Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Police report

Police responded to an emerceny call from employees at Wells Fargo bank on March 10. The police were dispatched at 4:42 p.m. they arrived a few minutes later to find the male suspect had already fled the property.

The suspect approched the teller handing a note which informed the teller they were armed and to hand over an undisclosed amount of money.

The suspect male was described by witnesses as an Asian male, between the ages of 35-40, approximately 5'10" to 6'0" tall, with a slender build. Witnesses stated that the suspect male was wearing a white baseball hat bearing a Nike emblem on the front of the hat, a dark color jacket, blue jeans, and a white t-shirt.

Although the police were able to respond with in minutes, they were unable to apprehend the suspect. Local FBI offices have been brought in to help with the investigation.

Anyone with information, please contact Detective Soule at the Provo Police Department, 801-852-6354.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

5 Ideas

Most eligable batchelors- Aliex Bowden
Outdoor rec center activities- Creighton Baird
Off campus activities- Julieann Bowden
Intermurals- Manda Lightfoot
Best places to eat- Alex Swan

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Living With Terror

Terror is a word used alot in todays political arena, we have the War on Terror, terrorist attacks through out the middle east, the aftermath of the 9/11 bombings that haunt all of our dreams. Americans today know a thing or two about terror. 9/11 changed the way we look and feel about our homelands security and just how vulnerable we can be to those determined enough to commit such crimes aginst humanity. However in the years since 9/11 the attitude of the average American citizen has moved away from fear of another attack to a more calm and "before" sence of security. Airports are still on high alert, but not nearly as bad as the months and years immediatly following 9/11, sure it's an inconvienance to not be able to bring more than 3 oz of any liquid past the security checks, but compared to 4 hour long lines to have every item and every bag searched it seems like a walk down the street. The point is americans don't live with a sence on constant terror, never knowing what will happen next. There is a firm solid plan in action and people can take confort in that and move on.

However in many places in the world that is not the case, terror is just as common to many countries and safety is to us. One of the most politically tumult contries in the world now is Israel. "I lived a lot of my life in terror. its not exactly the best life out there, but soon you become numb and just go about trying to ignore it, but you can't because you see it everyday." Besan Quffa said during an interview about her home town of Ramallah. Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank with a population nearly 25,500 and is approximatly 6 miles north of Jerusalem. Besan has lived in Israel for her whole life, and has moved to the United States to attend school at Brigham Young University.

Living in constant fear of attack and retaliations due to attacks from groups as Hamas or other occupational violence, seems to be an everyday occurance for people like Besan. "Every Palestinian (who lives there) is affected by Israeli occupation, you can’t run away from it you can’t hide from it, its everywhere," Besan said. "I and my family lived through crossfire happening outside our house; we had 67 bullet holes in our roof."

Every aspect of Besan's life is affected by terror, from the way she attends school to her attempts to go to Sunday services. Besan a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, would have to sneak past check points and enter Jerusalem illegally if she wanted to go to church. "I cant go...anywhere outside Ramallah. From what I have observed they only got worse, first it was one checkpoint, then there were two, and now there is a wall."

Life is very differant when you live in constant fear, even in our more industrialized countries we still have the lingering fears. In 2005 the London Underground tube stations were bombed by muslim extremists, marking the most devastating attack in Londons modern history. How has this affected the people of England, and London in particular? "At the end of the day, threat of terrorist attacks or not, you can't put your life on hold." Kate Ngai said "No one knows if or when anything will be attacked and to live in fear (or terror as it were) is to give the upper hand to those terrorists. If you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time than it is pure bad luck on your part." Kate and her Husband Matt have been going to school in London for several years. "there were some some bomb scares and tube stops were closed. But honestly they don't make too much of a big deal out of it."

A very differant opinon from a very differant part of the world. Dispite the distance and intensity, the lasting effects of terrorist attacks can be felt for years down the road.

My Father on Facebook?

It's more likely than you may think. So last Sunday dad wanted me to help him learn how to use Facebook, so he could try to use it for advocacy and other things of its ilk that our father is so prone to do. So I sat down with him and after showing him a few basic things I figured it was time to get him some friends.

I guided him to the search friends function and had him look for my by name. It brought up 3 differant Brad Kinsels much to my bewildered fathers amazement. He was so shocked that there would be other Kinsels out there that he didn't know, he insisted on looking at the friends of each one to see if he recognized any differant faces. I dont think dad had relized the magnitude that is Facebook until about then. I know Kinsel isn't a common name, in fact there are only a few places in most of the US where the name even comes up in census information.

