My office at SunRiver has a vantage point.  It overlooks a church parking lot, that would otherwise be concealed to onlookers.  Understand that this parking lot is within the closed retirement community.  I, from time to time, see people acting quite strange.  I’ve seen arguing couples, dancing exercisers, and a few passionate lovers (mind you this is a 55+ community).  Today as I was leaving the office, I witnessed a disturbing sight.

Let me set the stage for you.  An average looking 60 something lady, had pulled up to the empty parking lot with her golf cart.  SunRiver is a golf cart community, so often the residents will drive their carts instead of cars.  Seated beside her in the cart was her trusty companion, and no doubt dear friend, yellow labrador retriever.  A magnificent looking animal.

As I stood admiring the great beast, I could see the tell-tell sign of a dog needing to do his “business”.  Quickly, the dogs owner ran back to her golf cart to retrieve (no pun intended) a “duty bag“.  My first thought was, “oh good, a responsible dog owner”.  Then, to my horror, the lady took the bag, squatted down, and positioned the plastic bag directly underneath the dogs outbox.  At this point I was frozen with wonder.   I have seen the drop and go, the drop quick look and go, and the usual drop…walk of shame…scoop and go, but never had a seen the pre-drop…scamper…bag hold…nervous drop.  It was an awkward dance.

As I looked at the dog during this ordeal, I swear I saw it look at me, then back at his “owner” in disgust.

So yesterday about 3:00 I got an inkling to enjoy some fantastic Southern Utah weather.  Its been cold and rainy the past week or so, thus the Electric Rose has been collecting dust in the garage.  So, with my work complete for the day, I snuck (or is it sneaked? Curse you Cedar City grammar classes!) out of the office, and headed home to spandex up (thats right folks, a large man in spandex is a wonderful thing) and hit the road.

The natural risk, of course, is running into “the boss” while you’re out and about.  I say this due to past experience with both things:

1. Sneaking away from work early

2. Running into the boss

Most notably  was when I was 18ish and worked for a door company.  Being far to “sick” to work that day, and naturally seeking out some sunshine at the lake on a boat, I called in to work with my best sick voice, and told them that it would be impossible for me to work that day due to my serious illness and that it would be in the best interest for both of us if I just stayed home and tried to fend off this horrible sickness.  After a short congratulations to myself for conjuring up such a great sick-voice, I jumped into my vehicle of lies and headed towards the freeway.  As I was merrily going on my way, I happened to glance to my left out my driver side window.  There, driving parallel to me, was my boss.  Franticly, I tried to think of what to do. Do I hit the brakes? or maybe speed up?  It did not appear that he had noticed me yet, so with my best sick-voice now translated to my best sick-face, I attempted to appear as if I was so sick, I clearly must be driving myself right to the hospital, or maybe straight to the morgue to pick out my burial plot, as the sickness was so severe that it might take my life.

The next day, I showed up a few minutes early to work to show how good of an employee I was, my boss didn’t say anything.  Did he not see me?  Was he just torturing me to see if i’d break?  Its still a mystery to this day.

Yesterday, as I was racing down the rode on the electric rose, and noticed my boss on the same trail walking his dog, I figured I had two choices.  I can go as fast as I can, and hope he doesn’t notice me, or I can fess up that I couldn’t possibly stand to stay at work on such s beautiful day (obviously he felt the same way due to his being there and walking his dog) and that if I was to continue being the creative genius that he is paying good money for, he should congratulate me on making such a wise business decision on taking advantage of the weather to “clear my head”.  I decided to go for choice 2.  Mostly, because a large man in brightly colored spandex riding a electric rose colored bike (ok its pink), is kind of like not noticing that a 747 just buzzed you.

As I walked into the office this morning, few minutes early to show how good of an employee I was, I did not notice a pink slip or empty boxes on my desk, so for now I think I’m safe.  Of course the day is young.  And its a beautiful sunshiny dixie day.  Maybe Ill sneak out early and go for a ride?

On Saturday Alisha and I sat down to watch the Laker – Jazz game.  We did this with full knowledge of the pain and sadness that usually accompanies this match up.  Usally Kobe has a way of breakdancing his way down the court and making the Jazz look like the top high school team from Garfield County.

I had heard that Kobe had broken his finger in the previous nights game, but would “play through the pain” instead of healing up his finger.  Little did I know that we would be honored to see so many angished shots of Mr. Bryant during the telecast.

I know what must have been going through his mind at this moment.  Micheal Jordans still renowned game where he “played through the pain”.  It was game 5 of the 1997 finals, Jordan or “His Airness” (is how he likes to be referred as) was near on the verge of losing the upper hand in the series, when Mr. Air (for short) came down with an aweful sickness. So much so that he needed to be helped to and from the bench in order to “save” the Bulls from defeat.

This reminds me of another elite athlete of our generation, and his sacrafice of self to save the team from defeat.

Coach Klein, after giving a pep talk to the team about how they did this together as a team, and that they can win as a team, turns to Bobby and says “You’re the only one that can win this game for us”.  I wonder if Phil Jackson takes the same approach with his star players as Coach Klein?

Much to our surprise the Jazz were able to put together a full game, and were miraculously victorious.  And while they may not be going to the finals this year, at least its good to see that they are able to pull together as a team.

I really cant think of many more things that scare me than a gas leak within my home.  We’ve all seen the devastation that these leaks can cause if handled wrong.  Beyond our own safety, I think all of us have been adversely affected by a cut utility line.  Phone, power, gas, water all of which we take for granted every day, none of which I want to live without for even an hour.

The past few weeks I have had an opportunity to work with a company on a new idea to solve all of that.  Let me introduce “Identifill”.  Basically they have patented the idea of colored sand to be used as fill for a utility line.  So when a excavator, utility company or homeowner is digging in an unknown area, they hit this colored sand before they hit the utility line.  Yellow for gas.  Red for electricity.  Blue for water.  Orange for telecommunications.  Purple for secondary water. The fill sand is fade free, non toxic and environmentally friendly.

But wait, what about Blue Stakes!  Don’t they already do this.  The answer is, kind-of.  Blue stakes certainly has helped tremendously throughout the years, and they certainly aren’t saying to do away with blue stakes.  But the problem with the current system is that people either don’t call blue stakes, or blue stakes are off by a few meters in their guess of where the utility line.  Unfortunately for the excavator or utility company, the guy in the backhoe does not know the line is close until its to late.

With Identifill, the operator sees the color a scoop or two before its too late.  Saving the utility millions in repairs, to say nothing of injuries and lives.

In the next few weeks, Identifill will be officially rolled out to the public.  But since I am working on the marketing, I thought I would give you a little sneak peek.

Episode 4 of our viral video series

Episode 3 of our viral video series

Episode 2 of our Viral Video Series

This is a viral video campaign we have been working on. Enjoy!

It has become quite a tradition for Dalan and I to make some sort of outrageous movie for our company wide quarterly meeting. We have a meeting coming up next week and we made this little diddy as a teaser to send out to the company. The joke is that Dalan our sales manager, has started to ride his Honda Ruckus scooter to work to save on gas. This is all fine and well, except Dalan is about 6′2 250 lbs so frankly it looks funny.

This is a video that I finished today.  We recently did the open house for a commercial building we built in Hurricane so I thought I would put together a quick promo video.  This was a fun project because it was the first that I was able to do the logo design, photography, video and final editing.  I am still very much a novice in all these catagories but im getting better (slowly!).