Nails!

So lately I have been getting my nails done again. I started with the usual pink and white acrylics. I had those for a month or so and got really sick of the long length. I really wanted to have really short fake nails and have them look at real as possible. So I had her shorten them dramatically and had them painted. I have never been bold enough for dark colors, but she put a very dark purple almost black color on my nails and I fell in love! Here are some of my favorites! PS- these are not my nails, I sniped the photos from online. They are also all OPI colors.

Siberian Nights

Russian Navy

Mystery

Midnight in Moscow

Merry Midnight

Light my Sapphire

Holiday Glow
Black Cherry Chutney

Baby it's coal outside

All A-Bordeaux A Sled!

Last few weeks....

Well the last few weeks for Bryan and I have been quite busy. So here is an update on what we have been doing!

Samantha’s Wedding
One of my really good friends got married on March 19th. My parents, Jessica(best friend) and I traveled to Scottsdale Arizona, and stayed for the whole weekend. I had never met her husband Jonathan before since he lives in England so it was nice to finally meet him. They met while Samantha was doing a semester abroad. The wedding was great, and the best man’s speech was hilarious!


½ Marathon Training
As many of you know I have been training for a half marathon. Well on March 18th, the day before Samantha’s wedding I ran 7 miles and made really good time, but my knee was killing me. I was limping around for the wedding and was really starting to worry about my knee. Well after the wedding I traveled back to Granite Bay to have some quality time with my parents and get some much needed appointments taken care of (got my hair done, yay!). Well I continued to run while at home, my Mom biked while I ran. My Mom mentioned along with Bryan that I should go get my knee looked at. So I went to an orthopedist, and ultimately got referred to a physical therapist. The good news is that there is NOTHING wrong with my knee, I just have a really tight IT band(muscle that goes from your hip to your knee and attaches to your outer kneecap) and I have a very weak vastus medialis ( inner quad muscle that attaches to the inner kneecap). So basically my kneecap is being pulled to the outside every step I take. So I have lots of stretching and exercises I have to do every day and it seems to be getting better.

Island Park
So while I went to Samantha’s wedding Bryan got to go to Island Park with his family. They have made it a yearly trip and snowmobiling is a must. This weekend was shorter than last with Bryan and his family going up late Friday afternoon are returning early Sunday.
Intel Interview
So I had my first Intel interview. It was over the phone and I was so nervous. I have been applying to Intel in Folsom since December and this is my first response from anyone at the company. The interview went well, but next time I will be more prepared. He asked a bunch of technical questions and I realized I needed to brush up on the basics a bit since I haven’t had an intro computer engineering course in a few years.

Snow in April!
Well last night it snowed a ton here. It felt like winter all over again. So this morning I took the pup to Tanner for some fun in the snow. We haven’t been to Tanner in a month of so since it has been so muddy. Kumo was so excited, he started whining as soon as we got on the freeway.

Some photos of kumo....

So Kumo has been doing some of the 1/2 marathon training with me. He has never been running with me previously so he is learning to run nicely on the leash. He has done pretty well over the last two weeks. He ran one 5 mile run with me and got pretty bored. But the shorter runs he does great! He is totally tuckered out when he gets home and here are some photos of the little guy sleeping. He also got a new toy and sometimes like to use it as a pillow! hahahha

Training so far......

So training has been going well. I have managed to stick to the schedule and not miss any days! :) So here is my progress so far! I am very slowly getting faster, yippiieeeeee!

TM=Treadmill and Out= Outside

Half Marathon Anyone?

So a few weeks back some new neighbors moved in across the hall from us. Well I have become good friends with them. There names are Stephanie and Clark. A few days ago Stephanie mentioned running the Salt Lake Half Marathon that takes place on April 17th. I didn't think much of it at the time but over the last couple of days I have decided I really want to do it! My Mom ran tons of marathons and half marathons when she was my age so I decided I would do one especially since I will have someone there to run it with me! So training starts tomorrow. Here is what my schedule is going to look like the next 7 weeks......

