Carnage and Destruction

Last week I tried to ski every morning before work only to have my plans thwarted by avalanche danger. The huge snowfall coupled with rapidly warming temperatures created an unsafe environment for driving the canyon between the Salt Lake valley and the ski areas up Little Cottonwood Canyon, Snowbird and Alta. For the first 3 days, I could go to a safe area closer to home and tour to Alien Tower at the top of Suncrest in Draper. Then the warming temperatures melted a lot of snow and I decided it was no longer worth it. I waited patiently and was rewarded on Saturday morning with a safe window where the canyon opened enough to drive to Alta. Then I had to wait until the sun went down for them to open it again. It meant hanging out at Alta until after 7pm even though the lifts stopped running at 4:30.

As the canyon is closed again this morning and probably won't open until Saturday, I used my early morning time to create a video of Saturday's drive up to Alta where I filmed about 80% of the trip. In the video you can see most of the avalanches that crossed the road during the previous week. I missed the first one which is when I decided that I should probably pull out my phone and capture video as others might be interested in the carnage and destruction.

What is it about carnage and destruction that attracts viewers to video sites like YouTube? I get a lot of views of my skiing videos but this one will probably turn out to be one of my most popular. Should someone ask how to get a bazillion views of their video, I would recommend including natural disasters or other train-wreck ideas. People just can't help but watch.

Effective Use of my Smartphone

I often find myself in certain ruts where I don't try anything new and keep doing things the way they have been done for awhile. Then something will happen that challenges the old way and makes me look for improvement in everyday things. One such recent improvement came from the question of how effectively I am using my smartphone.

Every morning in the winter, I wake up and get ready to go skiing. I drive the 14 miles to Snowbird and ski for an hour before work. When anyone asks, this is my "gym time." That means I am using my ski boots daily and they need help drying out. I have a set of boot dryers that I use and only want them to run for a limited amount of time. I used to turn them on while I got ready for the day but decided I could use the timer on my smartphone. It is set for 50 minutes. When it goes off, I turn off the boot dryers. It is a little thing but started my mental wheels turning about how to use my smartphone more effectively.

Smartphones come loaded with a number of productivity applications and so there is no need to load up any more. Are you using those you have to their fullest potential? This morning my wife is busily working and sent me a quick text even though she is in the room above me. This is much more efficient than yelling through the house and trying to have "the original" long-distance communication.

One app I do have loaded onto my phone that I use constantly is a dictionary. I'm a pretty smart guy and figure I know the meaning to most of the words I hear in English. The reality is that there are a small number of words that I guess at the meaning based on context. Recognizing this, I have started looking up the meaning for words I am not absolutely sure of. This is tough to do in conversations but easy to do when I am reading something. Often times I will look up a word and remember something I heard from someone else and look that up too. I wouldn't say that my vocabulary is exploding, but I am finding I understand a lot more about what is being said.

Unfortunately there are a number of smartphone apps that can hinder you. I purposely don't have any social media loaded on my phone. I find it can be a distraction and keep me from actually being productive. I also don't have a lot of games on my mobile device. While they can help pass the time when you are stuck in line or waiting for an event to start, they more often keep one from doing more important things.

Using your smartphone effectively is a combination of taking advantage of its features as well as not letting it become a distraction. If you have any suggestions on what works for you, I'd be interested in your comments.