Elder Ferg happenings

Mark sent some great pics and I thought I would share with his blog buddies!  Enjoy!

Post Disney

Just as was predicted, Disneyland was off the hook. Just Brad, Michelle and me tearin' up the magic kingdom with nothin' to lose. We saw all we wanted to see, and rode all we wanted to ride, often multiple times (Splash Mountain was epic).
We had... we were... we... Just look at the pictures.

In front of Pirates. They remodeled the ride to incorporate the movies. Not too shabby.

Practicing our "Splash Mountain" faces.

On Splash Mountain

Round 2

Brad and I were sick of waiting in line.

"F" is for "Ferguson."

Found 'em. Love 'em.

Dopey and Grumpy.

 

Main Street USA. The whole park was decked out in

Christmas decorations. EVERYWHERE!

On the Disneyland Train. We were sick of walking, so

why not?

Israel = Disneyland

My parents have wanted to visit the Holy Land for a long time, and they finally got the opportunity. Unfortunately, the only time they could go was over Thanksgiving. To make up for this 'abandonment' (heh heh...), they're sending Michelle, Brad and myself to Disneyland for a few days!
Now, you may be thinking: "Disneyland for Israel?! What a ripoff! That's not fair!"
Au Contraire, my friend.
You see, I think it'd be cool to see the Sea of Galilee and all, you have to imagine this:

-It's Disneyland.
-Just the three of us.
-No parental supervision.
-It's Disneyland.
-We can eat whenever we want, and whatever we want.
-We can go on whatever rides we want, multiple times, even.
-It's FRIGGIN' DISNEYLAND.

So you see, I think it's a pretty fair trade. While Israel is hot, dangerous, and huge, we'll be in a warm, friendly, mouse-ruled environment. It IS the happiest place on Earth, you know.

Ask a Ninja: College

I don't know if you've ever heard of "Ask A Ninja," but if you're in college (or you've already been), you may find this entertaining. If not, don't blame me. I'm not in charge of how you spend your time...

Happy Halloween!

Happy Pumpkin Day, everyone! It's gonna be a cold one this year. Nevertheless, costumes must be worn, kids must steal candy form their neighbors, and pumpkins must be carved.

Speaking of which... here's our cast this year at the Ferguson House:

Dad's guy. I like the ears/horns he added. Every year, he does it. I've yet to figure it out...

Brad's work. He was pretty meticulous about making it perfectly even.

Also Brad's work. So... Epic...

 

Mom did this one. Rest in Peace, Tuffy...

I did this one. If you don't get it, ask your local math geek.

My Masterpiece. He got pretty hungry.

What did YOU do with your pumpkins?

Commercials

Everyone's got favorite commercials, whether they be funny, cool, or just plain stupid. Honestly, I'm a fan of all three varieties, and here's proof. What are your favorites?

Humanitarian Center

I'm not going to school, and I don't have a job, and I'm not entering the MTC until December. It's only for about two months, so no one's gonna hire me. I have a LOT of time to burn until I leave. I didn't know what to do.

Ah, but my amazingly intelligent father had a plan (he usually does).

He suggested volunteering full time at the LDS Humanitarian Center in Salt Lake full time. I thought he was a little nuts (I usually do), but today was my first day there, and I may think that he's on to something.

Most of the day, I was hauling boxes and palletes with an electric jack (I call him "Wall-E") and filling orders to ship out to other Humanitarian Centers across the US. It still astounds me as to how well connected everything in the Church is; there's a truck going from somewhere to somewhere else 24/7.

With this tsunami in the Phillipines, tomorrow's going to be a busy day at the LDSHC, as people tend to volunteer more when they know people are in trouble (atta kids). I wonder how little 'ol Mark will fare among the hustle and bustle...

Mission Call!

Yes, people, it's finally happened: Mark's got his mission call. I'm speaking English (thank goodness...) in the COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA MISSION.

I'm freaking out. It's going to be off the hook... for two years! I report to the MTC on December 16th, so that means I'm spending Christmas in the MTC. That's gotta be a once in a lifetime situation, and I can't wait.