So Jessica (my sister in law) is maybe going to do this thing with me! So here is another schedule that is more intense for better runners like her!!!

update on things

So as many of you know I am finishing up my college degree in Computer Engineering. I graduate in May! Bryan is already done and I am so jealous! However I am just so close. Now all I have to do is find a job. My dream job is available at Intel and I have applied for several positions and everyday I cross my fingers I get contacted. Since I have been applying to Intel since December I started to get discouraged, and decided maybe I could be doing more? So I looked at Career Fairs that Intel was attending. I saw there was one at ASU and decided to jump at the opportunity! I attended ASU for my first two years of college and am still very close with a family there. So I stayed with the Shaw's and had a blast. I love Samantha's family! Anyhow I went to the Career Fair a bit nervous but confident that I could make an impression. Well I think I did because I got the recruiters email and I quickly typed a follow up email. The recruiter is great and I hope my short three minute impression gets me a job!!!! That would be so awesome! Anyhow here are some pictures from recently.....

This is what nap time looks like for kumo and I....

Samantha's sister thought that Kumo was a bigger dog. She has a husky/shepard mix that is a medium sized dog and asked if kumo was the same size. Well I didn't have any pictures that really depicted his small stature, so I figured I would get him sleeping next to my shoe....So here it is... This is how big kumo is....he looks big and acts big, but he is still small enough that he can sleep on me without crushing me!!!

New wellsfargo card? Help me choose!

So my friend Nikki got her Visa card done with a picture of her pups, and I decided to look into it. Here is Nikki's card:

Well wellsfargo does do it! So I need some help choosing some pictures.... Let me know what ones you like!!!

#1

#2
#3

#4

My friend Nikki

So since taking my photography class over summer I haven't done much with Photoshop recently. My good friend Nikki asked me how I got my blog header, and I told her that I created it in Photoshop. So I offered to do one for her. She sent me a few pictures and just let me do the rest. I had a blast! I really love photoshop and I love learning new things about how to use it. Anyways so here is the header that I ended up....


For those of you who don't know Nikki, we met over summer. It was kind of a random meeting. I ran into some people walking their Siberian Husky pup and they asked me if Kumo was a Klee Kai. I said yes and they said that someone they worked with had just gotten one. I asked them where their friend got their Klee Kai from and they said Texas. I told them that I had gotten Kumo from Oregon. So I immediately went home and emailed the two Klee Kai breeders in Texas. I guess Nikki did the same thing and emailed the breeders in Oregon. Well we got in contact and were friends from then on. Now Nikki and I meet up to go on walks to Tanner and have decided to go hiking every weekend! Her and her husband John are great people and their two dogs are so cute.



If anyone else wants me to make them a blog header, just go ahead and ask! I would love to do one!

A very good read

So I have been following a blog for some time. It's not someone that I personally know but her story is very interesting. The Arizona Republic just finished an article on her and its a very good read. It takes a while to read so give yourself some time to read it, but make sure to read it all. Its heart warming. Here it is

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/stephanie-nielson-intro-120609.html


There is an intro and 10 parts to the story.

Senior Project

So for my Computer Engineering Senior Project a group of us had to design and build something relevant to our studies. We decided to build dynamic source filtering sunglasses. Our goal was to design some sort of glasses that would blot out bright lights like the sun. We accomplished this by designing a processor that read in brightness levels from a camera mounted about your eye. The processor would then determine which light sources to blot out based on a variable threshold. The processor would then tell the LCD to darken certain pixels. The LCDs were running at 60Hz so it would refresh faster than your eye could move. This allowed our processor to track bright lights and blot them out even when they were moving (or when you were moving). Today was demo day and here are some pictures from it. There were three other senior project teams. Each team had four team members and I was the only girl on any team. All teams successfully completed their projects and our professor announced today that we all got A’s! Here are some pictures from the day:

Here is our group: me, Torrey, Jason and Dan

LCDs and cameras. Notice the sunglasses is front of the cameras. This was because the camera processor would gamma correct and we were not able to interface with it and tell it not to. So therefore we just used some good old fashioned sun glasses to darken what the cameras were seeing.

better view of one LCD and camera
Our processor

closer view

our hand controls. Ever persons eyes sit different and have different head shapes and therefore fit into the hard hat differently. So we had some controls to adjust the cameras.

Our senior project professor trying it out

front view of the whole module