How big is the tree?

So here's a picture of a tree. It's from Becca's blog.




















For some reason, it looks small. Here's a picture of the same tree, from Kyle's blog:



















It reaches the ceiling! It's got at least 18 inches on Kyle. But here's a third picture of the same tree, from my blog:












How big is it really?

A brand called Alan

Things to tell interviewers and future employers:

Alan is the Jet Li of communication, and he will do anything for money.

Alan kicks butts frequently and in large quanities, "kicks butts" meaning "does things."

Alan will have your job within the year if he wants it.

Alan is dependable, and can accurately quote Sponge Bob episodes.

Alan finds satisfaction in complacency and relentless mediocrity.

Alan is better than you are; hire him immediately. Immediately!

Chuck Norris wears Alan Broadbent pajamas.

Alan understands if you don't really want to hire him.

Yes, I wrote these in class.

No hood!

I didn't put the hood up today. Big mistake. Here's what I saw:













Yep. Oprah. Ruined my day.

A hoodie

It was cold the other morning, so I threw on a hoodie before walking to class. It was a little skewed, so the hood ended up blocking most of what my right eye wouold have seen. It was wonderful. I walked to class blissfully unaware of what was happening or existing to my right. Here's what I saw:


















Maybe I missed something that would have ruined my day!















On the other hand, I may have missed something that would have greatly enhanced it...

Election day's a-comin'

Two great things

In no particular order.

Number one: My new CD.






















Number two: Julie from work.















Wisconsin! When would I have gone to Wisconsin? That's right. Never. What's up. Waterskiing cows.

Glee

There is nothing I could possibly write here to supplement this picture. I've never considered myself a photographer, but this photo injects immense glee directly into my inner soul.

What is fascinating?

This is fascinating. The thing that really gets me is the expanding shell of radio transmissions. Man, that gets me.

Day 14 - Guys play MASH too

We were all pretty fresh off the mission. We were waiting for William Shatner to fill us with light and wisdom. We played MASH. This one was mine. According to it, I'm going to marry Councilina and have 15 kids, live in a house with a pet fat slug, drive an 18-wheeler, and make 180K a year as a stay-at-home dad. How very obstensive.

(I'm trying to figure out whose handwriting it is. I think it might be Lashley's. It doesn't look enough like the Council Bluffs font to be Council Bluffs' handwriting.)

Well, that's day 14 of 14. The good news is I've gotten all that scanning out of my system. The bad news is that 2 weeks of daily blogging has made me think of all kinds of things I want to post, but didn't because they weren't scannable. Okay, one thing. But I kept thinking of it for some reason. Expect a great picture from a camera phone in the near future.

Day 13 - Snoop Dogg

What is Snoop Dogg's favorite cereal bar?

Day 12 - Nice notes from girls

I was once an avid note-passer. I thought it was funny to put little hearts on the notes, so that it was more like grade school. Everyone who sees the outside of the note thinks it's a love note. When I was a clerk and handed out financial statements to ward members, I wrote names and drew hearts. Even if I was passing a note that said "Please move your morbidly large head so that I can see the teacher." As a result, any note I got back had to keep the theme up, and I got all kinds of heart-covered notes from girls! You can see the X's and O's on the other side of this one in the top right corner.

Day 11 - Guster

I attended high school. I had a teacher named Mr. Fields. I had a classmate named Lashley. Lashley and I would eventually end up being roommates at a univeristy in Utah. But at the time, our minds were focused on the task at hand: drawing pictures of Guster instead of paying attention in class. This one's easily the best one.

Day 10 - Notes

I went to a fireside once where the stake presidency talked to us about dating. Apparently, I didn't care much for their tone or approach. These are the notes I ended up taking.

Day 9 - Dear blog

I posted this yesterday. Really.

Click it to embiggen it.

Day 8 - Briefcase

I passed this around in Elders' Quorum one day. It was after I came to church with a brieface stuffed with oatmeal cream pies. Note: if you ever do that, people will ask you for oatmeal cream pies from your briefcase for a long time. Think twice, people.

Day 7 - Ambiguous Test Result

...or ATR. I took my car in for a safety inspection. They handed me this piece of paper, but I have no idea if it passed or failed. They've taken tact to a new level, such that I can't tell if they granted me a pass or not. Oh well.

Day 6 - Did I purchase a large hobo?

