A Case for YouTube Videos

Several days ago my truck informed me I needed to change the oil. I managed to get into the specialty service station on Christmas Eve as the establishment had no customers at the time. The last time I had the service performed, they had me stay in my car but this time they invited me into their 4-person waiting room. They had a television going with various YouTube videos playing.

My oil change only took a few minutes and I have to say that I enjoyed watching some of the YouTube videos while I waited. I didn't have the option of selecting which videos I wanted to see. Instead the television just showed some of the popular videos that only lasted a few minutes each. The first video showed some guys in Australia that have a large tower where they drop various objects. The series I watched extolled the virtues of some really strong tape. They made a landing platform out of the tape on a steel frame. The objects started out small like a ball made out of rubber bands. The tape held and so they moved up to larger objects. Next came a small anvil and once again the tape held. They progressed through a number of objects with the final item dropped being a giant 500 pound fist made of metal. The tape didn't break but it did lose its grip on the metal frame.

The interesting thing about the videos is that anyone could walk in for a service appointment and not require any background as to what is going on. When it is time to leave, you don't feel like you are going to miss something important. If you really want to see what happens as the objects get larger, you can just go home and pull it up on YouTube.

I came out of the oil change feeling entertained and like the service happened quickly. As someone that creates YouTube content I now have something to aspire to. Perhaps someday I will create a video interesting enough that strangers getting an oil change will enjoy watching it.

Merry Christmas - You've Got Jury Duty

Yesterday I got in my truck to head up to the ski resort and got the message that I needed to change my oil. Sure I could ignore the message for a bit but I am one of those people that likes to take care of such things as quickly as possible. Today after skiing, I gave the local oil-change service company a call to see if they are open on Christmas Eve and changing oil. They said they were and also that they didn't have any customers at the moment. I quickly drove the quarter mile to their shop and quickly got in.

It made me proud to get something done so fast and not have it hanging over me. When I got home, I checked the mail before going inside and saw that I have been summoned for jury duty. My pride disappeared into humility. This is one of those civic duties we all have as Americans and we should be happy to perform. Unfortunately we all feel it can be a giant time-sync and nobody really wants to do it. To make matters worse, I got the notice on Christmas Eve. Fortunately I don't have to report until February but I don't think it made for a good Christmas gift.

Excel Trick: The UNIQUE Function

Yesterday I found myself spending more time in my Excel sheet with 32,000 rows and 44 columns. One of the columns listed video games. As there are a finite number of video games that is much less than 32,000, I wanted to get a list of them.

I did a quick search on the Internet and came across a large number of ways to list out all the unique values in a column. Some seemed overly complex. I typed one formula into the spreadsheet cell only to have it do nothing. Eventually I tried Microsoft's site and discovered the UNIQUE function. It is as simple as it sounds. You put it in a cell with the range of cells that contain your values and it creates a list with each unique value filling that column. It is as simple as using the following fromula:

=UNIQUE(B2:B32000)

If I put the formula in cell C2, all of the unique video game names will populate the C-column. It worked pretty well and I then had a list of all 800+ video games in the spreadsheet.

Excel Trick: Computing an Average of Filtered Data

As everyone in the office seems to be out early on Christmas break, I am using all this time without meetings to do some analysis work. Yesterday I did a lot in Excel and came across yet another trick that I want to remember and so I thought I would put it here. Hopefully it helps somebody else out there.

The spreadsheet I am playing with has over 32,000 rows and 44 columns. Some of those columns don't have any data and so I have been filtering the rows to see just the data I am interested in analyzing. Yesterday I created a filter to see all the rows that had values in one column and reduced the number of rows down to 16,000. That cut my data in half but is more data than I can casually scroll through.

I removed my first filter and filtered on another column and got the number of rows down to 4,000. That is approaching an acceptable amount of data to review. I wanted to reduce it even further and so combined the 2 filters and reduced the amount of data to 1,500 rows. These rows turned out to be key for my analysis. Now I needed to average the values in a 3rd column.

