Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Runner's Corner - An Awesome shoe store
So after reading this article and posting some on the comments section of that blog article, I decided to go in to Runners Corner. You can check out their website here: RunnersCornerUtah.com. Golden helped me out. He first asked about my running/exercise history, and asked about any injuries that I had. I explained the plantar fasciitis issues. He then grabbed a pair of shoes in my size and had me run a little while he examined my running style. It's interesting because several other shoe stores told me that I had problems with over pronation, but I had looked this up on the internet and it never made sense to me based on how I thought I ran. He told me I was very supinated and that shoes made for extreme overpronation would actually cause me more problems with supination. I was right and he confirmed it. I would have bought a motion control shoe for severe overpronators had I not talked to Golden first.
So they know their stuff at Runners Corner. After checking my run style he brought me some shoes to test my foot width and then after a few tests he had me try on one shoe from two different pairs and go for a run. We did this a few times until I found a couple of pairs that I really liked. I tried them out and then decided on the pair I liked. I found it interesting that the pair he was suggesting to me was the cheapest non-clearance shoe on their shelves. He recommended the Asics Gel-Fortitude 3's for stability and because I would be doing much more than running in these shoes (Basketball and Insanity). I found it interesting that he recommended completely different shoes for the guy next to me because he had a different running style and different injuries.
So I will be going in today to buy these shoes, a pair of soft orthotics, and possibly getting my shoes "zeroed". I'm not sure what the real term was for this. But basically they remove a portion of the sole in order to make the shoe more balanced so you don't heel strike as much.
Golden talked to me about proper form when running, how to phase out my orthotics and strengthen my feet so I never need orthotics again, and helped me feel much more confident in spending $100+ on the shoes and accessories. I felt like I was being sold like crazy at other shoe stores. They all kept trying to tell me to buy this $150 Kayano shoe that Golden explained would actually hurt me because it is not for my running style.
Runner's Corner in Orem is awesome and I highly recommend any of you to stop in if you are looking for a pair of running shoes or if you are interested in learning more about how to run properly, how barefoot running works, and if you want to hear someone speak intelligently about the sport...
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Insanity... It really does hurt.
Today, I did my first real workout and I have to say it is really really tough. It's pretty much intense interval training for two months. We'll see how it goes. I did all my pictures and measurements on Sunday so I can see where I end up, but I'm hoping that it helps make some real progress. I need to lose some weight and get some strength back. Also, it comes with a pretty intense nutrional plan that I am following. Albeit, not to a T, but I am following it. We'll see how well this works. What's funny is that this thing wants me to eat 3000-3500 calories a day because of how intense the workouts are...
Let's just say it is fun. :)
Thursday, January 14, 2010
2010 Goals... Gotta write them down right?
Jason:
Health:
- Get back down 175 lbs
- Get back to a 32 Waist
- With Gym Membership - Bench my weight (assuming we do end up getting a gym membership. Not for sure yet.)
- Run 5 miles
- Finish 60 days of "Insanity"
Financial:
- Be Debt Free this year
- Earn a raise
- Build full emergency fund
Faith:
- Read one scripture oriented book
- Say morning prayers each morning
Mind:
- Read 10 books
- Read one actual book (not CD)
Ashley's Goals:
Health:
- Get back down to 115 lbs
- Get Mental and Physical health in check
- Fit into pre-pregnancy clothes
- Run 5 miles
Financial:
- Be Debt Free this year
- Finish and sell (or give as baby gifts) all baby carrier covers
- Build full emergency fund
- Read one scripture oriented book
- Say morning prayers each morning
Other:
- Finish sewing projects (Seth's curtains, our curtains, mending)
- Do spring cleaning
So there you go. We have some lofty goals that we will have to work very hard and focus on to obtain. I'm currently 197 lbs... Not my heaviest weight ever but not far from it. I would love to get back down to my high school weight that was around 160, but I think 175 is more realistic and I haven't been that weight since the earlier parts of my mission which was around 2002-2003. A few years back, 2005 or 2006, I spent the summer running and was running about 5-6 miles a few times a week. I ended up getting plantar fasciitis which is micro tears in the plantar fascia, the ligament that connects your achilles to your heel to the ball of your foot. So now that it is all but healed, I would like to push for this again.
