The Adventures of Ben!

The Great Adventure of Being a Master

2010-04-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

Well I finally got it today. University of Phoenix sent me my diploma and not only one hour after receiving it I had a great adventure. I went looking for some of my old diplomas just to see how far I've come and actually stumbled across something way better. The FIRST and ONLY edition of the North Sevier Inquirer. Which was printed in September of 1997. This thing is a classic and I'm sure i'm the only one left with an original print so I had to scan it in and put it on the Internet. Oh this thing is awesome. Originally published by Josh Jensen and his friend this thing was an instant hit at North Sevier High School. So if there was one good thing about getting my masters degree it was that it lead me to the finding of the year. Now for your eyes enjoyment I present to you the front page of the North Sevier Inquirer.

L'aventure de l'amour

2009-06-16T12:24:00.000-07:00

Warning: This blog might get mushy!

As many of you might know, I took my wife to celebrate our fifth anniversary to Branson, Missouri. Let me just say that was the best adventure of my life. Although the trip started off with a snag as our flight got canceled. I speedily ran through the entire Denver airport until I finally found another flight to take us to our destination. The only thing was the flight wasn't on a plane it was a helicopter. It took quite a bit of convincing to get our airline to get us on the Helicopter, but once I spoke of my true love for Becca and our fifth anniversary, they immediately said there is no more of a noble cause than this and they booked me and Becca onto the helicopter.

This was our first helicopter ride ever. The pilot even let Becca fly for a bit while he talked about the only thing a woman remembers on her wedding day is the aisle where she was married, the alter, and the hymn that was sung on her wedding day. That is to say the only thing she remembers is "aisle alter hymn." After we landed we in Springfield, Missouri, we then headed to get our rental car a hot pink convertible (per Becca's Request). Off we went to Branson in style.

Once in Branson we watched the sun set into the Ozark Mountains just above table rock lake. There Becca told me she was the "happiest girl in the world." She had no idea what was yet to come. The next day we went to the Dixie Stampede show. This was a wonderful time and when we were there our names were called out from the audience because we were there on our fifth anniversary and we got to ride an Ostrich around the arena in a race. Becca's Ostrich must have been eating it's Wheaties that day because she got off to a huge lead. But then my Ostrich riding skills took over and we ended in photo finish and tied the race.

Our last day we were set to go see the group SIX. I had planned something special this night for Becca, if only she knew what was coming. Before the show started she said "I don't know how this can get any better." We got front row tickets to the show and were right in the center. SIX was an amazing group that was an all vocal experience. Little did Becca know but I served my mission with one of the singers and had pre arranged a little something. Towards the end of the show the lead singer of SIX called Becca up from the audience. She was so surprised. Then while she was distracted, I hurried over to the backstage and came up through a trapdoor in the floor right behind her and sang the song "The Way You Look Tonight" and SIX was my backup. Becca was in love all over again.

And that was L'aventure de l'amour.

Adventure of the Nerd

2008-12-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

This adventure occured many years ago before my wife saved me from becoming a complete genuine nerd. I was well on my way to to becoming a president of EMC2 (Enlightened Men with Calculators Squared) when my current wife swept me off my feet. The photo below was taken two weeks before the day that Becca and I met.

So it began like this. I was on my way to the 37th Star Trek convention when I got a flat tire in my styling Geo Metro. It was then I had to come up with a plan quick or I would miss the most important convention of my life at that time. So I did some quick calculations and the quickest solution to get to the Star Trek convention by 1.2 percent with a margin of error of .5 percent I was to quickly use my portable ham radio attached to my Geo Metro to call a cab. You should have seen that beautiful ham radio sticking on top of my car making my clearance 14 feet high. Any way I called the cab and low and behold I had to share it with this young looking lady. Her name was Rebecca Peterson. I stared at her while she occationaly glanced at me. While sharing the cab I like any other EMC2 member figured she was heading to the same place I was so I uddered my first words to Rebecca "Which captain of the Enterprise was best?" I soon found out that she had no idea what the Enterprise was, but that didn't matter because it was the first response from the opposite gender that was kind. I'm not sure if it was the glasses, the tape that held the glasses together, the tie, or one of my many pens, but Becca was love struck. I quickly calculated my chances with Rebecca. The chances were slim but they had beat any other chances I had previously by 34% with a margin of error of 3 %.