Yep. From Target. For twenty bucks.

Day 5 - Ben Jeppsen

I was once on an intramural frisbee team with Ben Jeppsen. He was the team captain. He was a lot better than I was, but when the ward would get together and pass notes, he still sent notes like this.

Day 4 - Things to blog about

I wrote all these down while waiting for a stake conference to start in the Provo Tabernacle. It was a long time ago. I've already used some of them. I know these ideas are gold, so if anyone wants to use one or more of these great topics, go ahead. Just let me know, so I can read it.

Day 3 - Theremin

Once upon a time, five of us took a trip to a little place called Ridgecrest, California. Their initials are Whitney, Gavin, PW, CB, and me. We swam in the sand dunes. We played 4-square. We ate at Jack in the Box. And we played Balderdash.

Readers. I exhort you to play Balderdash at 2 a.m. with close friends at least once in your life. The piece of paper you see here caused a lot of people severe shortness of breath and facial redness. Especially Council Bluffs. It was funny. We all thought it was fake and we were already enjoying the mirth of knowing that we were all spouting out lots of crap.

Theremins are actually really cool.

Day 2 - Close shave

There are about five things in life that make me happy. This is one of them. I don't know what the other four are, but this easily makes the cut. This is the worst ad a lot of us have ever seen. Kyle found this one and brought it home with him. What caught his attention was the expression of pain and woe on the face of our shaving buddy. It wasn't until we looked at it a few more times that we found the 2 typos. Find them!



Click for to make big!

boo scanners

I thought that scanners were magical boxes that allowed people to put papers onto computers. I thought they were the opposite of printers. It turns out they're only grinning scarecrows sent to turture and manipulate me. I've spent a lot of time lately trying to get my scanner working on two different computers, but it just keeps not-scanning. The people demand touch lamp lists. I promised Becca that as soon as I got my scanner up and running, I would scan 14 things and post one every day for two weeks.

As my stack of Stuff To Scan grew in size, I grew in giddiness, and my scanner grew in defiance. So I went to campus! I brought the stack! I went to campus! To scan!

My face remained expressionless, but I was smiling in my mind as I excitedly slipped precious documents between the evil jowls of the infernal campus scanner in the Wilk. Regardless of scanner placement, the scanner software ruthlessly cropped my e-precious documents to the point of slight unsatisfaction. Important stuff wasn't making it onto the screen! Luckily, the list made it, so I hereby declare this post to be the first of 14 consecutive posts of scanning joy. I'll figure out how to scan later. And check out some other blogs to find out what this list is about. Start here.

five dollars

Did we eat some five buck pizza?

















Or did we eat pizza that costs five bucks?

Park City

I went to Park City a couple of weekends ago. I brought my bagpipes. I just barely took the pictures off of my phone. There was a big sale at Linens and Things!




























































Here's the zipline we went down at the olympic village.




















Better pictures were taken, but not by my phone. According to my phone, all I did was check out the sheet sale and look at a zip line. My phone probably thinks I'm boring. And weird. And so do my roommates.

Story about good and story about bad

Today I slept in! :D

Because I had to work late last night. :(

But I did get some Burger King! :D

But they got my order wrong. :(

No they didn't! :D

I didn't really get anything else done yesterday, :(

except make some bucks! :D

at work. :/

Which wasn't so bad. :|

and wasn't really that great either. :/

so at 5 I came home. :|

I was tired. :/

Cannon started moving in! :D

But he doesn't really live here yet. :/

But he will! :D

But he really doesn't yet. :/

Yet! :D

This picture:
















This picture!
















Mike: Just 3 guys and we're havin' a good time!
Kyle: Look! not touching him!
Alan: HOLY CRAP WHOSE HAND IS TOUCHING MY SHOULDER.

Dear blog

Today at work there was a party for all of the people whose birthday is this month. There was a Beijing olympic theme, and there were fortune cookies out for people to take. I took one and declared its contents to dictate how the rest of my day would go. As I opened the package, the cookie slipped out of my fingers and shattered on the ground, where I saw that it didn't even have a fortune inside it. My day was going to be bad.