I tend to use Excel a lot but don't consider myself a power user. Well at least not yet. I used the AVG function and got a number. Then I removed my filters and discovered that average did not change. That means that the AVG function works on cells even if they are hidden by a filter. Instead I needed to use the SUBTOTAL function. It only works on viewable data and can be used for a number of different calculations.

The first parameter in Excel's SUBTOTAL function is a number that signifies the mathematical calculation you want to perform. The numbers correspond to the following:

• 1 = Average
• 2 = Count of all values even if they are blank
  
• 3 = Count of all values that are not blank
  
• 4 = Maximum
• 5 = Minimum
• 6 = Product
• 7 = Standard Deviation if the data represents a sample
  
• 8 = Standard Deviation if the data represents the entire population
  
• 9 = Sum

There are more, but you get the idea. Personally if I was the creator of Excel I would have associated sum with the number 1 as I think a subtotal is a sum and not an average of values. I guess Microsoft never won any awards for being intuitive.

Once I used the SUBTOTAL function the math worked out and my hypothesis about the data turned out to be true. Furthermore I can go above and beyond the simple statement that customers in group A are more valuable than group B. I can say they spend 20% more and that is a significant amount.

It Must Be Christmas Break

This evening I am trying to fix a date for a meeting at work after the first of the year and I keep getting automatic e-mail responses from people saying they are out of the office until after the first of the year. I will continue working until Thursday evening but I wonder how productive I will be. If anything relies on other colleagues, probably not very.

I woke up early this morning and had a call with my counterparts in Europe. Then I took a call this evening with Japan. That makes for a very long day in the office and so I made sure to take a break this afternoon around lunch and spent an hour on the ski hill. There is a marked difference between the skiers of last week, those that ski a lot and ski well, vs. today where people skied much more erratically, an indication of vacation skiers. I remarked to my wife that it must be Christmas break already.

On my call this evening we all signed off with, "Merry Christmas and have a happy Holiday." Things are really winding down and everyone is eager to celebrate the end-of-year break. Perhaps I will be able to get a number of projects done for work as I won't have any interruptions.

Probably the most helpful comment I can make in today's blog post is that I hope all your Christmas shopping is done. I have received a constant barrage of e-mails letting me know that the time has past for online retailers to ship stuff before Christmas. Of course there are some exceptions as next-day-shipping is always an option. My advice though is to visit a good old fashion store if you still have Christmas shopping to do.

Bad Christmas Movies

There does not seem to be an end to bad Christmas movies on all of the various streaming services. In an effort to break away from the traditional Christmas movies, I have tried expanding what I am watching this Season. Unfortunately you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a good movie. For the record, these are the Holiday movies worth watching and where you can find them:

• It's a Wonderful Life on Amazon Prime
• The Santa Clause on Disney+
• The Santa Clause 2 on Disney+
• Home Alone on Disney+
• Home Alone 2 on Disney+
• White Christmas on NetFlix
• A Christmas Story on several different streaming services including Amazon Prime
• I'll be Home for Christmas on Disney+
• Miracle on 34th Street (both versions are good) on Disney+
• A Christmas Carol on on Amazon Prime
  

I would publish a list of movies to avoid but it is a long one. Please let me know in the comments below if you have found a good movie I should add to my list. Also, there are a lot of movies that take place during Christmas but that doesn't make them Christmas movies. Die Hard is not a Christmas movie!

Resending a Calendar Invite in Microsoft Outlook

I find that you learn the most about something when you try to use it for something new. Last week I sent out a Microsoft Outlook invitation to a bunch of people across different parts of Sony. One person declined the invitation due to a schedule conflict. He then asked if we could reschedule for a different time. I responded that with so many people on the meeting invitation I had to select a time where I knew most people could attend. He then worked on changing his schedule so he could be a part of the meeting. Now I needed to re-invite him to the meeting.

It is very easy to add someone to an existing meeting but I have never had to add someone to an Outlook calendar invite who previously declined the meeting. Sure I could cancel the meeting and send a new invitation to everyone on my list. That seemed like a lot of work that might annoy everyone who responded that they could attend the meeting. So I looked up the proper steps according to Microsoft and it turned out to be rather simple.