I had to hold off becoming president of EMC2. This of course was more important than the most important thing in my entire life. So I immediatly began "The Plan." The plan was almost full proof according to my calculations. The only thing it required was someone to actually talk back to me. The rest is history and now I'm not a complete nerd but I am happily married with three kids. EMC2 never saw me as president but now I have realized that it was a dream that wasn't meant to be as becoming a Family Man was my true destiny.

All The Freshness of Ireland

2008-10-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

This great adventure happened in Canada although it started in Ireland. Every morning I read the same label over and over again. "All the Freshness of Ireland, Bottled." I read it from a bottle of Irish Spring body wash. I am amazed that all of Ireland's freshness can be stored in a bottle. It must be true, I've read it at least 489 times and sometimes up to 6 times a day. So I found myself thinking if someone wants to smell like Ireland then maybe someone would want to smell like Canada or maybe Mexico. I can see it now.

"All the freshness of Canada, Bottled"

Obviously it will be called "Maple Spring" body wash. I mean if a leprechaun smells good, pancakes must smell even better. I don't know anyone that would turn down a stack of five covered in the goodness of Canada. So this body wash would definitely have the real stuff not that imitation Canada stuff that comes from Jamaica. So last week I set off for Canada to, you know, collect the freshness of Canada. But before I set off for Canada I had to find out how you collect all the freshness of one country. So I emailed irishspring.com and consequently went to Walmart to pick up 800 beakers. I now had everything I needed.

So I crossed the border to get to Canada and started collecting the whole countries freshness. After traveling 3419 miles all over the country I had 765 beakers full of the stuff when it happened. The Canadian Mounty showed up just when I was filling up beaker number 766. Apparently you need a permit for collecting freshness, who knew? Luckily I knew a retired Canadian Mounty (Joseph Peterson) that had become quite famous. I was let off with a warning but they confiscated all my freshness that I had collected.

I went home empty handed but not without the much needed experience for my next Idea, "Bean Spring" body wash con queso. Mexico has to have much more lax laws when it comes to collecting freshness.

My HOOT Adventure

2008-09-17T14:21:00.000-07:00

One night at about 2:30 in the morning after I got home from my mission I sat up on my bed which was right next to my brother Joe's bed. Not 30 seconds later Joe sat up in his bed and started staring at me, but because it was dark he didn't know he was staring at me. He also didn't know I was sitting up on my bed. So without thinking I said "HOOOOT". We've been laughing about it ever since. Oh that was a great adventure.

The Amazing Adventure of the Milkshake Slave turned Native American

2008-06-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

In my blessed hometown of Salina there has been somewhat of a miracle take place. I haven't found anyone to explain how this may have happened or even why but what is known is that the mysterious Milkshake Slave Man has been transformed miraculously into a Native American Blackhawk Warrior. For all ten years that my family lived in Salina there stood the amazing Milkshake Slave man. He stood outside the Hotel off I-70. I call him the Milkshake Slave Man because he appears to be serving a milkshake while being tied up like a slave. Behold the Milkshake Slave Man. Anyone driving by today may wonder the same thing that I am wondering. Where did the Milkshake Slave Man go? Some time between 2003 and 2004 the amazing Milkshake Slave Man transformed into the Great Blackhawk Warrior. Behold the Blackhawk Warrior dawning his battle ax.
I will not rest until I solve this mystery. Why did the Milkshake Slave Man transform into the Blackhawk Warrior? Was he tired of the teenagers demands of oreo, marshmellow, candy bar chunks, cookie dough, and all the other extras in thier shakes? Or is this a sign that Salina has finally given up slavery in thier milkshake stores? These questions may never be answered. I must warn all residents to be wary of thier statues and watch for them to transform into something else. I'm not sure about you but the next time I'm going through Salina I'm definately stopping by the Blackhawk Warrior to find out what he did with the amazing Milkshake Slave who served without pay.

