The Grass Is Always Greener

So as my research on BCAA's continues, I have found this blog that also talks about BCAA's and their benefits. http://thefitnessnut.blogspot.com/2011/06/branched-chain-amino-acids-bcaa.html I found it very interesting and insightful. Perhaps you might too...

Over the last 6 months, I have been trying to grow stronger by lifting weights. At first, it was difficult to develop a habit, but now it is necessary. I don’t feel very good if I don’t get to go to the gym every day. Prior to these 6 months of consistent gym attendance, I had lifted weights before especially during my participation in various sports teams. As a result, I have a pretty solid understanding of the pros and cons of different proteins, pre-workouts, and supplements. However, recently I learned a lot about BCAA’s. BCAA’s is an abbreviation for Branched-Chain Amino Acid. There are very distinct and special benefits to BCAA supplements that you can’t get from your typical proteins or pre-workouts.   BCAA’s stimulate protein synthesis Reduce the rate of protein decomposition Increase effectiveness of workout as increases slower onset of tiredness BCAA’s enter directly into the bloodstream and give quick energy to the body without digestion. Having gained a b

Fourteen years ago, my Dad surprised my brothers and I by bringing home a baby puppy that we ended up naming Sugar. This past week we unfortunately had to put sugar down. Sugar lived a great long life, much longer than expected as about 3.5 years ago Sugar was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. She struggled to breath at times and was in visible pain at others. When I left on my mission 3 years ago, I did not expect to see her again as the vet originally told us she had 6 months to live. In the last couple of months Sugar was doing noticeably worse. Within the last two weeks before her passing, she would randomly whine and refused to walk on one of her back legs.               As a result, my Dad took Sugar to the vet to figure out her status. As it turns out, she had a pinched nerve in one of her back legs. The vet said she could fix it through surgery and a medication, but the medications she would have to take to overcome the pinched nerve would counteract the medication fo

I think I made a big mistake. I was rushing to get my website hosted on my domain before the deadline   for my Information Systems Class and I accidently added my html folder straight to the general file upload directory instead of the public html. When I realized my mistake, I just clicked delete. And it sent me a message saying something along the lines of, “Are you sure you want to delete instead of put into trash as it will be deleted forever.” I thought it would just delete it from the BYU Domains site and not off my computer. While trying to upload my website, I noticed I didn’t have some of my html files anymore. I have all of my .css files but not my html files. As a result of this mistake, I ended up not going to sleep till 7:30 in the morning. I learned a very valuable lesson. ALWAYS SAVE YOUR WORK! Furthermore, it is not a bad idea to consider backing up all of your data. I know last night it would have been worth its weight in gold. I know in the future I will def

This week in my information systems class, we learned the basics of writing HTML code. Even though I still can’t do very much and what I can create isn’t super impressive, I am very pleased with my progress. Prior to taking this class, every time I imagined someone coding, I just pictured someone typing illegible jargon on a computer and then hacking into the Pentagon. I still have no idea how anyone would do anything like that, but I am happy to say that I at least understand the basics of the basics.               Now when I look at websites, I can recognize what was done with the coding to cause it to do what it does, or sometimes even recognize why it is broken.               I recently looked at the website for my father’s Association and was shocked. By no measure is the website poor or insufficient, but with the information that I learned this week, I noticed simple errors that are easily fixed if someone was actively managing their website.               As it turn

Yerba Mate is an herbal tea consisting of an herb plant originating from northern Argentina. Mate is drunk across South America. Mate is known to have many health benefits such as: good source of antioxidants, help you focus and stay awake, hunger suppressant, decreases lactic acid build up in your muscles, promotes good sleep.               Although mate is not common in the United States, I first became familiar with yerba mate in Dallas, Texas while on my mission. At first I thought it was disgusting, but I soon acquired the necessary taste to enjoy such a drink. Since then I have continued to drink mate on a regular basis.               Nevertheless, I learned something new about mate this week. I learned that when you first pour in the water to drink mate, it is best to pour in cold water (even though mate is prepared hot). The reason being, is so that you do not burn the mate right away with boiling hot water. This allows the taste of the yerba to be consistent througho

After mountain biking for the first time two weeks ago, I realized I had caught the itch. Over this past weekend, my friends and I decided to go mountain biking again. We decided to go to Fruita, Colorado. It was a lot of fun and we had a great time! My post today, however, is not about biking even though it was a blast! We took a friend of ours that had never been mountain biking before. He didn’t have a bike so we thought it would be a good idea to all chip in to rent him a bike from Outdoors Unlimited. We called beforehand and they told us that it was going to cost us $30. After driving three and a half hours to Fruita and biking less than one mile on the trail, the derailleur on the bike we rented snapped. So, the bike that we paid for proved to be a waste. In our minds, we felt that Outdoors Unlimited owed us a refund as their equipment was assembled poorly and did not serve the purpose for which it was rented. Not only did we not get a refund, but they ended up charg

Many of my closest friend, and even my brother, live in Logan, Utah as they attend Utah State University. This semester I have been busier than I was last semester, so I hadn’t been able to see my brother or my friends since winter break. A visit was long overdue, but I was having trouble finding time to drive to Logan. At 6:00 p.m. on Saturday night, my friend Caiden and I decided impulsively to go drive up to Logan for the night and to drive back tomorrow afternoon. This whirlwind of a trip had lots of potential in our minds and it was a risk we were willing to take. Unfortunately, the night did not play out as we fanaticized it could in our minds. When we arrived the friends that I was so excited to see already had set plans for the night that couldn’t really be shifted around too easily. The one thing that Caiden expressed he wanted to do, was to go into the hot tub. When we finally made it into the hot tub, the hot tub wasn’t very hot. To make matters worse, I was given

Here is a taste of what my weekend was like!! Enjoy!!