The first thing to do is open the calendar invite and remove the person that originally declined the invitation. Outlook will send out an update to just that one person saying they have been canceled from the meeting when you save the updated invitation. Then add them back to the meeting and it will send out a new notification to just that one person asking them to accept or decline the invitation. Nobody else will get notified of the changes, which is exactly what I wanted for such a large number of people attending the meeting.

I use Outlook constantly but occasionally get to try things that are outside what I have done before. This trick is probably very intuitive if you stop and think about the steps to follow. I appreciated being able to look up the solution and get the software to do what I wanted. Hopefully this trick helps you too.

Holiday Travel

My company has set up a special webinar on how to cut down on stress during the Holiday season. The area I would like to focus on is that of Holiday travel. I have traveled a lot through the years and have some suggestions that may help should you be traveling during this busy period.

I will bypass all of the tricks on how to get inexpensive airline tickets as I assume it is already too late to get a good deal. About now, the only trick you can leverage is flying on Christmas day. Nobody wants to do that and so it is when you will find the lowest prices on flights. In the future, the most inexpensive days to fly are Tuesday and Wednesday. That is a trick I use a lot.

Tip #1: Pack lightly. I always tell people there are 2 types of luggage on flights: carry-on and lost. If you are flying for your holiday travel then try to pack so lightly you can carry everything on the plane. Should you be bringing gifts for others, look into shipping those packages or have them delivered to your destination instead of your house. Also remember that gift cards are light and don't take up much space.

My wife and I spent a week in Fiji and both packed in small backpacks that fit under the seat in front of us. Now I know we just needed flip flops, a t-shirt, and a swimsuit but we packed in the same backpacks when we went to Europe for a week. It is also the same backpack I take for my week-long trips to Japan.

If you are driving, packing light also has its advantages. Should you get a flat tire on your journey it will be significantly easier to pull that spare out of your car if it isn't overloaded. You also have a lot less to worry about forgetting on either end of your trip.

Tip #2: Prepare for the Weather. What good are all of those weather websites and apps if we don't use them to help with our Holiday travel. Going someplace warm, you don't need that extra jacket. Going someplace cold, make sure it gets packed. More importantly, mentally prepare yourself for the weather and effect it will have on your journey. If you are flying and you see a storm on your travel dates, prepare to spend extra time in the airport. More than likely you will be delayed.

If you are driving, you have some flexibility in your schedule whether you realize it or not. Storms don't last forever and you have the option of leaving before it arrives or waiting it out. Sure you may be later than expected but you will cut down on the chances of being in a weather-caused accident. I am a great driver in the snow but that will not protect me from someone who isn't.

Tip #3: Remember why you are traveling. People travel over Christmas to spend time with family and friends. Travel can be stressful and it doesn't do any good if you show up at your destination grumpy. Think about who you are going to see and the importance of those people in your life. If you have a bad travel experience, think about how you can share it as a funny story instead of a stressful one. It will help others understand the trial you endured to get there without making anyone wish you hadn't come.

Once I flew home from the Bay Area and my flight got routed to Boise because of thunderstorms. All I could do is call my wife and tell her I would be a few hours late. Everyone on the flight was upset about the delay except me and the guy sitting next to me. We both knew each other because we took the same flights every week. We laughed about the experience and made light of the situation. When I arrived at home, I didn't bore my wife with a story of trials and hardship. Instead I shared how Ben and I kept throwing our arms in the air as the plane dodged and dove around thunder clouds as if we were on a roller coaster. I think she appreciated me being happy to see her and not sour about the difficult flight home.

My Personal Dashboard

I do a bit of volunteer work using my amateur radio skills. Sometimes this allows me entrance into community emergency operations centers or EOCs. They tend to look like NASA's mission control or at least what we see of it in movies. There are generally large screens showing all sorts of information that is helpful for dealing with an emergency that might be taking place.