My Computer Adventure

2008-06-09T15:31:00.000-07:00

The other day I was checking my email at home when all of a sudden the monitor went black. Boy oh boy was I ever surprised. Then I thought I could put all my computer skills to some good use. By using my computer knowledge I figured out that because I had setup a dual boot of Windows and Linux that maybe some of my Windows was getting eaten by my Linux. I immediately opened up my computer and did a cyclic redundancy check in my power supply where I found a broken CMOS. After I discovered the CMOS was broken I knew that there might be a token ring inside the Ethernet. So I checked my Ethernet and sure enough, I found the token inside throwing all sorts of megabytes away. After taking the token out of the Ethernet and fixing the broken CMOS with a cyclic redundancy check my computer was still not working. I knew after all of that work I still needed to fix the Windows from getting eaten by the Linux. So I grabbed an old mother board and took an extra pci slot off and attached it to my CPU front end bus. That PCI slot would now act as a firewall and keep Linux from eating all my Windows. While I was doing that I found an extra stick of RAM that could definitely make my 5400 RPM hard drive rotate at 7200 RPM's making it faster. So I added the extra RAM to my computer and now all I needed was to restore a backup of my registry into the master boot record. Yep that did it. Everything works now. That was perhaps the most challenging computer adventure I ever did have.

This is the Place

2008-03-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

Years ago Brigham Young uttered those famous words "This is the right place" as he overlooked the Salt Lake Valley on Ensign Peak. Below you can see what Brigham Young one day envisioned as he looked across the valley.
Yet on the way to Salt Lake most of the saints who settled passed by another land, one today known as Cheyenne. I'm pretty sure that as Brigham Young passed Cheyenne he envisioned the future to look almost exactly as it is today and as shown by the picture below.

Yet here I am taking my family away from the Salt Lake Valley to a place that the saints once passed by and now I am declaring This is the place. Could "HIGH WINDS POSSIBLE" really be the place? You might be able to tell from the photos with this blog, but only time can tell ... only time can tell.

Open Invitation

2008-03-03T12:57:00.001-08:00

This last weekend my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came to town for a short visit. During this time I was able to talk about moving my family to Cheyenne, Wyoming. This is when Hannah almost immediately said that I could move my family into her bedroom. She then pulled out a diagram of her bedroom and began to divide it up into sections that we could use of her room. Hannah has displayed a great amount of charity towards my family this weekend and to this I am grateful.

After a few minutes of dividing the room Hannah was able to come up with this final diagram below of her bedroom. And she said, "Ben, your family can stay in my bedroom as long as they want." I tried to convince her that she didn't need to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor but she then said, "No Ben, I insist."

The Glass Bowls

2008-02-07T08:12:00.000-08:00

My popularity has risen since starting a blog and my many fans are flooding me with tons of emails. Not quite tens of thousands of emails more like ones of tens of emails. Becoming famous has made life a little harder. I will now have to lengthen my stride. Well maybe just the stride of my right leg. My chiropractor (Bruce) told me my left leg is longer than my right. So to keep up with the demands of the fan clubs, ones of tens of emails, and the never ending paparazi's, I will lengthen the stride of my right leg. The demand in all of the majority of my fan emails come requesting me to document and post the adventure of "The Glass Bowls." So here is Ben's adventure of "The Glass Bowls." I must remind all readers that my adventures are 100% genuine.

Growing up in Salina, Utah in a family of mostly boys the only "take it backs" were when my siblings would say something about me and I would sit on them until they "took it back." This didn't happen too often in my life and the result was "Take it backs" were rare. Turns out that "take it back" can be applied in life more than in the way I used it in my childhood. This of course was oblivious to me until I got married. One of the benefits of holding a wedding and inviting people to it is the gifts that come along with it. When my wife and I were able to finally get some time to sort through all of the gifts, we came across this picture frame to which I thought I guess we'll find some picture to put in the frame. My wife had other thoughts which she simply said "I guess we'll take it back." Take things back, Who knew? This happened to a few other items to which I found out that you really can take stuff back, but it wasn't pretty.

After Becca and I had been married for about a month I thought we had pretty much gone through most of the stuff that had been given us. One of the items we were given was from Pier 1 Imports. It was a set of glass mixing bowls. They were the nicest glass mixing bowls I had ever had, but once again "take it back" were the words that came from Becca. We ventured on over to the Peir 1 Imports in Orem. Luckily there was an CompUSA right next to it. By now I figured out that take backs were not that fun and I prefered to browse more of a guy store. We decided to meet back up in about 30 minutes. Of course Peir 1 required an exchange for the bowls for something of equal value. After my 30 minutes I went over to Peir 1 to see how things were going only to find out that I had grossly underestameated the time it took to "take it back." Becca was still working on what to exchange it for. I decided to help out and after TWO MORE HOURS we were able to decide on a scented candle and a picture frame. Finally we were done, at least thats what I thought.

