Russel's Havens - Blog of Time

Some snowshoeing photos

1/1/2021

I have been snowshoeing up my regular hiking trails for the last few weeks, including today. Here are a few photos from those hikes--all taken on my cell phone (since my DSLR photos are not on this computer yet).

Today had one freaky bit: there looked to be a huge blood stain in the snow right in front of the Fourbay gate. If it's real, I would guess somebody killed a deer there--from the redness of the snow, at first I thought it might be paint or some kind of red stain, since that usually oxidizes and turns brownish-red pretty quickly. However, I suppose it could have been actual blood. If so, I think it must have been earlier this same day (though the cold could have preserved in an unusual way).

I started my hike around 4:20 pm, so there was the whole day for strange things to have happened, I suppose. Once I was past that strange scene, the trail and the evening were quite lovely, as can be seen in the last photo.

All work and no play...

1/1/2021

Life has been pretty busy for the last few years, with a demanding DevOps job at Adobe, working on a Ph.D. and teaching classes on the side (not to mention family and church work). I have had to find a few ways to diversify my downtime so that I could keep going. Photography and hiking are two of these (which should be obvious to anybody who has looked around this site). Reading and gaming are two others. Obviously, I have not had a lot of time to follow any of these activities too much, but I have wedged them into various slices of spare time. Each of these activities have been helpful in keeping my sanity during times of stress.

As a youth, most of my reading was in the fantasy literature of the 70s and 80s, and Tolkien's works were the bedrock of much of that literature. (I've always loved that in Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, the name of a stone in the "true speech" is tolk--so fitting an homage.) I have added a lot of other types of literature to that list since them. Being a Japanese literature major for my undergraduate work certainly impacted that, but as much as it broadened my reading, it also deepened my reading. It provided a framework for analyzing what I read.

With these two aspects of my history, I have been a fan of Dr. Corey Olsen, the Tolkien Professor, for most of the last decade. My regular commute being about 45 minutes each way, I've had a nice time slot for wedging in his podcasts podcasts over the years. It has been fun delving deeper into Tolkien's works with Dr. Olsen. He does in-text analysis that helps to lend even more depth and meaning to these stories than I already had.

In particular, and have been following his Exploring the Lord of the Rings podcasts for several years. It's a deep-dive into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And when I say deep dive, I mean that sometimes he only discusses one or two paragraphs in an hour-long conversation with his online followers. It's the kind of analysis that would drive my wife absolutely crazy, but which I love.

Without the commute this year (Adobe has had us working from home since last March), it's been hard to find time for these podcasts, but I still find time for one every so often (e.g. I was teaching on-campus [socially-distanced, of course] in Provo, so I had that commute for listening).

At the end of each episode of Exploring the Lord of the Rings, Dr. Olsen (and others) then go into the Lord of the Rings Online game and explore that created world. Imagine going into Middle Earth and wandering around like a fantasy archeologist--while being aware that this is a story. They get to talk about how the story is being told, and to try to unearth the history of the world, as found in the landscapes and structures. It's probably an odd stretch for a real-world scientist, but just plain fun for a lit major.

So, a few years ago, in addition to reading through a number of Tolkien works, I created LotRO account and started wandering around Middle Earth as well. I now have characters on both the Crickhollow and Landroval servers.
On Crickhollow:
Lengifbuck - a level 112 Man Hunter
Arvistir - a level 56 Elf Lore Master
Barmarvir - a level 34 Dwarf Champion
Curamil - a level 25 High Elf Warden
Stekrin - a level 21 Stout Axe Dwarf Guardian
On Landroval:
Nestor - a level 25 High Elf Hunter

As a youth, most of my reading was in the fantasy literature of the 70s and 80s, and Tolkien's works were the bedrock of much of that literature. (I've always loved that in Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, the name of a stone in the "true speech" is tolk--so fitting an homage.) I have added a lot of other types of literature to that list since them. Being a Japanese literature major for my undergraduate work certainly impacted that, but as much as it broadened my reading, it also deepened my reading. It provided a framework for analyzing what I read.

With these two aspects of my history, I have been a fan of Dr. Corey Olsen, the Tolkien Professor, for most of the last decade. My regular commute being about 45 minutes each way, I've had a nice time slot for wedging in his podcasts podcasts over the years. It has been fun delving deeper into Tolkien's works with Dr. Olsen. He does in-text analysis that helps to lend even more depth and meaning to these stories than I already had.