I've never been a reader so to say I would read 10 books in a year will be a big stretch for me. Especially if I have to read the physical book. Also, we have been really focused lately on getting out of debt before we buy a house. So we are going to work on getting out of debt and building a fully funded emergency fund by the end of the year so that we can start looking at houses and saving up a down payment for a house for next year. Can I tell you how nice it is to pay off debts? Not just to pay the minimum, but to see the debts go away permanently. It's a beautiful thing to not have a car payment and it's wonderful to see those student loans melt away.
I think the hardest one for me to complete will be the 60 days of Insanity. It's a workout program like P90x or Tae Boe, but it is extremely intense. We'll see if my body can hold up under the workouts, but I think this is what will help me to get to my desired weight. This and a good diet will get me there and both will be difficult to keep up. We shall see. I might even gives updates on the blog as I go through it on the program and whether it is working or not.
K... That's our goals for 2010.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Updates
- Seth is now 15 months old.
- 2 Weeks vacation for Christmas in Wyoming was a ton of fun
- Working for Adobe is a great thing. They have awesome benfits and have really taken good care of us.
- Ashley is now 26 and is more beautiful than ever.
- I just earned 5 more bonus points for my previous comment.
- Ashley will start tending two kids from the neighborhood 4 times a week starting today.
- We have been following Dave Ramsey's financial dieting and have paid off about 60% of our debt during last year!! (It's tight sometimes)
- We expect to be out of debt this time next year (Except for the house which we hope to buy next year)!!!!
- I plan to start an exercise program called Insanity this next week. We'll see if I can shed some weight doing it. More like, We'll see if I can keep doing it... I'll shed the weight if I stick to it.
- Ashley and I are closer, happier, and more talkative than ever. We love each other and I am so happy we have what we have.
Well, I hope that helps catch you up a little. Let us know if there is anything that you would like us to update you on.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Quote Board
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Why "Spreading the Wealth" won't work in the US
Professor is a Genius
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.
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That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK,
we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
If you talk to people who are from the US and have lived in countries that have Universal Health Care or Socialized Medicine, you will usually hear stories of terrible doctors and people not liking the service they received. I believe this is the reason why. People who are not given proper motivation will lose interest and desire to be the best. Who cares if you are the best if you receive no reward for it. I'm afraid that eventually business will plateau and people will be less motivated to succeed if the government tries to equal everything out for everyone. The reason most people work hard is to rise above their circumstances and improve their life or their family's.
I guess the question I have is, how can we expect progress and innovation in America if we give no real reward to the innovator?
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Why I love Digis
After having this service for almost 6 months, I wanted to give a review. I love it. Digis is interesting because it is a wireless service. Instead of hard wiring cable or a phone line into your house like Qwest or Comcast, Digis relies on a small wireless hub that they mount to your roof. Our is mounted to our antenna pole. They then run a network cable into your house which then plugs into your computer or router. It's a really straight forward setup that is fairly painless.
Since getting Digis, I have noticed as good of download speeds as I had with Qwest. on Qwest we had a 6-7Mb connection and we receive the same from Digis. The biggest difference is that on Digis's network we get 5Mb download and 2Mb upload, and on Qwest we got 5 Mb download (normally) and a little less than 1Mb upload. For most people this won't matter at all, but for us it was huge.
I do a lot of Bit Torrenting. No I'm not getting illegal software or movies over this. I download LEGAL files and I want them to download super fast so I use bit torrents. Well that upload speed is huge because in the torrenting community if you don't share as much as you download, a lot of services will throttle (slow down) your download speeds. Digis has destroyed Qwest in it's ability to get our files downloaded quicker as a result of the huge upload.
So outside of that, how has it been? Great. We have had no downtimes as far as I can tell. Ashley would tell you otherwise, but it's a result of our router dying and not a result of anything Digis has done. I have not had to call their support for any reasons, except for on the first few days to make sure things were working right, but in those short conversations, I found their customer support to be superb.
Pricing is what makes this the best thing ever. At Qwest we were paying about $65 a month after taxes and fees. At Digis we are paying $40 a month for similar speeds. Now it sucks because Digis charges you $100-140 for installation depending on the deal you come in on, but we made that back in 4 months by saving $25 a month on our bills. Now we are simply saving $25 a month and we love the service.
What are the cons? The cons are that you don't know how well digis will work in your area until you try it out. It's totally based on how close your house is to the main tower in your area. They don't give you a public IP Address for free. You have to pay $5 a month to get a public address. I chose to not get this and have opted to use hamachi when I need to get to it remotely.