All that aside, we finally got navigated to my page, and the first and only thing dad could comment on was how terrible my profile picture was, a simple phone shot that in dads words "makes my nose looks 3x its normal size." Thanks dad. The next thing he couldn't get around was the status updates, mine happened to be at the time "Brad is not threatening to kill you" which for the awesomely educated is a quote from the game Portal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_(video_game). In all it was a funny experiance to see him try to come to terms what us "youngsters" do with our time online. So if you seen him write on your wall make sure to write something back.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

wow, that sucks.

So I had a really nice long blog about iPods and how i've become an iPod person with my new iTouch and junk but blogspot decided to crash and not save the post while I was trying to publish it....that sucks hard. So all your going to get a lame wordy blog post about nothing in general.

Nothing to report, I've been going to the gym every day for about 3 weeks now and dropped ten pounds, woot go me, i'd like to lose more and since i'm unemployeed it makes it pretty easy to find time to go when I want to rather than at the end of the day and i'm just tired. So probbaly the most akward thing is when you run into some one you know at the gym, nothing is worse than being all gross and sweaty and your buddy from comms class comes up and wants to chat it up for ten minutes ruining your rythm and groove. Or seeing that hot girl from your math class as your pounding out your last ten sit ups lookings like a sweaty monkey. Oh yeah both happend to me in the last week.

Why is it when you see some one you know at the gym or they see you they all ways ask "So what areyou doing" Duh i'm at the gym i'm trying to work out dont be retarded. I know its just polite small talk but really? What do you say to something like that?

iPod People

Ok so i'm usually the first person in my family to get any kind of cool looking gadget, largly because my family isn't realy hip on cool toys. I was the first to advocate the SNES in my family, new computers, trampolines ect all master planned by myself. Now of all my toys i've owned over the years I think my most cherished ones have been my iPods, yes with an s, there have been several.



I got my first iPod while on my Mission, crazy I know, but an old companion and I started a habbit of saving 100 of our 140 a month and "living on faith". Every month on "pay day" we'd stick 100 into an envelope and seal it up and toss it in our suit case to be forgotten. Well it came to be about 3 months before I was to go home and I had around 800 dollars saved up. I'd managed to get every companion I had since then to also save the money, so when one day my companion turns to me and says "Elder I have 300 dollars I want an iPod" who was I to deny him, seeing as i'd never had one and it seemed like the right thing to do with the money i'd saved we went down on the next P-Day to Best Buy and wam bam thank you mam, we were iPod People. Now having an iPod as a missionary is a novel experiance, especially when it can play brick out and tetris, we were kings! We were able to find a nice member in the ward willing to spend about an hour or two ripping out entire missionary music collection and helping us get it onto our iPods.



Fast forward a year. So after a year or so and being home and my Ipod getting slightly abused over time, I went to Cyndi's house over night for some sort of family function. I happened to leave my iPod in my car, not out in the open mind you but in the glove compartment under some junk as I usually did. I went to leave the next day...and my iPod was gone. It was my own fault for not locking the car but still, that sucked.



One month later I decide its time to reinvest, this time in a shiny new black one, boo-ya! It worked and it worked well, by the time I was done with it it had scratches and marks all over it. However all was not pretty in the park, I was at the gym one night and set it in the little neat containers they have(not a cup one) I wasn't using it that night because I was watching somthing on the TV, well i got done running and pulled my iPod out, and only then relized that my container was full of about 3 inches of water...thanks Golds Gym, of course I set it condustor side down. It never worked right since, half the time it would eat the battery in about 30 min and some times it would go into diagnostic mode and not want to leave...for like a month. It was bad news bears. I managed to sell it though for abotu 50 bucks, towards the end when I cleaned out the head and it worked pretty well.



Now just this last christmas I upgraded to the newest and quit possibly the greatest iPod ever, the iTouch. Life is pretty sweet

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Lazy

Im too lazy today to think of anything special to write about so your just going to be a boring old life update, which to all 3 of my family members (75% of my total readership) is what they really want. Sorry Mark.

So not much has changed i'm still unemployeed and carefree. I've signed on at this point in time to go and do installs for APX Alarm systems over the summer, i'm not sure yet were i'm going so you can save that question for another time. Hopefully it will work out and I get a good area or i'll end up back in provo broke as a joke again, haha that would suck. I think it will be fun to get out of Utah for awhile again and go see another place. I'm going with some of my friends and the training meetings so far havn't been all that daunting so I think i'll be able to handle it ok.

I just read that Larry H Miller died on the 20 of this month, kinda odd to think about really, such a large local name here in Utah who has been around and prominent for as long as I can remember, largly in part to Mom and th Jazz. Anywho not much going on with me just living the life of the poor using all the tricks i've learned from my father over the years (hello 10 for 10 Albertsons)