At least it didn't somehow burn my fingers or kill my ficus plant or change my name to Boron. Or make me watch crappy sitcoms. Or popular reality shows. And it didn't put me on a flight to a painfully boring city in an amazingly boring country. It also didn't shave my head and build a permanent house of cards on it. It didn't convince me to become a tree-hugger. Or an elephant-hugger or a flan-maker. It didn't sneak up to my office and steal my stuff.

And sell it all for trapezoid cookie cutters.

Or soy nuts.

So how bad was my day really going to be?

I didn't draw this

the new Google

Apparently cuil.com is a fancy new search engine looking to give Google a wet willie. Well, if you haven't heard if it, allow me to be the first to tell you that it's complete junk. I searched for accurate and accidental, and I couldn't find my blog anywhere. I even tried my ace in the hole, the word "shizzy", and it came up with absolutely no results. So I tried searching for my name, and of course tons of results came up. I added "-jazz" and again, zero search results. Zero! Heck, I can come up with zero results whenever I want!

Heck!

Any search engine that can't find me or my blog is obviously not a Google contender.

And it was really hard to use "searched for" instead of "googled" while writing this post. I'm assimilated.

How do I feel?

I went to my MCOM 320 class one day, and the teacher gave everyone a piece of paper that had a big square on it. She said something like "I want you all to express one of your life goals using this piece of paper." Everyone obediently filled the square with words that described their life goals. The teacher then expressed her disappointment that everyone assumed that they were to fill the square with words. She wanted people to write outside the square. Or draw pictures on the back instead of writing. Or fold the paper into something. The lesson was that we shouldn't assume our restrictions and take whatever liberties we can. So I'm going to use means other than paragraphs to express the answer to the question: how does Alan feel?

1. Of all pictures of casserole on the internet, this one best expresses how I feel:















2. Consider the following list of words:
mason
awoke
soft
sushi
foamy
fax
amid
divvy

The three that best represent how I feel are sushi, fax, and amid.

3. I feel more like the row of dots than the dashes or ampersands:

a. ...............................
b. -------------------------------
c. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

4. What Marx Brother do I feel most like? Zeppo.

5. Open Microsoft Paint. Double-click on any of the colors. Click "Define Custom Colors." Enter the following values: Red 124, Green 201, Blue 178. That's the color that I feel like.

6. I'll now type a few rows of random letters. The placement of my fingers on the keys while trying to be random will reflect my mood and feelings.

aojaoaoaojaoaj aomaoiajo a aoiaoija oai jaoij aoi nanmaioin aana oaoaaoa
a zeppo aoina oianaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa anoai anoianoa inao ainao ainao aa a aiaiaaa
aiuaoa oajao inao amoamoaimoaiahaihaia a ai jao ao ama iamaio aonam anma a

Not cool enough

Things that are cool but not enough:

- Optical mice
- Xerox 92-brilliance paper
- Scars
- The 4th season of SpongeBob
- New Balance shoes
- Hankook tires

If they were just a little bit cooler, they might have made this other list.

Things that are plenty cool enough:

- The tank that Kyle drew on a comment on Katy's blog

Catch that train

Sand castles!!!

Brackets = secret message

The other day [I] made (my)self {eggs} with bacon. I thought "Hmm, I'm just {like} a real breakfast chef! Yes I [am]." So I grabbed [a] blue (spatula) and gave {the} [lazy] susan a {good} spin. Bacon (is) good. Then an egg blew (up) and knocked {me} on my [bum]. I'm ok though.

People that need to shove it

I'm not kidding about this:

Every time(EVERY time?(yes, every time.)) I sit down to make a blog entry, the first(the VERY first?(yep, the very absolutely first)) thing that pops into my head is "how about I make a post called "hey, shove it right now" or "people that need to shove it" or something like that?" My old pp8 roommates can verify this if they remember when I made a list with the very name of this blog post on the whiteboard on our fridge. (The board actually had two columns; the second was "things that need to be shoved.")

I don't actually think about specific people that need to shove it, I just (for some reason) ALWAYS think that it would be amusing to make a blog with that title. I usually snap out of it. Today I had to do it just to see if it would appease my nagging mind.

I told a few people a long time ago about my idea of making a Web site called "People That Need to Shut Up." That's a little more rude than "shove it," but the idea is that people would go to the site to do two things: post the names of people that sincerely need to shut up, and check to see if their name has been posted. I planned for it to become the new short-lived internet sensation that everyone talks about for two weeks, then completely forgets about. Two weeks tops. But it would get millions of names. Oh yes.