Oh, and a little side note: my mission president is the son of Bruce R. McConkie. I'd better study up on my scriptures.

Snowmobiles are for Snow

I went to the East Idaho State Fair three times this week (that's right, THREE), and on Friday, myself and two friends went to see the Motocross Freestyle. MX Freestyle is where they get motorcycles with crazies on 'em, leave ramps at 20 mph, do tricks in the air, and try to land without killing themselves.

Well, at this particular MX, they brought out a modified snowmobile for the finale. He was going to attempt a backflip on something that was never meant for dirt. After he left the ramp, he.... well, just look for yourselves:




Now don't you kids panic. About 30 seconds after the crash, he got some air back in his lungs, popped right up, and started high-fiving the fans.

If you want to prove you've got some guts, try this out.*

*(Please don't try this out.)

Laugh-A-Rama

I'm not exactly sure why, but I was feeling kind of down today. So, to make myself feel sunnier, I found some funny stuff on the Interweb. While busting a gut, I thought that the huddled masses (you) might be interested in participating with me in the shinanigans. I found some funny clips and posted them below for your enjoyment. Don't worry, they're PG rated.

You're welcome, huddled masses.

St. George (Pronounced 'Horhey')

If you think where you live is hot, take a trip to St. George. 111 degrees, and it rained the day before, so humidity was up. Like being a turkey on Thanksgiving... But hey, the family trip down there was still pretty darn fun. We hiked to Slot Canyon once again (with me as their trusty dusty guide. Mostly dusty), ate at "Pirate Island," a themed pizza joint, tennis, racquetball, swimming... quite the adventure.

But there's something I have to show you people: I've heard of killer deals where you buy something and get something else free (the Wii is pretty common as a side-dish), but I've never seen this before:







Gives a new definition to "killer deal," doesn't it? The good news is that if the world falls apart and you need some extra defense, go buy yourself an automotive accessory.

I've found a new hobby, ladies and gentlemen: Body Language and Facial Expressions.

Have you heard of the show 'Lie to Me?' I saw the pilot a few months ago, and I was enthralled. Here was a guy that used facial expressions and body language to decipher what people were thinking and whether they were lying or not. Now, I had to ask myself whether all of this mumbo-jumbo was factual or fictitious, and it turns out, it's completely real.

Dr. Paul Ekman has been studying human expressions for over 30 years, and he's come up with multiple volumes of findings, as well as becoming a university professor. I've read two of his books, his magazine articles, and his online materials, as well as a few books by other body expressions experts. The information is astounding:

Facial expressions are interesting in that 7 basic expressions (fear, anger, sadness, happiness, contempt, anger, and disgust) are UNIVERSALLY the same between all human beings. It shows that basic facial expressions aren't taught, but known genetically. Isn't that just COOL? It means that if you're a housewife in Indiana or a shaman in Africa, a broker in South Korea or an actor in England, your expressions are linked.

This post has gone on for a bit, but I'll post more about the subject later. There's some pretty amazing stuff, folks...

New Digs

Look who got a facelift... my blog! I'd say that it's more tasteful than the last one, but the fact that I'm writing on it negates that. I still have a few kinks to work out, but it's now 20% more enjoyable than the last blog (according to our experts).

Anywho, I thought I'd celebrate by posting something that's both random and explosive. This is the way to diffuse a car bomb the awesome way:

See more funny videos and Technology Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Get a Job...

Some people have waaaaaaaay too much time on their hands. But hey, they sure are entertaining. Here's a little treat I found for you people. I know it's a little late for the 4th, but hey, explosive candy is awesome no matter what time of the year it is.

A Sad Day Indeed...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have grave news... Just as he was becoming popular amongst the masses, Animal (my antenna topper)was STOLEN off of my car whilst parked in Idaho Falls.





A moment of silence for the fallen comrade...



...


...SO! I need a new one. I'm taking suggestion concerning which topper I should get now. Any ideas?

Long Time, No Post.

