Mario Kart Wii

Most of you know that I have a Wii. Many of you have played it with me. It is a wonderful system that provides hours and hours of fun. There are games that Whitney and I can play together, which is great. I love playing video games with other people. That being said, I know some of you also have Wiis. I have only one registered friend and that is my brother Matt. I want more friends! Here is my Wii console code:

1690 8407 2543 4210

Post your code in my comments and I will enter it into my console and then we can send each other messages. The online video games have another system though. You have to enter each other's game codes for the game you want to play as well.

This leads me to the real reason for this post



Mario Kart Wii!!!!! Or maybe I should say Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! This game is a blast. It is one of the best games I have ever played. There are new aspects to the game that give it new dimensions. The single player mode is fun, but where it really shines is the multi-player. This game should be the benchmark for how all the rest of their Online games should be. It is slick and seamless and you can't tell that you are online (except for the very very rare connection drop). You can race friends and people you don't know at the same time. There is just too much goodness for me to cover. I have only a few complaints. First, there is no voice chat (this could be a good thing because you don't have to listen to all of the stupid people swearing all the time). Second, the battle mode is always in teams. I think that you should be able to battle individually.

For those of you who have purchased it already, here is my friend code so you can play with me:

3050 8001 9730

Just post your friend code in the comments or email it to me jlars80@gmail.com. So if you haven't yet purchased Mario Kart Wii, get your $50 bucks and go buy it as soon as you can. I look forward to racing you online!

Work, Work, Work

This has become a killer work week for me. My boss approached me in the late afternoon on monday to ask me about a potential job to run on the stitcher trimmer at the bindery. For those of you who don't know what the stitcher trimmer is, it is a machine that will collate the pages of a magazine, staple it, and then trim three of the edges making the book look really nice. The job was very large for our shop with a book total of 328,000. The job also had to be done by Tuesday April 8th. Our machine can run books at a top speed of 10,100 per/hr but only if you encounter no problems.

I told my boss this and said that we would do whatever he wanted. Well, we took the job and wouldn't you know it but the company who sent it to us had miss labeled everything. We also didn't get the job until late Tuesday and had a few problems getting it to run correctly. Suffice it to say we are not likely to get it done by next Tuesday. But, that doesn't stop me (and those I work with like my brother Steven) from trying. So starting Wednesday I have been putting in 10 hour work days. It wouldn't be that bad except you have to stand all day. My heels and knees hurt. I will also be putting in some time on Saturday (just a few hours because of General Conference) and probably another 10 on Monday and Tuesday. I guess that's why they pay me the BIG BUCKS!

Shoes

So I have a problem with keeping my website updated. I always think to myself, "Hey, I could blog about that." But, I never do. So here is hoping that I have turned over a new leaf and start doing more blogging about what I am thinking or what I am doing.

For the last year or so I have been having problems with my shins. When I would run I would eventually get really sharp pains in my shins. Some days were worse than other days. This would happen while I would play basketball, run, walk, or anything that required some shock absorption in my feet. I talked to my Chiropractor and he looked and determined that my arches were collapsing and that I was not getting the proper support. He told me to try Superfeet Insoles.



I found a small specialty shoe store that sold Superfeet and when I talked to salesman I found out that part of my problem was the terrible shoes I had been wearing. I don't buy new shoes very often, really almost never, so I had some pretty old shoes. He fit me to my size of Superfeet and explained what I should be looking for in shoes. He then set me up with a pair of Brooks Adrenaline 7 shoes.



Oh! they were Heaven on my feet. I could walk and run and not have my shins kill me.

Fast Forward nine months. Here I am today still with hurt shins because I was too stupid to buy new basketball shoes and/or put the insoles into my old ones. So Whit and I went on a quest last Saturday to find me some new shoes, both running (because the ones I have are worn out) and basketball. We went to 7 stores in hopes of finding what I was looking for. We found my running shoes, Brooks Adrenaline 8, at Fleet Feet in American Fork. Unfortunately, they were having a sale on my old shoes but didn't have my size. We finally ended up at Famous Footware where I found some basketball shoes. They were having a buy one get one 1/2 off sale so I also found a pair of Dr. Martens.

On further inspection and contemplation, I have decided that I don't like the feel of the basketball shoes on my feet. So until such time that I can find a pair that I really like, I have decided to pull the insoles out of my old running shoes and put them into my old basketball shoes. I hope this will give me enough time to find the right pair of basketball shoes without having to deal with the pain.

March Madness

This is my favorite time of year. I love the passion, the effort, the crowds, the great play, the amazing finishes. It's win or your done. Well, not quite yet for some teams, but for others they are fight for their lives and a chance to make it to the Big Dance. I just can't keep from watching all the games. If I could I would take the days off work to allow me to just soak it all in.

One of the most important things to winning a national title is match-ups so without the brackets I can't yet predict who will be the national champion. I will tell you though that the two teams I think are the best in the country and they are Kansas and UCLA. They having everything you want in a team. Both play great perimeter defense and have good to great players on the inside. UCLA has a better post presence in Kevin Love, but Kansas has more depth in the post.UCLA has some great perimeter players, but they sometimes struggle to hit an outside shot. Kansas is a better shooting team. But they are both terrific teams and I would be hard pressed to pick a winner between the two teams.

I am really excited for BYU and their chances of making the Sweet 16. Of course it will depend on the seed and their draw, but they should get at least a 6 seed as long as they can win the MWC tournament. Maybe even a 5 seed, but that makes me worry because there is always a 5-12 upset. If Plaisted can make his free throws and the cougars play some defense, I think they have a great chance to win a couple of games in the Big Dance. (And Tavernari either has to make everything he shoots or, as I would prefer, he needs to shoot the ball less).

I have also decided to try a new way of predicting games in one of my brackets. I am going to compare each contest by some team stats. A team gets one point for each category that they are better than the other. The team with the most points is going to be the team I pick to win the game. This is more of an experiment than anything else. I just want to see what happens.

I will certainly have more to write as the time grows closer.

The Spiritual World We Live In

Today I had a very interesting and insightful talk with my home teachers. We talked about cloning and some of the spiritual ramifications of it. It was really interesting to talk about. There are so many things that we don't know about in this life. When thinking about how cloned animals are alive and thus must have spirits, I thought to my self that there may be some sort of binding contract or law that Heavenly Father follows that any new life that comes into the world must be given a spirit. I am not sure that this is true, but it makes sense to me. But, it is something that I may pray about more and see how I feel about it.

I also mentioned to Spencer and Casey a great article that I had read by Spencer W. Kimball. In it he quotes Brigham Young a lot and talks about ordinances that we have not yet received. It also talks about matter and intelligences and lots of other deep doctrine. Click here for the article
from lds.org.

The best entertainment in the world

I have been at my parents house in Washington for a few days now. I have to say that I have found the best and most addicting form of entertainment; watching my nephew Tanner toodle around. He is so funny! He dances to the music that plays from the Christmas decorations, he waddles clumsily around falling down often, he jabbers is gobledy gook, pushes a chair around the kitchen in circles, and a million other things that just make me laugh. I seriously can't get enough! He is the cutest little boy I have ever seen (that is until I have my own). His exploration of the new things around him is some of the happiest stuff in the world. And, when he is having a rough time I can hand him to his parents and don't have to deal with all that other heartache. It's the best of both worlds.