I even decided that I would post my own name, so that I wouldn't be sad to see that someone else had posted it.

To liven up this boring post, here's a picture of a guy with a great 'stache.

bloggin' slump

To get out of my blogging slump, here's some great sentences. I made them using spell check, like Kyle and I used to do.

-She flaps the diffused odd seats in tens silly flood kills and snout flange.

-Down that strider bait I healed and dimpled all the fiddles.

Ok, so they're not entertaining. Actual blog post:

So I went to California this past weekend. I played on the beach. I saw the Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. I watched two of my favorite single people in the world become two of my favorite married people in the world. I sat with two brilliant minds and discovered the greatest word on the planet. I heard a secret. I went on a completely pointless hike.

I'm a wimp. And what's more! When I came home, I caught both of my roommates swingin'. Foucault and Nemrow would have been ashamed of me.

some drawings

Here's how I thought being homeless for eight days would be:


















Here's what it's been like so far:



















I guess I thought it would be cool, like I was being sneaky, or that it would feel like camping or something. Well, it sucks. It's cool when the sun gets eclipsed by the moon, but we wouldn't like it as much if it lasted for more than a few minutes, much like leaving the house is good until you realize you don't have a home. Wow, being homeless is absolutely nothing like watching an eclipse. Oops.

On the other hand, I've seen the goodness of mankind manifest itself to me many times over. People that I don't even know that well are offering me their homes and goods and storage space. And I bet if I ever said "hey sounds good! Thanks, man, I'll see you tonight!", a lot of them would actually follow through with it. I want to cry when near-strangers are that nice to me. And I don't mean the creepy kind of strangers. They make me want to cry for different and obvious reasons.

here's an easy one

Here are the reasons:
1. The semester's about done
2. Binary solo
3. Mixed nuts and apple newtons

Here are the things:
1. I'm extremely relaxed
2. I have renewed faith in human kindness
3. I'm ecstatic that there are people in the world that know how to make a good joke

Of course, they're not necessarily in order.

Things that are good but do not belong in piñatas

Screwdrivers
raw eggs
mice
ninja throwing stars
maple syrup
explosives
ideas
glitter
tear gas

any others?

Bless you, ants = blants

1. poke you, ants
2. cheese you, ants
3. date you, ants
4. glaze you, ants
5. stop you, ants
6. please you, ants
7. like you, ants
8. freeze you, ants

So I ran into Gavin (1) and said "Just gimme a (2) to do a hip-hop (3)!" Then I tossed him a (4), and he took a fighter's (5) and punched me into some (6). I got him back when I grabbed a (7) and poked him into (8).

Google isn't cool

I was a long-time Google fan. They'd never done anything to stab me. Well now they have. Accurate and accidental? Not anymore. They might as well have sent me an email saying "You never existed."

Do it Jimmy.

I win! kind of.

Ok, so my blog is now the only Google search result that is officially accurate and accidental.

However.

There's a book called "Accurate and Accidental Empathy" by Michael Chandler.

I'm currently trying to hack into the book so I can change the author to ME.

Analog hacking. It's gotta be possible. I can poss anything.

Things that are accurate and accidental

What I did:

1. Googled "is a great adjective" in quotes.

2. Got "gromphibbious," "nutty," "weird," and "fueled." Top 4 results.

3. Googled "what do gromphibbious, weird, nutty, and fueled have in common?" and looked for the first adjective on THAT page.

4. There were no results. And it told me that the "and" operator is unnecessary.

5. Unnecessary it is!

6. Googled "is the opposite of unnecessary" in quotes.

7. One result. Accuracy.

8. Googled "is the opposite of necessary" in quotes.

9. The third result was the first that had a real adjective for me. It was "accidental."

10. Set the title of the blog post.

11. Googled "is accurate" in quotes.

12. Googled "is accidental" in quotes.

Here are five things that are accurate and five that are accidental: (I picked my favorites from the first 2 pages of each)

Accurate:
1. Wikipedia
2. Passion
3. Mohs Micrographic Surgery
4. SenseWear(R)
5. My clock

Accidental:
1. Injury
2. Nothing
3. Whatever
4. Death by sunstroke
5. Fate

Then I Googled "is accurate and accidental" in quotes and got nothing. Then I googled "is accidental and accurate" in quotes and got nothing. I hereby declare my blog to be the first page on Google to contain something that is both accurate and accidental. Here it is.