So that's my opinion. I love it and I am really glad we purchased it. I just wish we would have switched sooner. What's also cool about them is if you refer people, you can get free internet for a time period. I think each referral that signs up gets you a month free and if you get 5 referrals, you get a year for free. So if you decide to signup after reading this, then PLEASE say that Jason and Ashley Case referred you. We would love this. I think it also gets you a free month if you sign up through a referral. Not sure on that though.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Saturday at the latest
So I don't know what to write, but it's been a while and this may be my last chance to blog before the baby gets here. After that, I will definitely have something to say. ;) Everything is set up and ready to go for baby. I'm actually quite proud of Jason and me for being on top of things and having everything ready to go. I remember reading something around 35 weeks that was talking about painting the nursery. My only thought was, "I can't even bend over without flames running up my esophagus. How would you paint a whole nursery now?" I was grateful to have it all done and ready to go. I finished the quilt I was making for little Seth. That was a good day. And I am more than half way done with the curtains for the nursery. I was really behind on house work and getting this place clean enough for a newborn, but thanks to my mom and my little sister, Alyssa, things are caught up now. That was the part I was afraid wouldn’t happen, and it’s possibly the most important part. My problem is that I can’t bend, reach, climb, stretch, lift, or move quickly. Try doing house work without doing any of those things.
I just keep thinking that next time I’m pregnant, I will have a little one running around. I don’t know how anything will get done at that point. I’m sure I’ll figure it out but it’s given me a new respect for moms. Pregnancy is one of those things you really can’t understand until you experience it. My dad said he had been pregnant seven times and I corrected him and said he had been the partner of a pregnant woman seven times. He more or less said it was the same thing and I realized how much he didn’t know about being pregnant at that time. I’ve been around pregnant women before. It’s definitely not the same.
I went to the doctor today and found out that he is leaving for a two week vacation next week. So my options were to get induced before he left or have a different doctor if Seth came after next Wednesday. What I’m hoping is that I just go in to labor in the next few days, which is definitely a possibility. If not, I’ll be induced on Saturday whenever the hospital calls and says they’re ready for me. Though I didn’t want to go that route, it has its pluses. Hopefully it just happens naturally. Wish me luck!
Monday, July 7, 2008
July 4th
After I got home Ash said, "I think we should let her in on the plans..." Al was like, what plans? Kathy (Ash and Al's mom) asked Alyssa to go get the stuff out of the trunk. Al came back with armfuls of clothing. She asked, "Why are all of my clothes in the trunk?" We all started laughing and I hung an envelope of sorts over her head. (Then proceeded to do some weird Rasmussen ritual that says, 'Heavy heavy hang over thy poor head. What would you do with a (you then hit then with the gift on the head) bonk on the head?' Weird... I know) She took the envelope and opened it. Ashley said this was her birthday and Christmas gift all in one. She started reading and was like, "Oh... Cool...". Then she went into what looked like a moment of deep thought... And then she squealed really loudly. :) She figured out that three tickets to the Stadium of Fire actually meant three tickets to see Miley Cyrus! She started flipping out. It was awesome.
Stadium of fire was great. Miley was ok but that's not why I wanted to go. I wanted to see Blue Man Group. I'll tell you what... I really want to go to concert that is just them. They were very entertaining. The opening show with the dancers was fun too. They had 1300 girls all dressed the same and they came out on half of the football field and lined up. They had all kinds of different sports equipment. They ended up acting out every summer olympic event in their routine. It was great. There were several parts where I was like, "sweet!" It was really fun. The unfurling of the flag and the paraschute jumpers were great. It was just all-together fun. I definitely feel like the money was well spent. If someone really cool comes next year, then I think Ash and I may try to go again. Maybe they'll bring Rascal Flatts or something. I'd definitely be at that.
So we had a great weekend going to Stadium of fire, playing games, and watching Lost. We taught Al how to play Settlers of Catan while getting her addicted to season one of Lost. We're all so into it. It's a great show! The only thing that would make it better is if they got rid of the random girls dressed in bikinis. I know I know... It's on an island so I should expect it, but it is still annoying since it has nothing to do with the plot. To say the least... We really like Lost so far.
Life is grand. The baby is growing very well, Ashley is great and I'm doing well also. We got all of the walls in the baby's room stripped and washed. We bought paint and are going to start painting soon. Yay!