Lately I have been thinking about information I find useful as I go about my daily routine. After all, I generally spend most of my day at my computer for work and have my personal computer next to my work one. I thought I would give a rundown of what my personal dashboard looks like in the hopes of giving others ideas of what might help them.

I would say that the most often visited application on my personal computer is my e-mail. About 90% of the e-mail I get is immediately deleted and so while I spend a lot of time looking at it, the information isn't that useful. 

Next I have my web browser open and have 4 tabs that I constantly view. It doesn't matter if it is summer or winter, I am always looking at 4 websites. One of those is weather.gov. This is where most news organizations get their information and so instead of picking my favorite local site, I just go to the source. In the winter, I focus on the forecast for Alta ski resort. In the summer, I shift down to my own neighborhood.

The second website I check is for my stock portfolio. Right now the market is pretty depressed and so I only check it daily. When the market is up, I probably check it 3 or 4 times a day. Naturally when I am looking to invest, I spend a lot of time here.

My third website is that of my YouTube channel. I like to see if I have any comments to respond to as well as see how many people are viewing any of my videos. I don't have a lot of daily views but it is interesting to see trends and how the weather effects the number of views. Let's just say that in May of this year I was seeing 8,000 views in a single day.

Finally I have this blog in the 4th tab of my browser. I don't check to see how many views a post is getting. Instead I keep the window open to remind me to post something every few days. I only get about 10 reads of each post and I never get any comments. This is in sharp contrast to my YouTube channel where I average around 150 views every day.

Inventorying what I have in my personal dashboard has me thinking. Are there any other tidbits of information I should be reviewing on a daily basis? Perhaps traffic? As I work out of my home, I don't see the need to keep a traffic map open. It is nice to know it is there if I need it though.

PlayStation 5 Consoles Available

I just received an e-mail from Sony Interactive Entertainment letting me know that they have PlayStation 5 consoles available for purchase. You can go to https://direct.playstation.com and buy one without having to wait in line. It even ships to your home.

I know that COVID caused some severe supply chain interruptions but having to wait 2 years for the latest video game consoles seems a bit excessive. Knowing that there is finally enough product to meet consumer demand is encouraging. Hopefully it signals the end of supply shortages for automobiles as well.

Please remember that I used to work for PlayStation and am a fan of their product so I am not completely unbiased.

Digital Privacy

This afternoon I checked my personal e-mail and received a message claiming to be from my company. While I work for Sony, my personal e-mail is through a domain that I own and it looks like another company. The message claimed to be from the admin account and said that I had 3 undelivered e-mails because they were SPAM. My e-mail account has a different filtering mechanism and I would never get an e-mail from the "admin". I had a link I could have clicked but I'm sure the results would have been nefarious. This is what is known as a Phishing attack. Paying attention helps ensure I don't inadvertently install a virus or malware on my computer. This has the potential of releasing all sorts of personal information to bad actors that can steal my identity, drain my bank account, and ruin my credit.

Your digital privacy is very important and you should do everything you can to protect it. Being aware of potential phishing attacks is only one step of many. I also limit the information I share with various websites where I have login accounts. I never provide my social security number nor do I provide my birthday. There are many websites that require a birthday simply to verify age. I use the same fictitious date for such occasions and avoid providing my real birthday if I can help it.

Another trick to maintaining your digital privacy is to limit your payment information. There are a lot of websites that want to make purchases as simple as possible and so they offer to store your credit card information. Then you just have to hit the "purchase" button and it automatically bills your credit card. I actually have my primary credit card memorized and re-enter the information every time I make a purchase from infrequent accounts. It only slows me down a few seconds but gives me piece of mind every time I receive an e-mail about websites being hacked and payment information stolen.

One final word of caution is to severely limit who has access to your bank account information. This includes debit cards. Once someone gets into your bank account, it is very difficult to get your money back once it is gone. By using credit cards for all payments, you have a level of protection that ensures you don't lose any money. You just need to notify your credit card company about fraudulent transactions and they will credit your account while they investigate. You may have to provide additional documentation but most credit card companies will catch the invalid purchases before you do.

