should be clear that I don't speak for the LDS Church in any way. I am just a faithful member who has done (probably too much) thinking on the topic.)

So, last night I got a phone call from a neighbor apologizing about the fact that we wouldn't be able to come over and visit like we planned for the following day (today). They understood that the purpose of the visit was religious in nature, so the father very kindly explained that while we are welcome any time, they belong to another faith now.

No problem, IMHO. I absolutely love talking to people who changed religions, whatever direction they've gone, because it usually means that they have actually thought about what they believe as opposed to just going with the tides.

One of the things that he said, though, intrigued me. It might have been a slip of the tongue or it might reveal a little bit about his point of view. I asked him whe…

By nearly every account, I'm 100% nerd. Somehow, though, my father fostered in me a love for professional basketball. Looking at the rest of my priorities, I totally don't get it, but basketball is definitely one of them.

So, how 'bout those Jazz? The comeback wins are very cool, but here is what I am overwhelmingly more excited about: Road wins. In the words of Ron Boone (no, I don't have the reference), "Championship teams win on the road."

And, as you know, the Jazz have been poor on the road during the "rebuilding" years. Last year's road record, 21-20, was their best road record since 2000-2001 when they acheived 24-17. To give a rough idea of this, hear are the last 9 years on the road with the Jazz:

2009-2010, 21-20
2008-2009, 15-26
2007-2008, 17-24
2006-2007, 20-21
2005-2006, 19-22 (Deron's rookie season)
2004-2005, 8-33
2003-2004, 14-27
2002-2003, 18-23 (Stockton and Malone's last season)
2001-2002, 19-22

So, you can see, then, why I…

I had a bad dream last night: I dreamed that we had actually bought a car from this millennium.

Normally on Thursdays, I delve into an obscure mental math trick. But, the effect of realizing how important the fact actually is to my subconscious has motivated me to explain how it is that Kristi and I haven't had a car payment since roughly 2004.

When Kristi and I were first married in 2003, I had a Blue 1999 CR-V. I really liked the car, and the payment was only $296/month. While it was always a little embarrassing to have people get into an apparent SUV and then find out that it was only a 2.2-L four-cylinder engine that could hardly make it up Cottonwood Canyon, there were few other problems.

And it was a stick. I love driving sticks, much to the chagrin of me when I'm trying to sell the car. Apparently, there are only a few people left that prefer a stick to the degree that they will buy a stick car knowing that there are only a few others that they could sell it to once …

(This is the second in a series of posts about how I started The Pi-Dye T-Shirt Shop. I hope that it's helpful to someone out there that is trying to start their own business.)

If there is one thing that made our t-shirt shop successful (and a whole lot funner (I know that "funner" isn't a word, but doesn't "a whole lot more fun" sound less fun?)), it is the fact that we nearly turn into pi an extreme sport, including it in every aspect of marketing, delivery, and operations that we can think of.
PricingA few years ago, I noticed, like many of you probably did, that in addition to most prices ending in "9", most Walmart prices ended in "8". If you are into Internet Marketing at all, most of those prices end in "7".

Noticing a possible pattern, and being a hopeless nerd, I decided that all of our prices would be multiples of pi. Our first "real" online shirt was listed at $12.56, which is $4*pi. This hasn't le…

If you read my previous post on my sons' names, you'll know that this post is about my daughters' names.

When we found out that we were going to have twins, I vowed that there names were not going to rhyme or alliterate. We weren't going to do Jadyn and Jordan, or Kim and Tim, or Esther and Edgar (all likely candidates for other, less elitist parents, especially Esther and Edgar). I did want the names to have something to do with one another somehow.




Felicity Mae CummingsFelicity's first name has little to do with its underlying Hebrew meaning or its tie to Biblical history and everything to do with the fact that this was a name that Kristi had always wanted one of her girls to have because she liked that it meant "happiness".

So, to tell you the truth, I didn't do a lot of research on this name because its place in our family had already been decided.

But, it was excellent material to work with. The initial spark that 'Felicity' provided gave …

Halloween is a difficult time for me. My heart says, "Dress up as something really nerdy!" whereas my head says, "If you do that, you'll be explaining it to non-nerds all day long!" On Halloween, my heart usually wins.
So, just in case there are any super-nerds out there, here are my five nerdiest costumes ever:
1997 - The Information Super Highway
We were sitting at Grandma and Grandpa Cummings's house, trying to decide what I should dress up as for Halloween. I had always tried to be something clever--I mean, in the third grade, I was a garbage can, and what could be more clever than that?--but this year I hadn't been able to think of anything at all.
Actually, my wife will attest today that last-minute costumes are my specialty, but that is because I am no longer a teen with gobs of time to obsess for weeks over minutiae like the best Halloween costume (no offense to any teen that is reading this). Now, I have to obsess for weeks over the best Hallow…