In particular, and have been following his Exploring the Lord of the Rings podcasts for several years. It's a deep-dive into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And when I say deep dive, I mean that sometimes he only discusses one or two paragraphs in an hour-long conversation with his online followers. It's the kind of analysis that would drive my wife absolutely crazy, but which I love. (Someday I hope to catch up to the live stream--right now, I'm up to early 2019.)

Without the commute this year (Adobe has had us working from home since last March), it's been hard to find time for these podcasts, but I still find time for one every so often (e.g. I was teaching on-campus [socially-distanced, of course] in Provo, so I had that commute for listening).

At the end of each episode of Exploring the Lord of the Rings, Dr. Olsen (and others) then go into the Lord of the Rings Online (LoTRO) game and explore that created world. Imagine going into Middle Earth and wandering around like a fantasy archeologist--while being aware that this is a story. They get to talk about how the story is being told, and to try to unearth the history of the world, as found in the landscapes and structures. It's probably an odd stretch for a real-world scientist, but just plain fun for a lit major. The world is absolutely gorgeous and impressively massive--after 3 years, I feel like I've only seen about half of it.

So, a few years ago, in addition to reading through a number of Tolkien works, I created LotRO account and started wandering around Middle Earth as well. I now have characters on both the Crickhollow and Landroval servers.

If you know me and happen to be in LotRO on one of those servers, you should reach out via LotRO IM and add me as a friend. I don't know many other people who play LotRO right now, other than my son, so it'd be a nice surprise.

As of 1/1/21 --
On Crickhollow:

Lengifbuck - a level 112 Man Hunter
Arvastir - a level 54 Elf Lore Master
Barmarvir - a level 35 Dwarf Champion
Curamil - a level 26 High Elf Warden
Stekrin - a level 21 Stout Axe Dwarf Guardian

On Landroval:

Nestor - a level 26 High Elf Hunter
Emmalith - a level 14 Man Captain
Ronivert - a level 12 Hobbit Warden
Athegn - a level 8 Beorning

PhinisheD!

12/26/2020

I certainly can't claim that clever title for myself--it came as a text message from my mentor, Dr. Colleen Ramos, when she knew that everything had been turned in. The last couple of years, and especially the last few months, have been bumpy enough that I couldn't allow myself to believe it until I got the final notification from Capella University earlier this week.

So, here I am. Now what? As my wife just said, "It's a no-school, no dissertation weekend. What are you going to do with yourself?" What, indeed. Part of me expects to pop into a chalk pavement picture for an outing in the country. Part of me wants to quietly bask in this success. Part of me wants to look for teaching or research positions in universities around me. Part of me wants to double-down on my current awesome job at Adobe. Part of me is already working out the publication of my dissertation data with Dr. Justin Giboney and thinking about my next research project.

Last week, I did some snowshoeing, and the Christmas lights always beg for photographic experimentation. For this week and weekend, I am enjoying some family time. My daughters, Rachel and Catherine, work work in tech support jobs in the SLC area and have come down to spend the week with us. My son is between his last two semesters at UVU and is applying to grad schools all over the world. My wife is enjoying a break between semesters for her teaching job at UCAS. I am okay with a small pause here. Time will tell how things may change, but for the moment, I am just enjoying the quiet moment (though anybody who knows Rachel knows that quiet moments with her around are few and far between--let's call that a "zest for life").

Dissertation...done?

12/14/2020

I've been working through the IT PhD program at Capella University for a little over 5 years. A year and a half ago, I passed my Comprehensive Final Exam and started working on my dissertation with Dr. Colleen Ramos. Last spring, just before COVID hit everywhere, I collected my research data. Since August, I have been editing and rewriting the dissertation to please my committee, the School of Business and Information Technology reviewers, and the Capella publication reviewers. It has been a very long slog.

My dissertation was approved by the publication reviewers and my committee last week. Everything has been sent in to the dean's office (either by me or by Dr. Ramos). Now, I just wait for Capella University's bureaucratic machinery to cross all the Ts and dot all the i's.

It's a bit of a soft landing for what feels like a big push to get everything done. Maybe by the end of the week (and for sure by the end of the month), I hope to officially have that PhD. But for now, I'm just tired. And hopeful that I really am done.

Local summer hikes

8/15/2020

Working from home has bought me about an hour-and-a-half of commute time back every day, and I still feel like I work the same number of hours--just hours that actually help my company instead of the big oil companies. One of my personal therapies is to get out into the mountains (as can be seen throughout this site).