Unfortunately there are some thieves out there and the ubiquity of the Internet makes it easy for a small number of bad guys to inflict harm on a large number of good ones. Taking your digital privacy seriously will help reduce damages. I just wish there was a sure-fire way to keep yourself 100% secure.  

Why So Many Apps?

Lately it feels like there is an app for anything you want to do. I am not a fan of loading up my mobile phone with a ton of applications (or apps) that I rarely use. After all, isn't that the reason we have the web? You can create the same thing you would use an app for with a general HTML page.

Right now I have about a dozen apps I should install on my phone. Instead I prefer to use my browser and have not loaded them up. Whenever I try to use IMDB on my phone to look up an actor, it suggests I load the app. Naturally I decline and just use the web interface. It does what I need. I also use the Google page instead of loading the special Google app. The web works just fine.

This evening I used the website for Virgin Pulse to input my healthy habits for the day. Sure I could load up another app on my smartphone but don't want to. There are many more examples I come across weekly and wonder what I can do to let vendors know I don't want another app. Why? For the simple reason apps take up space on my phone and I prefer to save that space for important stuff like cool pictures or videos. Perhaps you feel the same way.

A Neat Trick in Excel: VLOOKUP

Lately I have been doing a lot of data analysis. One of the tools I have been using is Microsoft Excel and I recently learned a new trick using VLOOKUP. I thought I would put the information here in case I ever need it again. Oh and it may help you as well.

Most of the time I work with data, I use a relational database. That allows me to join various tables to replace cryptic values with more descriptive ones. A classic example is that of an EMPLOYEE table that uses a department number instead of the name. The database will then have a lookup table that converts the number into the name. This saves a certain amount of space and makes for much more efficient queries.

You can do the same thing in Excel using the VLOOKUP function. In my spreadsheet I have 2 tabs with the first being the employee information and the second being the department. Let's assume the employee tab has the following information:

	A	B	C
1	Firstname	Lastname	Deptno
2	Matthew	Bennett	10
3	Mike	Smith	20
4	Sara	King	30

 Now let's assume that those department numbers translate to something much more readable like:

	A	B
1	Deptno	Name
2	10	Research
3	20	Operations
4	30	Finance

You can use the VLOOKUP function in the 4th column of the table to include values from the department tab. It has the following syntax:

VLOOKUP(LookupCell, TabName!StartCell:EndCell, PasteColumn, Match)

So the LookupCell is that of the number that we want to convert to descriptive text. In the example above, we would use the column C values. 

The next values to fill in are that of the lookup table. While we could have them on the same page of the workbook, I find it easier to list them on a different one and call it the "department" tab. There are only 3 values and so we would start in column A on the second row. We would then run to B4.

The PasteColumn corresponds to the column number on the lookup tab that contains the value we want to show. Our descriptive text is in the 2nd column and so we would use the value "2".

The Match parameter indicates if we want to use an approximate or exact match. This example uses an exact match and so it should be set to "FALSE". I haven't tried doing an approximate match and so I am not sure of a use case for setting it to TRUE. Perhaps I can play with it for another blog entry.

Now let's put it all together. In cell D2, I would use the following value:

=VLOOKUP(C2, department!$A$2:$B$4, 2, FALSE)

I would then copy that formula and paste it into cells D3 and D4.

If those dollar signs confuse you, that is to hold the values constant regardless of what cell you paste the formula into. Otherwise Excel will adjust the reference. In the above example, the C2 reference doesn't have the dollar sign and will be converted into C3 when you paste it in the C3 cell.

This really helped me with some analysis I did and so I hope it helps you too.

In Person vs. Joining From Home

Today begins the annual Sony Technology Expo Fair or STEF. It is a chance for different research and development groups to showcase the work being done. In the past, I have been able to attend in person but this year I am attending from the comfort of my own home. Unfortunately I am not able to share any upcoming technology due to my confidentiality agreement. Let me just say that there are some very interesting things on the horizon.