This past weekend was definitely one for the memory books. My friends, John and Caiden, decided to take me to Moab to go mountain biking for the first time. Being from Florida I had never been to Moab, never really spent too much time on a mountain, and hadn’t biked too much previously. John and Caiden, however, are avid mountain bikers and were so excited to share their passion with me. For those that are familiar with Moab mountain bike trails, we did the following trails: Bartlett Wash, Slickrock, Bull Run, Arch’s Corner, and Little Canyon. One of the biggest things I learned after reflecting on my first day biking, is that I was missing learning and fun by being too cautious. I made the goal the next day to give it my all, and if I got hurt then I got hurt. But if I decided that some parts of the trail were too hard and walked down most of it, then I was robbing myself of growth opportunities. I crashed many times and I did get beat up, scratched, and bruised. I loved eve

This week I learned in my Doctrine and Covenant class I learned something that has caused me a lot of reflection. We learned that Doctrine and Covenants Section 89, the Word of Wisdom, was not originally a commandment but a suggested health code. It wasn’t until the 1920’s till the Word of Wisdom was enforced as a commandment as we know it to be now. The part that fascinates me, however, is that during the abolition period in American history, the saints voted to repeal abolition and make alcohol legal again. Abiding by the Word of Wisdom is one of the biggest separators between Latter-Day Saints and the rest of the world, and one of the key principles is the consumption of alcohol. Growing up in a primarily non-religious community, I always wondered what life would be like if all my other friends lived the same standards we do.               Secondly, what is most surprising to me is that most saints went against prophetic counsel and voted in favor of alcohol even though

I had an interesting experience this past week. In my management communications class this past week, we were asked to produce a formal business proposal. The interesting this that I wanted to comment on isn’t the intricacies of our business proposal, but was the fact that we were able to complete this group project 100% without meeting in person. We were able to communicate via google hangouts and then have a live google doc that we could all edit simultaneously. This experience has caused me a lot of reflection. I personally had never used a google doc before and it was shocking to me how well it worked!! I can’t help but admire how fast technology has shaped the world as we know it. Our capabilities today are leaps and bound ahead of what they were when my parents went to school. In almost every industry, technology has shaped it to be near unrecognizable from what is used to be before the influence of computers and technology. Unfortunately, it can be all too easy to t

Last week I wrote about the special opportunity I had to film one of my best friends' proposals. This week; however, I had the opportunity this past week to attend the sealing and reception of another one of my good friends from my mission. He was married in the Bountiful, Utah temple. It was BEAUTIFUL! As I am sure many of you are aware, Utah is covered in snow, and this just added to the beauty of this temple. I had never been to the Bountiful temple so it was a pleasant discovery. I definitely support my friend’s decision to get married there. I am not familiar with many temples in Utah or very many across the world and would be very curious to hear what you think. What is your favorite LDS temple? (Please click on the link to answer) https://goo.gl/forms/SmPKLzH06IakMQJS2 As some of my closest friends are reaching these large milestones in their lives, I have really learned the effect that marriage has on your future. What I mean is that you have to be so careful

This week I learned something I didn’t expect to learn, and certainly didn’t hope to learn. I learned that recording one of your best friend’s proposals can be a very difficult task. As silly as it might sound, it proved to be very challenging at times especially when one would think it would run smoothly.               Before I delve into the details of our difficulties, I want to preface it with the things we did accomplish. My friend’s fiancé had no idea that it was coming, she was surprised, and we were able to get multiple videos and pictures from multiple angles to record this priceless moment forever.               Since we were trying to keep it a secret, we could never talk about it openly when she was present (which happened to be a lot that week). We ended up not being able to begin planning the concrete details till 3 in the morning the night before! To get a better idea of our options, my friends decided it was a good idea to take a trip to the Provo City Center Te

One of the unique opportunities available to BYU students is to be able to take religious courses for college credit. This semester, I am enrolled in a course covering the second half of the Doctrine and Covenants. Due to the nature and origin of the Doctrine and Covenants, we began the class by discussing the history of Joseph Smith and his First Vision.               The topics discussed weren’t necessarily new information for me, but I could see his story from another prospective. We talked in detail the fact that there are nine different accounts, from Joseph, of his First Vision. Even though I have read these accounts previously, what caused me to ponder was what my professor emphasized. He pointed out that in five of the nine accounts, Joseph’s primary focus for going to the Sacred Grove was to seek out forgiveness for his sins.               What really hit me hard was the realization of the purity, humility, and goodness of Joseph at this young stage of his life. I th

For some, change can be a dreaded but unavoidable part of life. Having recently returned from a two-year volunteer service mission where almost nothing was constant or consistent, change has actually become something that I look forward to and enjoy. So far I like my classes despite the foreseeable difficulty. Although I like school and my current friends,  I'd have to say that my favorite part of a new semester has to be the new opportunities to meet new people. This week, I had the opportunity to meet Caiden Wilkens. I met Caiden through a mutual friend: John Lindsay. John and I met while serving our missions together in Dallas, Texas. We lived together for a couple months a grew to be close friends. Before his mission, John roomed with Caiden so I heard many stories about Caiden long before I got the chance to finally meet him this week. Caiden is from Missouri and just returned home from a mission in Sacramento, California. We met briefly when I went over to their apartment