I must back up just a little. Pier 1 Imports if any of you have never been to that store (I never had before this experience) is full of expensive junk. I didn't find one usefull thing in that store. Even the chairs were not worthy of sitting in. I'm positive that whoever made the chairs sold in that store had never sat in them. Everything in that store just took up space and emptied peoples bank accounts. I've never seen anything like it. I warn all men this day to never set foot inside of peir 1 imports and to strongly encourage your spouse to never buy anything from that store. The only cool thing in that store was a giant statue of an elephant. I'm sure it cost over a 1000 bucks. So even the cool thing in the store was a rip off. Now back to the adventure.

Back to our house with a candle and a new picture frame. I wasn't so sure that the bowls weren't better than these two things, but who was I to question. I didn't even begin to understand the complexity of "take it back." We burned the candle until it stopped working. I can't really take the time to explain how the candle didn't work, but you have to trust me, it didn't work. So Becca got a advertizement in the mail from peir 1 saying if you don't like our products "take it back" thats what designers do. So back to Pier 1. I thought we were just taking the candle back but I guess as long as we were going back we might as well "take back" the picture frame too. The split happened again and once more after 30 minutes (I don't know why we decided that 30 minutes would be enough) I went on over to meet with Becca at Peir 1. I still claim I was too young to fully realize the implications of my actions at this time. Once entering Peir 1 I found Becca to still be looking for something to exchange with the candle and the picture frame. TWO HOURS LATER, I was still there with Becca picking something out. I finally convinced my wife to either get the glass mixing bowls back or that big elephant thingy. So we got back the glass bowls. The glass bowls! That is what we started with. So with glass bowls in my hand and a reciept in hand we left Pier 1. As soon as we went out the doors I ripped up the reciept so that we couldn't "take it back" anymore. I was just glad to go home and maybe one day make some cookies or something in our fancy glass bowls. I should have known that that would never happen.

I was puzzled when we got home that Becca put the bowls in our closet rather than in our kitchen cubbards. Once again who was I to question? I have learned a few things in the last few years about "taking it back." If you can't "take it back" there is still hope. You can never open it and put it in the closet. I never understood all the piles of unopened stuff in our closet. But it was all part of the game. I had soon forgotten about the bowls hidden away in the closet even two years had passed away since the adventure of the Glass Bowls and then it happened. I had a freind who invited us to his wedding. Well off to the closet we went to find a wedding gift. Deep down in the closet the bowls had been rediscovered and were wrapped once more as a wedding gift.

I sure miss those glass mixing bowls. We had some good times together. I never even had a chance to make cookies with them.

The moral of the adventure is, You never know what you have until its gone.

The start of something not so great!

2008-01-31T14:33:00.000-08:00

Today is the day that I will start something that will probably end up as something not so great. I will from time to time try and post something here to tell of the adventures of my life. Not that the adventures of my life won't be so great but the actually documenting them in the written form will probably be the part that is not so great.
First off I would like to add a little disclaimer that everything on this website is to be exactly 100 percent of the time a complete picture of accuracy of my life.
My first adventure stemmed from Becca's email about how to work with babies. This can be found here ---> http://www.c00lstuff.com/1133/Do_s_and_don_ts_with_babies/

I thought the funniest one was "lifting baby"

"Fun games with baby" and "exercising baby" are not funny. I do that all the time with the twins. Sometimes at the same time. It's funny to watch Ryan pumping iron and strategically move his bishop for a checkmate at the same time.

One other note. "Stimulating baby" That sounds like a pretty good idea to me. That was the inspiration of my next adventure. So off to Walmart I went to buy a couple of tv-mounts made for cribs. That was a terrible waste of time. Turns out Walmart doesn't sell tv-mounts for cribs. So then I went to Home Depot to see if I could find some raw materials to make a couple on my own.

On my list for Home Depot:
U' shaped tubing
Protractor scale
Car exhaust clamps
Old LNB arm
Some kinda wood
Some kinda adhesive
Metal fence Pole

After working for a few hours with my raw materials I ended up with this thing pictured on the right. It wasn't quite what I wanted and there is no room left to put a TV on it, but I figure the twins would always get up on time with the alarm clock. Maybe they'll be the first people to find life on other planets. And perhaps I'll get some good pictures of the twins in their crib.

What a great adventure!

I guess that wasn't so bad.