This morning I woke up early and had to give up my usual morning exercise to attend the first group of meetings. I didn't mind though because should I have wished to attend in Japan, I would have had to catch a flight Saturday morning and missed a lot more than just an hour or two of my daily workout. Furthermore I was not feeling 100% this morning. I would have had to excuse myself from an in-person meeting for about an hour. Instead, I could bring my laptop to the couch and lie down while I recovered.

Today I hosted a series of meetings on AI and Data. Those meetings are now done and I can relax for the rest of the week. Had I made the trek to Tokyo, I would still have 4 more days of meetings and events to attend. Instead I can return to my normal schedule and get real work done.

All of the convenience of not having to get on a plane does come at a cost though. There is something to be said for meeting people face-to-face and shaking hands. It is also easier to have a lot more energy leading a discussion. By the end of today, I felt like everyone was so worn out, they couldn't wait for the last presentation to end even though it was very interesting and effects 125 million PlayStation consoles.

Fortunately the restrictions from COVID are loosening and next year I will be able to attend STEF in person. It is a great event and I love seeing all the cool stuff coming out from other parts of Sony. While I get the idea from online presentations, there is nothing like seeing the new lineup of televisions and other consumer electronics.

Technology Can Help Make Smart Decisions

Today I went skiing with the adult members of my family and we had quite the adventure. We started at Alta and went looking for leftover powder from yesterday. We skied over to the Supreme chairlift only to discover all the new snow had been skied out. We probed along the ski run looking for newly opened gates to see if we might find something fun to ski. All of the gates remained closed because of high avalanche danger and so we stayed on the main run.

Next we headed over to the Sugarloaf chairlift and traversed over to the Collins side of the resort. We had a bit of a hike but made some good turns and found some unskied snow. Unfortunately it was a long way to go for only a few turns. We kept looking. When we got to the bottom of the Collins chairlift the line looked very long compared to the Wildcat lift which only had a few people in it. Not wanting to wait in line, we headed up Wildcat. At the top, we had a decision to make. We could stay at Alta or we could drop into Snowbird via the Keyhole gate. It is this decision where technology could have helped yet we trusted our own intuition. Well I trusted mine and my wife gave me the look that said she didn't.

There are several options for moving between Snowbird and Alta. Before even considering skiing both resorts in the same day you need to have an AltaBird pass. Otherwise you are stuck in one resort or the other. We all had the requisite pass and wanted to take advantage of it. We knew we could use the Keyhole gate to get from Alta to Snowbird. The trick was how to get from Snowbird back to Alta. One option is to take the public bus. That is always the last resort as we came to ski, not ride a bus. There is also the option of dropping into Mineral Basin and taking the Baldy Express chair back to Alta. Unfortunately it is too early in the season and Mineral Basin isn't open yet.

As we sat on the top of the Wildcat chairlift deciding which way to go, we knew we couldn't use Mineral Basin but knew we could use the Armpit gate on Baldy to get from Snowbird to Alta. With that as our plan, we headed to Snowbird. In hindsight, we had all of the tools necessary to augment our decision. We should have pulled out a mobile phone and checked to make sure we could use the Tram to get up to Baldy. Given the tram closure, we could also leverage the Little Cloud chairlift. Furthermore, we could have verified that the ski patrol allowed people to ski on Baldy. Remember that the avalanche danger was high enough at Alta that we couldn't guarantee Baldy would be skiable.

Armed with only the intuition that we would be able to get back to our car at Alta, we headed to Snowbird. We definitely found the fresh powder we wanted. Those turns at the top of Keyhole are the stuff skier's dreams are made of. Then we carefully threaded our way down the narrow chute that gives Keyhole its name. Once on the main runs at Snowbird we headed to the tram so we could get back to Alta. This is where the adventure began.