Geez, it's been forever since I've posted here... Sorry about that.

But first things first, you need to meet my new friend. This is Animal:




Animal lives on my car's antennae.






When it rains and I'm driving, his hair slicks back in true Animal fashion. Sure, he makes the car look 10X as tacky, but he's always welcome on my car.

News, news.... I'm still in Logan, and it's finally getting hot. Thank Zeus for AC! For the first time in my college career, I have air conditioning in my housing. I also have a dishwasher for the first time, too, which turned out to be a curse when I forgot what the difference between dish soap and dishWASHER soap was. So many bubbles...

I'm taking 3 classes, but because of the short semester, they go much longer, so I have a deceptively busy schedule:
HIST 4820: WWII in Europe
HIST 3070: Perspectives in Folklore
FCHD 3350: Family Finance
Combined with institute, homework, the lack of a computer (the Library is my second home), and other random stuff, I'm pretty busy.

That's my life right now. I'll try to be more "faithful" in updating this thing in the future. Then again, I'm not sure if many people would notice if I didn't...

If I were an Evil Overlord...

I got these from a friend, and they're quite possibly awesome. They're a bunch of things that Evil Overlords overlook, which usually lead to their defeat/demise by the end of the movie/book/comic.

So, here are the things I would do if I were an Evil Overlord, to ensure that my empire would outlast the ages:


-My stronghold will have ventilation ducts that are too small to crawl through.

-I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to demonstrate how evil I am. Loyal service should be rewarded... Which is how it becomes "loyal" service in the first place. And besides, honest messengers are hard to come by when you are in the Evil Overlord business.

-I will never utter the sentence "Before I kill you, you should know…"

-I will never turn into a giant snake, no matter how much I might want to, because it never helps.

-If my Trusted Lieutenant tells me that my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him... After all, he is my Trusted Lieutenant.

-If any of my advisors ever says to me "My lord, he is but one man, and what can one man possibly do?" I will reply "This.", and then shoot him.

-I will not have a son. Although his eventual and surely laughable plan to overthrow me will fail, it could provide a fatal distraction at a crucial moment.

-I will not have a daughter. Although she would certainly be as evil as she is beautiful, once she sees the hero's rugged good looks, she will no doubt betray me to him.

-The entrance to my stronghold will have doors that are normal sized. While twenty-foot tall doors do impress the masses, they are difficult to close quickly in an emergency.

-If I am forced to make my escape, I will not pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner before leaving.

-Shooting is not "too good" for my enemies.

-No matter how tempted I am by the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field that is larger than my head.

-When I capture the hero, I will also make sure to capture his pet ferret, dog, monkey, or whatever other sickeningly cute pet animal that is capable of untying ropes, fetching keys, etc that happens to be following him around.

-If one of my enemies says, "Look, before you kill us, will you at least tell us what this is all about?" I will say "No." And then I will shoot them.

-My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic rifle marksmanship. Any who cannot hit a man-sized target at ten meters will be used for target practice.

-My Legions of Terror will be trained to dogpile hand-to-hand opponents, rather than attacking them in ones and twos while the rest stand around waiting their turn.

-No matter how much I desire vengeance, I will never issue the order, "Leave him! He's mine!"

-Since nothing is more irritating than a hero defeating you with basic math skills, I will design all of my personal sidearms to fire one more bullet than is standard.

-If I come into possession of an artifact that can be used only by the pure-of-heart, I will not, repeat,will NOT, attempt to use it nonetheless.

-When it is prophesized that "no man will defeat me", I will keep in mind the growing presence and influence of non-traditional gender roles in the world today.

-My Legions of Terror will be trained so that if they burst into rebel headquarters and find it empty except for a strange, blinking device, they will not approach it to investigate. Rather they will run like hell.

-If my mad scientist tells me that my superweapon is almost finished, but requires more testing, I will wait for him to complete the testing. No one ever conquered the world by using a beta-version.

-My force field generators will be located inside the force field they generate.

-The interior decor of my fortress will not feature pointy objects I could be impaled upon if I'm knocked off balance and stumble backwards during a fight.