Monday, June 23, 2008
Baby updates
If you didn't know, we are having a boy. We have a few names, but we are pretty settled on one, but we are keeping it pretty private until the baby is born. if you really wanna know then call Ash. :) We are having so much fun and we are way excited for the baby to come in a few months. If you remind me, I'll post the ultrasound. it's pretty cool!
So to say the least we are excited. An update on us. We are still in Springville Utah living in Ashley's grandma's house. I'm still working for EnticeLabs in Provo and work is going well. Ashley is now a stay at home almost mom. :) She's doing her best to get the energy to take care of the home. it's gotta be hard to just about anything when you have an extra 10 pounds all of a sudden. She is wonderful though and things are well. Feel free to say hi sometime. :)
Friday, May 9, 2008
Life after school
I'm going to try something new. I'm going to bike to work. Gotta get a bike first, but this will be great for my health and hopefully really good for the budget. This will be a new fun adventure for me.
Out side of work, I have plenty to do. We're planning to do a lot of gardening. I dug up this large wild tree growing next to our house. I learned that the roots do run as deep as what's above ground. That was fun. I've been taking care of the lawn and doing all the little honey-do's that I have been putting off until the end of the semester because the last semester was crazy. I'm also doing little odd jobs like installs a new front and back porch light on the house we're living in. I also do my best to take care of my baby, and my future baby. I love her dearly and love spending time with her. Truthfully, we probably are one of the few married couples these days that probably spends too much time together because we don't seem to get that much done anymore. :)
Life is still wonderful...
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Graduation is coming soon!
I think it will be nice to come home and not have to worry about homework for classes that I no longer care at all about. I think one of the things I really look forward to is being able to come home and actually spend time with my wife and not have to worry about what is or isn't getting done. I guess I'll need to find a hobby or something. :)
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Feeling like a man
Monday, January 28, 2008
Our late Honeymoon in Florida!
So we had a blast in
We spent Sunday at church and walking on the beach. We were collecting seashells. The water was freezing for
Monday, New Year's, was spent at Disney World - Epcot. This was fun. The lines for rides were ridiculously long but we had tons of fun. I had never been to Disney World so it was a great experience for me. They had the best fireworks that I have ever seen... Seriously. They were awesome. We got home that night around 2 or 3 am.
We then slept most of Tuesday and went to a really nice dinner at the Chart House. It was probably one of THEE best steaks I have ever had. It was amazing.
On Wednesday, we went to Disney World again and this time went to Hollywood Studios. The rides here were MUCH better and the lines were smaller too. We had so much fun here. I was actually pretty impressed by some of their rides. This time we made sure we understood the FastPass's and we used them as best we could. I have to say that one of the best things here was the fantismo or fantistico or something like that. It was a show on the water at the end of the night. I loved it. The worst part was that it was absolutely freezing and we had worn shorts. So we ended up having to buy plenty of hot chocolate and a blanket to stay warm. We still had loads of fun.
On Thursday we went to International drive and walked through Wonderworks. This place is definitely recommended by both of us. The house was a lot of fun. It's a building turned upside down. They have all of these scientific "rides" that you can play with and they actually had one ride that made me completely nauseous. We were in control and we just spun it and spun it and spun it as fast as we could. I was done for a while after that. Later we played LazerTag (and I kicked everyone's butt... Maybe that was because I was the only one that knew the rules because they didn't explain them at all.) After that we went to the comedy show. This was hilarious and so much fun. I would go to this show again if I went to
Friday was awesome. We ended up going snorkeling with Manatees and scuba diving. Scuba diving was fun because we had never done it but snorkeling was amazing. Mostly because of the manatees. We went to an area where we got to play with them and scratch their backs and everything. It's amazing how playful these animals are. We’ll post some pictures when we get a chance.
Saturday we came home. We loved it in
We're staying in Utah
So the first thing I'll share with you is that we have decided to stay in Utah and work for the startup company, EnticeLabs. After a long period of study and prayer, we decided that we would stay. We strongly felt like this is where we need to be. We also thought that if we were ever going to try out a risky startup company, then we needed to do it now before we get wrapped up in our lives and have kids.
So we should be here in Utah for about 3-4 years at least unless something happens. Then we'll make a decision if we want to go somewhere else or stick around. We are doing wonderfully. we have been blessed in so many ways and although there have been times when we feel lost and confused, we feel that the Lord has been watching over us and directing us. Sometimes it has felt like direction into very strange and not understandable paths. We'll continue to follow no matter what the Lord tells us, but we are hoping that he gives us some direction soon.