Alan is accurate and accidental.

I hope I documented my process well enough that you can all repeat it and verify my steps.

I'll let you all know when it's official.

Things to forget

The following things are worth forgetting, and have been sorted by category:

Because it hurts to remember them:
- that Mr. Rogers died
- your first rear-ender
- homework
- that there are people out there who actually watch America's Top Model
- that Council Bluffs isn't going to run for senator
- middle school

Because I do it so often that it has become a habit:
- homework
- homework
- people's names

For creative, crafty reasons
- that speeding is illegal
- how much you owe someone
- how much you hate someone
- which kitchen utensils are yours
- homework
- about that 6:00 AM meeting

Sheer unintelligence:
- where you live
- what you're allergic to
- whether or not you're gay
- ok, so these are actually NOT worth forgetting.
- anti-homework

Politeness:
- that someone stole your couch
- that someone wigged out
- that someone etc.
- please don't do your homework. It will make you unhappy.

I'm avoiding homework right now.

Frozen cans of cell phones

Cell phones allow people to call people. They do! There's no waiting for pay phones to become available or saying stuff like: "Oh, hey Roberto. I don't have a cell phone. Nope, don't got one." Cell phones make that kind of conversation a thing o' the past!

But cell phones are also the dumbest dumb thing in the universe, dumber than piano benches, a sack of diapers, and an anvil.

Things that are dumb:
1. Cell phones
2. piano benches
3. a sack of diapers
4. anvils

I say so because of cell phone PROVIDERS. Sprint is stupid. In fact, cell phones are not all that unintelligent, the folks at Sprint are.

Revised list of dumb things:
1. Sprint
2. piano benches
3. a sack of diapers
4. American Idol
5. anvils

A post about post-its

I blogged once about index cards. A comment surfaced about post-it note index cards. Post-it notes have so many other uses, though, besides note-taking. But only one is of any real worth.

Things post-it notes are good for
1. Note taking
2. Post it note art!!!

Obligatory Post-Valentine's Day Post

Almost everyone I know posted on Valentine's Day, and I didn't, so I better get crankin'.

I went to every blog that I know about, and I made note of those with a February 14th post. Then I included the ones with a February 15th post, as long as it had something to do with V-day. Here are the blogs:

http://councilbluffs.blogspot.com/
http://caitlinpcarroll.blogspot.com/
http://theschmec.blogspot.com/
http://eanaj.blogspot.com/
http://thefruitrollup.blogspot.com/
http://sparklepony.blogspot.com/
http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/
http://www.apostropheabuse.com/
http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

(Those last 2 really are blogspot blogs. Or at least they started that way.)

And here are my reactions to each of the above blogs, in no particular order(of course):

1. What's with the crappy Flying V clip art?
2. Can't stop thinking about NFL.
3. I'm not! I'm totally not!
4. That's not even that good!
5. Great crap. That sounds REALLY good.
6. Cuties, they are. Cuties.
7. Well, mediocre people do exceptional things all the time.
8. I was also single, but I'm a guy, so Valentine's Day doesn't faze me.
9. Hah! Yellow?

The worth of the human genome

This is what happens when Kyle and I start talking about crap.

The human genome contains about 3.2 billion base pairs, each of which can be represented by a C, A, T, or G. Thus, they can all be represented using 2 bits, i.e., 00, 01, 10, and 11.

We can store 4 at a time in a byte, which is made up of 4 bits; for example, GTTA would be represented as 11101001.

Here's a helpful conversion table:

1 byte = 8 bits
1 Kilobyte = 1024 bytes*
1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes*
1 Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes*

*It's not 1000. It's 2 to the 10th power.

So if 4 of the 3,200,000,000 base pairs can be stored in a byte, it would take 800,000,000 bytes to store them all.

Store them all!

That means it would take 781250 Kb.

And 763 Mb.

I know what you're all thinking. "763 megabytes really isn't all that much!" And you're right. But as Council Bluffs pointed out, we're constantly shedding skin cells at an alarming rate. Now we're talking about some new conversions:

1 Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes
1 Terabyte = 1024 Gigabytes
1 Petabyte = 1024 Terabytes
1 Exabyte = 1024 Petabytes

Now this is some serious data storage. The human body casts aside a LOT of dna strands. Yet people pay hundreds of bucks for computers that store a few hundred Gigabytes of data.

