| February 15, 1990 | Issue 3 | Provo, Utah |
In this issue:
The Slopes of Sundance
After four years, I finally went skiing again. I went up to Sundance, Robert Redford’s resort, and the day was absolutely beautiful. The sky was clear blue, and the snow was only a day old. I went with Brett, who also works at the Sears Telecatalog Center. After a couple of weeks of working together, we also discovered that he lives across the street from me here in the Colony, so we carpool to work now and are becoming good friends. An Italian girl and another guy from Brett’s ward also went up. I was the worst skier of the bunch, but they said I was doing great for not having been on the slopes for so long.
One time I was skiing like a madman, flying down the slope at surely remarkable speeds. To avoid another skier I cut into the trees, went over a snow-covered boulder, did a double front flip with a half twist in the air, and broke my ski in half when I landed. (Well really I was just coming down the slope and crashed and broke my ski off at the tip, but all my roommates thought that that was too dull of a story so I made up the part above.) So I guess I’ll have to look for some more ski’s. I did get to ride a snowmobile down to the base of the mountain so I could rent some ski’s for the rest of the day, and that was quite fun. I enjoyed the whole trip, and was quite proud of my sunburn until my face just started to flake.
Jammin’ Ammon Hits Provo
Rebecca Gustafson’s wedding reception was the happening place to be last weekend. Many of the Gustafson family were here for the wedding like mom and dad, Alex, Nephi, Debbie, Lia, and (to my great amazement and pleasure) Ammon. In the line were about eight blonde girls, none of whom I recognized, so I figured they were the groom’s sisters. I just about fell over backwards when one of them said, “Oh, hi! I remember you.” it was Debbie. Five years have made her a mighty fine looking young lady. Carl and Louise were really excited to see me.
The groom was a pretty nice guy. After all, his name is Erik and he speaks Portuguese, and those are sure characteristics of greatness. I saw there Kaylyn, Heather and Debbie Briggs all with their husbands, and Lynne Duncombe.
I waited around until Ammon was free of his responsibilities, then we loaded all the wedding gifts into the Nissan and took them over to the newlyweds’ house. Ammon and I talked quite a bit, and we watched a movie over at my apartment. I drove him up to Salt Lake a little after midnight, and we sort of got lost for a while because Ammon didn’t remember exactly how to get to his grandparent’s house. I got home at about 3:00 AM, but that’s okay. It was great to see him and spend some time with him.
Breakfast with Pay
We had a little Valentine’s Day party with our team at work. Since we all get there at work at 7:00 AM, we decided to make it a breakfast. The party lasted for half our shift, and we had waffles, hash browns, scrambled eggs, bacon, muffins, orange juice and milk – surely the best breakfast I’ve had this year.
My job is quite perfunctory these days, but I’ll survive for another few months. I had a performance evaluation last month and I received the highest possible rating. I was pleased.
Jumping to Conclusions
We had our first test for my CS 162 class, and it wasn’t so fun. We have been studying formal logic and formal proofs, so the last question was this: We were given the three statements: ‘If the TV set is not broken, then I will not study.’ ‘If I study, then I will pass the course.’ ‘I will not pass the course.’ From these we were to come to a valid conclusion about whether ‘I’ studied or not, and the working condition of the TV. Of course, we had to do it all symbolically, stating the rules of inference that we used at each step, but that’s not important. It’s obvious that ‘I’ didn’t study – that’s: very easy to see, but I struggled to come to some kind of conclusion about the TV set. What do you think? Did it work or not? Well, I looked at all the strange rules of inference that I could, like modus ponens, hypothetical syllogisms, etc. and my final conclusion was this: it is not possible to come to any valid conclusion with regards to the working condition of the TV. I was kind of nervous about leaving that as my answer, since I felt like the teacher probably expected that the problem could be done. When we asked him about it in class later, he had a solution all worked out. I kind of thought, oh well, but we examined his reasoning and found it faulty. In fact, the exact problem was an exercise in the book, and the answer in the back confirmed what I had said – there is no way to conclude whether the TV worked or not. Ah, sweet is the taste of victory.
Personals
Phyllis & Kent: Thanks for the letter. I didn’t send you mine because I didn’t have your address until just now. Thanks for the picture, too.
Mom & Dean: Thanks for the Valentine’s card. The truck is fine.
Dad START is the name of the magazine I’ve subscribed to. I have a coupe of their past issues and it Is a pretty good magazine too. I also just got an offer in the mail for it to get two free issues so it worked out great.
Alan: Hi.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FEBRUARY PEOPLE!
Richard, Jeff, Kerry, Aaron, George and Abe.
I hope I didn’t miss anyone.
Until next time, remember “How can you have a refining fire without some heat?” — Neil A. Maxwell.