-Once my power is secure, I will destroy any pesky time machines that might be at hand.

-All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

-When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

-If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

-If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

-My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

-The gun turrets on my fortress will not rotate enough so that they may direct fire inward or at each other.

-I will allow guards to operate under a flexible work schedule. That way if one is feeling sleepy, he can call for a replacement, punch out, take a nap, and come back refreshed and alert to finish out his shift.

You're More than Everyone... and Here's Why

Today, in my Management Information Systems class, we were talking about the various sizes of data that we use in modern computers. Many of you have heard of megabytes and gigabytes, but how “big” are these, exactly? I looked it up, and I was absolutely astounded as to just how much information humans have bothered to record. Not only this, but I found a mind-blowing fact that I’ll remember forever, and you should know about it as well.

A “bit” is the smallest unit of data. Basically, it’s a 1 or a 0; a true or false, up or down. 8 bits make a byte, which is the basic unit of computing, with 10 bytes making a single word and about 100 bytes making a sentence. Next is a kilobyte, which is 1024 bytes (1 kb=one page of text). Megabytes are 1024 kilobytes, with 10 Mb giving a one-minute song and 5 Mb holding the complete works of Shakespeare.

Sorry for all the techy lingo, but stick with me. A Gigabyte is probably what you’re most familiar with. A single GB can contain an entire symphony or a TV quality movie, whilst 10 GB can hold the entire orchestrated works of Beethoven and 50 GB is equivalent to an entire floor’s-worth of books at a library.
Now THIS is where it gets nuts. A Terabyte is 1024 Gigabytes. A SINGLE terabyte can house as much information as 50,000 trees worth of paper, and 1.24 TB is estimated to be the capacity of a human’s functioning memory. 2 TB is how much it takes to store an academic research library, and 10 TB is the amount of information in the Library of Congress.

But it gets BIGGER. A Petabyte is 1024 Terabytes. If you had 100 PB, you could store all printed history in human civilization. That means every book, magazine, newspaper, or anything that’s been published. But it doesn’t stop there; one Exabyte (1024 Petabytes) is the amount of information that has ever been SPOKEN by humans. That means that every word, phrase, sound, song, laugh, or anything that has ever come from the mouth of humanity could be contained in an Exabyte.

And here’s the point that made my jaw drop: a Zettabyte is 1024 Exabytes. This piece of information is so large, if everything humans ever build, said, wrote, designed, and even DID was recorded, you could fit it into a Zettabyte with tons of room to spare. Now here’s the kicker: if you took a single gram of human DNA, it would contain more than 2.2 ZETTABYTES OF INFORMATION. I don’t know about you, but the sheer ‘size’ of all this makes me feel pretty small. Isn’t it amazing that the thing that makes you “you” is greater than the rest of all humanity combined? It’s a pretty sobering thought.

And THAT, kids, is your mind-blowing fact of the day.

It's quiet... Too quiet...

So I was right: Utah State is pretty much abandoned. I knew that there were less students than normal during the summer, but it feel a lot like this:



The labs are always empty, and the library is like a morgue. San Juan (the building I'm staying in) is very private and anti-social. But hey, it's only for a few weeks.
On the bright side, I get to ride my bike as fast as I dang well please. I stil it in the highest gear it's got, and I don't have to worry (much) about mowing down some poor pedestrian.

Random question: I want to put new music on my playlist, but I don't know if it's worth the time. So I ask: do you like the music? Not care much what's playing? Let your voices be heard, my people!

Back to School

I'm pretty sure I didn't mention this earlier (or ever, really), but I'm going back to USU for the summer!



I'm going to be up there for about 4 weeks, and depending on the mission paper situation, I may be at school for 8 weeks after that. I love it up at Utah State, and I can't wait to go back on Monday. I'm living in San Juan Hall, even though it's about 1.3 miles away from campus (center of the quad). But hey, it'll give me some excercise.



I'm not taking as many classes as I'd like, but it'll be nice to be in Logan for the summer.