I did my teacher evaluations and left this as a comment for my pre-tenure teacher.

Coach Bangerter is more than just a teacher but is a giant in the community, and an asset to the University. He is valued very highly by the Students here at Brigham Young's University. Coach wanted everyone in his class to understand the material, and I would dare say that he wanted us all to get an A in the class. Unfortunately, the university wants a strict bell curve for the grading scale.

Coach Bangerter has equipped me with various techniques for dealing with real life every-day situations, such as "What do you do if someone comes up to you on the street and asks you to find the impulse response of a particular input output relationship?" Before I took coaches class, I would have gone about this situation all wrong; trying to solve for an h(t) without even knowing if it could be done. I now know that I first need to check this stranger’s input-output relationship to determine if it is indeed linear and time-invariant. This is 2011; you can't just trust that every input output relationship you are handed is LTI like you could back in the nineties. And if it is not LTI than I have no business finding an h(t).

Coach explained things very clearly, and was very sensible to the student’s workload. On more than one occasion I visited him in his office just to be in his presence, and feel his awesomeness radiate to every corner of the room. He is a true American Hero and an inspiration to all of us. No lie, on more than one occasion, I left his class wanting to be a better person. Coach has done things that not many have and has cast himself into the caliber of people such as Elisha Kane, George Washington, Coolio, and I would even daresay, Mr. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier himself.

Coach Bangerter knows both his signals AND his systems. And he shared that knowledge without refrain to his students, in an attitude and pace that was respectful to all of his students. He was bold, but not overbearing. Nor did he ever require that a student should run faster than he had strength. Coach was a leader. And not one of those crappy leaders, like my first missionary companion. He was a leader that led by example, and never required anyone to do a convolution that Coach himself could not do. Coach was a master of incentives. He knew that while grades were a great motivator for most of the class, not everyone responded the same to this particular incentive. He wanted maximum participation from everyone, and this concern for his pupils led him to the discovery of yet another incentive that could reach out the few in the class that were unresponsive to grades.

When posed with difficult questions in class, Coach Bangerter didn't cower, no. Rather he felt the thrill of challenge and tackled great transforms with his class supporting him the best they knew how.

Coach had vision, and more importantly, the ability to create vision in his students. On more than one occasion he took the day to depart from the usual in order to educate us on big picture topics. He would show us how what we learned applied to MRI, building a stereo amplifier that would blow the pants off of any audiophile, blowing up a picture to twice its original size, and dealing with strangers on the street that need complex signals converted back to analog.

Although the best Athletes do not necessarily make the best coaches, I will stand as a witness that Neal Kepler Bangerter is not only one of the leading experts on signal analysis but has also earned the title of “Coach” in the rawest meaning of the word.

Just some random thoughts running through my head that I need to type out and send to the world.

Sometimes I feel really Emo. I found this new band, "We are in the Crowd." I think I am drawn to emo bands with girls in them. I found this video on youtube and I am in love with this girl. Hailey Williams has some competition for my heart now.

I was talking to my dad today and we were talking about a couple of my friends who are getting married and one of them who had bought a ring and spent a pretty penny on it and then she ended up giving it back because she prayed about it and her answer was "no." Well now he is stuck with this way nice ring and doesn't know what to do with it. My first reaction was to just hold onto it until he meets someone else that he wants to give it to. "No, no, no, bad idea," my mom cut in. I guess giving a ring to a girl that you originally bought for someone else is taboo. (Did I use the word taboo in the right way?) My dad suggested that they should have some type of insurance/return/trade in policy if stuff like that happens. I was just thinking that it needs to be a given though. Noone expects that is going to happen to them. Nobody is going to lean over the glass when your wife is looking at the case 10 feet away and ask the manager,"So, what happens when if she can't go through with this?" People just don't think that could happen to them. Maybe cubic zirconia is the answer...

If you know it's not going to work out it is better to break it off during the engagement than to wait til you're at the altar. How awkward would that be? "Do you take him to be your husband?" "Ummm....yeah.... about that. I don't think I can go through with this. Lunch was great though. Thanks for that."

I have been thinking a lot about stand-up comedy lately. There was a big thing down at BYU a couple weeks ago, my friend had actually tried out/attended open mic night, and I went to wiseguys comedy cafe last week for my buddies mormon bachelor party. I kind of want to give it a whirl. I thought I was funnier than half the guys from wiseguys. But I am also full of myself.

Guys and girls are not equal.

I was sitting around yesterday with my best friend Jake and he started doing this incredibly immature thing to his girlfriend, naturally I was a big supporter. He sealed his mouth around her nose and had her open her mouth. When he blew air up through her nose it would come out her mouth and make this really goofy sound. I was laughing uncontrollably. Not so much because of the goofy sound but because he was acting like he just discovered this little trick. In reality I remember him doing this to a girl in high school. Maybe two or three girls got to experience this lovely trick. I almost chimed in and said, "Hey Jake remember when you used to do that to Amanda?" But I thought that I might be crossing some sort of line. It's odd when a guy and girl start dating the guy has to pretend that this is his first relationship with a girl ever. He is forbidden to acknowledge that he has ever so much as spoken to another girl besides his mother. Even said guy's best friend is somehow forbidden to bring up the existence of previous women.

Changing Our Lives

It seems like we are constantly on the prowl for new ways to change our lives. Every day women are starting new diets, programs, and exercises that they are convinced will change their lives for the better. And we all know that these kinds of resolutions are about as good as saying that you are going to stop picking your nose. Besides New Years, the most common time you can find people trying to change their lives is church. Every week some kid at church prays and asks, “Please help us to learn something that we can apply and change our lives.” Come on, Really? This is dumb. Why would I need to change your life? I’m already at church dammit.

I mean, I could understand if you were plastered, sitting over the toilet in the back of Sammy’s Saloon and you started praying, “Oh, lord, please help me to change my life.” But if I am in church, why change?

Cows in Cambodia

The other day I went with a group of friends who had free tickets to go see the movie “Tooth Fairy”. It was one of those movies that you walk out of and you want to demand your money back plus time and a half. It was so terrible that I was embarrassed for everyone that was in any way involved with this movie, including other people in the theatre. I did, however, meet a friend of a friend, who changed my life by opening my mind to something about my country of Cambodia I had never consciously thought about. When people hear I went to Cambodia I get a lot of different reactions.

“How was it?”

“That’s crazy!”

“What was it like?”

“Now that’s in South America, right?”

But when CL was told that I had recently returned from the homeland of Angkor Watt, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, open sewers, and bamboo huts, he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Oh, I heard there is a shooting range there, where you can blow up a cow with a rocket launcher. Yeah, and I heard it’s only a couple hundred bucks.”

Now while serving in Cambodia I found a lot of problems and things that bugged me about the country. It was slowly dissolving as the land was taken by Vietnam and Thailand, the government is among the most corrupt in the world, the people are poor and stupid (this is not a mindless personal attack. This is true. During the war Pol Pot killed off anyone that knew how to read, the only survivors were as dumb as the people who funded the film “Tooth Fairy”). Cambodia is my country. It is my second home. I love the place and the people almost as much as I love a good booger joke, but at times it was hard to be patriotic about a country with so many flaws and no hope of progress.

Finally I had found something that I could brag about. I found something about Cambodia that made me want to stand tall and be a better human being. I discovered a set of values that has been lost to Americans, but still highly valued somewhere deep in Asia. “In my country of Cambodia, you can purchase and blow up a cow with a rocket launcher. Live long Cambodia!”

These guys are lame and missed the cow. But you can get the idea...