We got to the tram and found it to be closed. We are not sure we would have known that while still at Alta as the closure seemed to happen as we got there. The reason for the closure was high winds at the top of the mountain. A quick check of the weather on the Snowbird website would have told us that the winds approached the maximum speeds for tram operation and we might be flirting with a closure. We explained our desire to return to Alta in the hopes of a suggestion from the Snowbird staff. I threw out the idea of heading over to Little Cloud and hiking from it to the top of the tram so we could get to Baldy. Chairlifts can run in higher wind speeds than the tram. Unfortunately Little Cloud was temporarily closed because of avalanche activity in the resort.

We saw our options decreasing with every idea but had a few more. Next we headed up the Peruvian chairlift. From there we had 2 options. We could try to make the short hike up a very steep face which would put us on Baldy. The second option was to ski down to the condo complex below and make the mile walk to Alta. I didn't want to wear everyone out and I do enough hiking so I suggested I would make the hike up to Baldy, get to the car, and drive down to pick the rest of the party up at Snowbird. My wife wanted someone else to go with me and so I picked the kid that kept up with me best while hiking earlier in the season. We started the climb and got about a third of the way up before others on the trail told us that ski patrol had just closed Baldy because of avalanche danger.

That left skiing down to the condos and hiking the mile to Alta. We tried to find other ways to get to Alta as we skied down towards the condos but couldn't find one. We pulled off our skis, threw them over our shoulders, and started walking. It didn't take long to find a ski trail. We put our skis back on and skied across the snow. We found another parking area and pulled skis off to walk through before putting our skis on for the last time. We had to skate up a few slight inclines but we made it to Alta and got the car.

We never wanted to take the bus and that turned out to be a blessing. Right now the public transit system in Salt Lake can't find enough drivers and so they have suspended bus service at Snowbird and Alta until later in the month. It turns out, the bus was never an option. Once again, a quick Internet search would have told us that our absolute fail-safe option wasn't an option after all.

Ultimately we had the technology at our fingertips to help us make an informed decision. Knowing the buses were not running might have been enough to keep me from making the wrong decision to head into Snowbird. In the end though, I did get a good story out of the experience. I also hit my step count for the day before noon.

Ode to a Good Friend, Dusty Boren

Last night I was practicing guitar so I could play "Silent Night" for a group of women at the request of my wife when I received an important text message. One of my good friends, Dusty Boren, passed away yesterday. That is one of those messages you don't want to receive in a text but it is the quickest way to let a large number of people know about an event in a very short amount of time. Dusty's health has been in decline for the past year or so and so the news was not unexpected.

Dusty was born about 2 months before me and so we are the same age. I first met Dusty and honestly avoided him. He had Down's Syndrome. I didn't have much experience with it and felt uncomfortable around him. That didn't keep him from coming up to me and proclaiming that I was his buddy. I quickly realized that I didn't need to be uncomfortable around Dusty and to just return the kindness and friendship he showed me. Needless to say we quickly became good friends and have remained such over the past decade or so.

Most people with Down's Syndrome struggle with weight but Dusty was an exception. He made sure not to overeat and always got out for exercise. That means he would come by my house daily either by walking or riding his bike. When I was not at home, my wife would tell me he stopped by. When I was at home, I would sit down on the front steps and share 5 or 10 minutes with him before he continued his walk or bicycle ride. Sometimes I would help him fix a flat tire or pump one up that needed a bit more air.

Some of my favorite memories with Dusty are when we went skiing together. Every year he attended the Steve Young Classic held at Snowbird. This is an event where Steve Young invited a bunch of sports celebrities to lift the spirits of people with any type of disability. During the ski race, Dusty always seemed to win and everyone made a big deal out of it. That was a lot of fun but the most fun I had during those events is when I took Dusty on the chairlift further up the mountain. Dusty skied very well given that he only went once a year. He even braved Snowbird's half-pipe and did amazing. The half-pipe is my favorite memory of skiing with him and has me smiling as I type this.

The physical limitations placed upon him during his mortal life probably brought a lot of heartache to his parents and family. They didn't bother Dusty one bit. He always seemed happy and his smile was contagious. May we all be a bit like Dusty and forget our trials so that we lift those around us and put a smile on everyone's faces.