Battery battle... what a BLAST!

One of my favorite things to do is play music.  And when it comes to music, the best instruments are percussion!  Although I never took private lessons, I loved to play anything I could hit.  I was fortunate enough to be able to play in school starting in the 4th grade and continuing through high school.  I love to perform and miss it very much.  There is an organization called Drum Corp International (DCI) that consists of "professional" drum corps that do field shows.  The maximum age for a performer is 21 and is a summer activity.  I was not able to do this, but I did go to the 2007 DCI finals at the Rose Bowl.  It was great!

This group named Blast is a professional marching band of older performers (over 21) that made a group to continue performing and doing what they love at such a high caliber.  This is one of the songs in their show.

BYU vs USU: typical time of year

This Friday at 18:00 MST, the football game against BYU and USU will begin.  This game has usually been played the Friday before the first Saturday in October as to not conflict with the Semi-Annual General Conference of the LDS church.

So what is in store for this years game?  BYU has a power-house defense as well as an amazing special teams... but I can't give so much acclaim to the offense.  USU running game is killer, their freshman QB is the shiz, they had Auburn against the ropes (and lost), yet their defense and special teams have problems.  As a biased BYU fan, BYU wins the game but in a fashion similar to how they won the UCF game: with Special Teams.  I would love to see another kickoff returned for a touchdown, but that is not quite expected.  I think that special teams will put the offense in easy positions to score for BYU.  And with the clash of USU run offense and BYU power defense, those series are going to be exciting.

the video has some hightlights of the BYU vs. U of U game then everything from the UCF game.

I say a close game of dominate offenses, but BYU special teams wins it for the home team.

BYU Football

I have my All-Sports pass, I'll be with friends and my brother, and I will have the BYU Football team.  Football season is about to start and it has been a long time since BYU destroyed UTEP in the bowl game in December.

Now that BYU is 1-2 on the season with two of those games being decided by one point and the other an unneeded blowout... the cougars have started the season by putting a lot of pressure on themselves.  What has been interesting though, is that the defense has become the backbone of the team while the offense can't seem to score a touchdown.  The offensive power house that BYU was last year has not been at all impressive at finishing the drive.  They seem to have the quote, "Life is about the journey and not the destination," to heart.  They move the ball well in the middle of the field and just cannot get into the endzone enough.

This weeks Friday Night game against UCF needs to be a season changer for BYU players, coaches, and fans.  We are the big dog Independent!

Rocky Mountain Conference 2011

I recently made a movie highlighting my and my team's experience at the Air Force Academy during a student Civil Engineering competition.  It was a lot of fun while I was there and it was a lot of fun making the video.  I made it with windows movie maker, which sucks but it was the only thing I have.  iMovie is a lot better.
Hope you enjoy!

"Huge" cancer breakthrough

There are very few ways to fight against Leukemia, none of which is hurt and cause serious illness.  A new method that was tested over a year ago for three patients.  It involves inserting an engineered virus into blood where the virus attaches itself to T cells (a form of white blood cells) and then the virus tells the T cells to multiply and then attack cancer cells.  This proved to be a high aggressive way to fight the cancer cells.

LA Times describes the procedure:

To build the cancer-attacking cells, the researchers modified a virus to carry instructions for making a molecule that binds with leukemia cells and directs T cells to kill them. Then they drew blood from three patients who suffered from chronic lymphocytic leukemia and infected their T cells with the virus. When they infused the blood back into the patients, the engineered T cells successfully eradicated cancer cells, multiplied to more than 1,000 times in number and survived for months. They even produced dormant "memory" T cells that might spring back to life if the cancer was to return. On average, the team calculated, each engineered T cell eradicated at least 1,000 cancer cells.

A year later, two out the three patients are cancer free!  This could be the next big cancer breakthrough.

Blue Man Group: perfect fit for BYU

I recently saw online that Blue man Group is going on tour and they are stopping in Salt Lake.  I grew up wanting to play drums all the time.  And I did just that for about 10 years... through my senior year of high school.  During those last few years of high school and still to this day, I loved to preform.  I then had a new dream job: to become a member of the Blue Man Group!  It was pretty ambitious, and true is... it may never happen.  But if I am ever asked I will have to be held down so I don't break things as I am jumping around with excitement. 

Maybe BYU could think about doing a Blue Man Group show for a little bit.  They both bleed blue!  I'd try out; because I could never leave this dream go.  It's part of me to preform.  I hope to get back into it.  One day...

Earth's two moons? Thats science fiction, right?!

Recently in several articles in the major news outlets, a story is running about a developing theory of why we always see the man on the moon.  One of the articles is titled: Earth's two moons? It's not lunacy, but new theory.  I found a similar article in the LA Times a lot more informative and just flat-out-better overall.

Basically 4.5 billion years ago, a little moon about one third the diameter of our moon and 25 times smaller hit the moon traveling at a relative speed of 5000 mph.  This means that the collision was slow, or at least slow enough to not melt rocks.  Yet the whole episode is theorized to have taken ONLY 3 HOURS.  And in that time the little "moonlet" wasn't touching the moon to having one mass that had already returned to a sphere because of the moon's gravity.

I'll tell you what though, it would be way cool to see the animation of the 3D model simulation!  Because whatever made the image that I started out with is pretty B.A.