Weak.

2 Solutions and Who Should Be President

Solution #1:
The answer to the matching problem is as follows:

Stuff 1-7 corresponds to reason #5.

Thanks for playing!


Solution #2:
If every house or apartment had to elect a president, there wouldn't be months and months of debate and backstabbing. It would be relatively easy for most houses. In my apartment, Council Bluffs would be the president, and I think we would all agree on that. When you go from small groups of similar people to one big group of extremely different people, you can't pick just one person to govern them all. Heh, govern them all.

That's why I think we should split the U.S. into a thousand states, and put people that are similar to each other in the same state. We could narrow all the different kinds of people down to 1,000 groups. Sure. So we let them govern themselves, each group with its own president, economy, and one of those war-planning boards with the little armies and rakes.

The states that fail? Make them admit that they are all too stupid to have a say in who should be president of the whole country. The states that do well? They decide who should be president.

Who Should be President
Council Bluffs.

Y? Cause we got to.

Match the stuff with the reasons why!


Stuff

1. I'm not doing homework right now.
2. P-A-R-T
3. I'd like to visit the moon.
4. But I don't think I'd like to live there.
5. I don't commonly ask girls on dates.
6. I'm not good at asking girls on dates.
7. I'm not gong to wash my car soon.


Why

1. I'd miss all the places and people I love
2. I'm flabby and weak
3. It's snowing
4. Cause we got to
5. I'm lazy
6. Girls are hard to ask on dates
7. I'm writing in a blog

Good luck!

Index cards

I have index cards because they're great for writing things on. When I'm holding an index card and a great pen, I can't help but write something down. They pull thoughts out of my head and immortalize them. That's good!

But I don't like to throw away index cards. Every index card has a thought or list or plan on it, and that came from my head! If I throw it away, I might as well have never written it down in the first place. I just can't get myself to throw them away. Maybe I should sell my computer for more index cards and index card organizing containers. I'll keep my journal on index cards. I'll do my homework on index cards. I'll put a stamp on one if I need to write to someone. My great grandchildren will find large plastic boxes full of indexed index cards. They'll never be able to read them all. My secrets are safe!

What's up

Things that are up:

Time!!

The gig!!

The Canadian dollar!!

Seven!!

My stocks!!

Order!!

Gas prices!!

Things that made me ecstatic

1. Having Council Bluffs come back to Provo, and choosing an "unprecedented" theme for everything we do. I remember the "self-evident" theme, Gavin's "Max Power" theme, and we even had a blogging theme for a while. They all affected everything we did. "Unprecedented" will be a good one while it lasts.

2. Driving from Arizona to Provo with Kyle and Becca, and passing three speed traps that were being watched by mannequins in police cars. One of them was Miss Jenny's sister, probably Miss Sally or something. Evidence:












































now THAT'S unprecedented.

Things that made me happy

1. Being at home and kickin' it with awesome people.

2. My sisters are all moms, and I'm learning stuff about being a parent, and how precious those little kids are. What makes me happy is knowing that God loved all of us enough to send his only begotten Son down to Earth, to be mocked and crucified, so that we could all return to His presence, for a big ol' family reunion not unlike this Christmas break.

3. My mom, who is the nicest mom in the entire world. Anyone who knows her knows that if you but glance at a $3000 ming vase in a display case, she'll get it for you because she thinks you'll like it. If you're happy, it makes her happy. And that makes me happy.

4. Playing sit-down tag with my niece Hannah. I didn't think it was possible. And it was her idea.

5. An acoustic cover of Outkast's Hey Ya.

6. My dad gave me a blessing. Sweet beans 'n' molasses!

7. I got an accordion for Christmas.

9. My brother talked about things he wishes he could teach our nieces. We have 6 of them, and they play and fight and laugh together, and it's fun. But he, like me, was frustrated at wanting really badly to teach them some really basic and important things, things that grown-ups take a long time to learn.

1. Things aren't important.
2. Being better than other people in any way isn't important.
3. Being nice to people IS important.

I think he meant to say more things, but just those three speak volumes.

10. We also have 2 baby nephews. For some reason, doing something silly and making a baby smile makes me feel like a million dollars.

11. There. That's ten.