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On Friday the 23rd we left Provo to go down to Island in The Sky in the Canyonlands National Park. It was raining as we traveled down there, but that did not deter us at all. By the time we got into the park it wasn’t raining but things were damp. We quickly set up our camp with tents and rain flies because it was for sure going to rain. We went to a short hike and then came back to camp. We played some cards and then hit the sack. I got into my new Marmot Limelight 2P tent with my new Therm-a-Rest Prolite 4. Having a self inflating sleeping pad helped me sleep better through out the night. I woke up in the morning to pouring rain. The amazing thing was that there was not one drop of water in my tent, I love this tent. Others around me had some water inside their tent, but some of this was do to condensation building up on the inside of the tent. The nice thing about the Limelight is that the rain fly sits on top of the poles and does not touch the tent material which makes it so condensation doesn’t come through from the rain fly. After we had laid around for an hour or so we decided to get up and hit some of the 1 mile hikes. We saw Mesa Arch, and Grandview Overlook. After those hikes we went back to the camp site and had lunch. After lunch a couple of my friends took off and headed home. We decided to go and do the Gooseberry Trail which was a 5.4 mile round trip hike with a change in elevation of 1,400 feet. It was a pretty cool trail that had a quick decent and only took us 3 hours roundtrip. All in all it was a good trip and a chance to use my new tent minus the little mishap with tent seen in the picture below.

As I look forward to graduation I find myself wanting to start buying things in anticipation of my increased salary. This summer I plan on doing a lot of outdoor activities such as biking, hiking, and camping. There are several places I want to go including The Wave, King’s Peak, Lone Peak, Havasupai Falls, Blackbox and others. Since I already had a sleeping bag the next big thing I needed would be a good tent. I have a 5 man Wal-Mart special tent that weighs 20 pounds, but this would not be a good tent to take on a backpacking trip. So I spent a little money and got a new 2 person tent. I purchased a Marmot Limelight 2P on moosejaw.com with the optional gear loft and footprint. With the optional footprint it allows for a base set up with just the rain fly and the footprint. When the package arrived at my apartment I set it up to see how big it was and what it looked like. From my little experience with the tent so far I like it. I am excited to use it the next time that I go camping which will most likely be in the Canyonlands at the end of March. I think my next purchase will be an internal frame backpack.

They say laughter is the best medicine, I couldn’t agree more! On Saturday night as I dropped Megan off at her apartment we started working on her birthday prank. In an effort to be original I decided that I would use Post-It Notes and cover her car with them. We started at 1 am, thinking this will be so fun, and by 5 am we just wanted it to be done. We had 6 people there helping us put all the sticky notes on her car and yet it still took such a long time. We started with 12 packets each having 100 Post-It Notes thinking that would be plenty, but after two more trips to the store at 2 am and at 3 am we realized that was not nearly enough. We finished the whole car except the driver side window. We wanted to drive it across the street and put it in the school parking lot so that everyone could see it. At 5 am we drove it across the street and finished the one window. The end result was 3,200 Post-It Notes used and 4 hours of work, all creating a masterpiece. Below are a few pictures.

Today Kevin Rollins, former CEO of Dell, came and spoke to the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization on campus at BYU. We were all stuffed into a small auditurium style room in the law building. He spoke about the entrepreneur spirit. He said that the door has not been closed on entrepreneurial opportunities, but that you have to be very thoughtful but also visionary approach. He said that the internet is continuing to grow and we can not comprehend how it will change our lives. He focused his lecture on technology and some areas that have not been totally capitalized on yet including:

• Community Based
  • The internet is growing, but changing into more of a community model
  • Using what is out there and using forums - risk associated take the good and the bad
  • Examples would be Facebook, MySpace, YouTube
• Globalization
  • 2/3 of the worlds population has not been able to use the internet like we in the US experience
  • 1 billion users on the internet currently and that will double in 1 year
  • They will start off in an advanced stage such as starting with wireless not wired access
  • They will start off with laptops, or something smaller and cheaper, instead of desktops
  • The internet will penetrate new markets
• Wireless
  • WIMAX is going to make wireless easy and faster

Kevin also said that we need to expand our horizons on how we use this new. The US market is a very mature market with some opportunities, but right now there are a lot of opportunities in countries outside the US. Other countries will be able to grow quickly because we have already taken the time to develop the technologies and test it. With this increase in data we have to be willing to constantly be learning. Kevin said that leadership capabilities need to exceed what we are doing right now. We need to get better, faster and assimilate more then we have ever had to before. He closed the lecture with four suggestions:

• Ever learning as a leader
• Continual balance
  • There is a time and a season for everything
  • Understand where you are and prioritize
• Give back
  • The responsibility that you have with that success is that you give back
• Maintain the standards you started with
  • He has never felt he has had to compromise his standards
  • You do not have to feel you need to compromise to be successful