Here are a few photos from some my recent local hikes, mostly in Payson Canyon, Santaquin Canyon and Pole Canyon, the three canyons nearest to my home. I tend to go early in the morning or right before sunset, so the light can be challenging for photography, but these places are not very high, so I go during the coolest times of the day. My wife is convinced that I will fall off a cliff or get eaten by a bear sometime. I tell her that I generally don't go where the cliffs are dangerous, and I'm too noisy to surprise a bear. I'm more likely to be eaten by a mountain lion. Somehow that doesn't comfort her. I'm not sure myself how I will exit this life, but nobody gets out of this place alive, so maybe those are as good ways to go as any. At least the views are nice.

Winding down the PhD work

7/24/2020

As is obvious, I have been pretty tied down with work, my doctoral program, family, etc. for some time. I am hoping to defend in the next couple of months. Then, I think, "maybe I'll... try some of that life Tony was telling [Steve] to get."

Hikes in Santaquin and Payson Canyon have been sanity-savers for me this year.

Europe: Late Spring/Early Summer

7/28/2018

Adobe gives a sabbatical month after 5 years of service, which I passed a couple of years ago, so I had to use it before I lost it.

I have always wanted to go to Europe, and now that my kids are grown, I was able to go there with my wife. We flew to London in late May, then went on a 7-day cruise on the Sapphire Princess, which took us to Belgium (Zeebruge and Ghent), Denmark (Copenhagen and Roskilde), Sweden (Helsingborg) and Norway (Oslo)--all of which were amazing. After the cruise, we stayed in Windsor for 2 days, then in a hotel in Slough for 3, from which we visited London and Oxford. It was amazing, and physically challenging for this computer-desk-bound geek: nearly every day, we walked for most of the day, and when we weren't walking, the sitting was causing my muscles to lock up. A small price to pay, in my opinion, for a great opportunity to visit places I had long dreamed about.

True to form, I am still working through the small mountain of photos that I took. Here are a few (getting me up to Helsingborg). I'll have to post more later. (And I'll post a bunch to Flickr, etc.).

Quick! Find a foreground!

10/10/2017

A couple of days ago, I noticed that the lighting outside was amazing...and the found that it came from an amazing sunset. It was a quick scramble to find a good foreground, and even with that most of the color had faded. But it still turned out a nice image. And I like the embedded symbolism with that dark and foreboding sky looming behind the spire rising like a sort of spiritual lighthouse.

That overwhelmed feeling

10/7/2017

I was able to sneak in a short hike after my SysAdmin class earlier this week--just up Rock Canyon in Provo (nice and close to BYU). The colors are really becoming beautiful, both in the mountains and in the valley.
I start two research classes for my own PhD this coming week, so hiking time will probably be in short supply. In fact, I'm thinking that both sleeping time and breathing time are going to be in kind of short supply. <sigh> It's self-inflicted, so I can't complain too much. (But I'll be really happy when it's all done in a year or two.)
I always hope that if I'm busy enough, I won't have time to get into trouble. It does help, but I seem to have the ability to get into trouble anyway--though usually for different things.
On a tangentially-related note, I learned (well, learned more thoroughly) last quarter that qualitative research is very cool, and that many of the possible research questions floating around in my mind may be best approached with various qualitative techniques. Since my current classes are related to research methodologies, I'm quite excited to explore this space a bit more thoroughly.

Spokane before the colors hit

9/29/2017

I had the opportunity to go to Spokane, Washington for a few days in mid-September with my wife. She is studying Communication and Leadership as a distance learner with Gonzaga University and had a class on campus. Because of this program, she has put together her own blog site, which is quite pretty, imho.

I spent most of two days finishing up a paper for and advanced research class of my own, then spent a lot of time walking up and down the beautiful paths along side the Spokane River, around Riverfront Park, and around downtown Spokane.

Views like this are common. The air was a bit hazy because of the wildfires in the area, and the river was low, but the weather was perfect and the city delightful.

Being Christian, but not being Catholic, some aspects of Gonzaga were unusual to me, but I quite enjoyed the campus. I was struck by how easy it is to feel at cross-purposes with Christians of other faiths, and yet how important it is that we who have so much in common should support each other, encourage each other and joy in each others' successes. As I pondered on these feelings, the truth of them sank into my soul, and I found myself being very glad for the successes of this university that strives to instill faith and good works into the hearts of so many students. I felt that their purposes fit very well with my own beloved BYU's "Enter to Learn, go forth to Serve" unofficial motto.

Author

Russel is a mid-career IT guy with an academic interest in log and data analysis, a professional interest in monitoring and management systems and programming languages, and personal interests in family, photography, reading, and the outdoors.

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