I LOVE Football season.  I have been looking forward to it for awhile now.  I created a page to start collecting things that get me excited about BYU football.  Check it out here:  http://www.brettpeterson.us/cougars/collection.php

Theres a lot of hype around BYU this year and everyone is making predictions about BCS, or failing, or whatever.  Coach Mendenhall says, "Its a perfect storm... for a letdown."  I have to agree, but there is no denying the excitement in the air!

Even little Olivia walks around and says "Cougars!" as she pumps her fists.  Its going to be a fun year!

I am having a great time at the company that I work for, checkMD.  I finally am doing the type of work I have always wanted to do: web and database programming.  At the end of my second day, when I completely lost track of time because I was enjoying myself, I thought to myself, "This is awesome."

CheckMD is a website that is going to change the way healthcare websites work.  It has more information on physicians and hospitals than other healthcare websites, and we are going to let the physicians themselves own a portion of the site to communicate with their patients.  Our goal is to promote good physicians and hospitals to eventually improve the quality of healthcare in this country. 

Check out the site at http://www.checkmd.com, recommend your physicians and hospitals, and help us get this going!

Coming home from work yesterday in rush hour traffic, cruising along at 70mph with cars all around me, I had a blowout!  This was no ordinary blowout though, and in fact I didn't know what it was at first.  There was a loud explosion sound followed by my car shaking violently.  My first thought was a tire blow out, but my car wasn't running anymore either!  Then I thought maybe my engine finally died, and there was smoke that I thought was coming from under the hood.  Anyways, I was lucky to be able to control the now-dead and shaking car enough to get off the freeway without accident.  Lucky for me, it was just a blowout, that happened on the tire right under the battery and I guess it must've just shocked the battery or cables to cause the car to die.  I got all my tires replaced (they were all in need of replacements, I have just been lazy lately) and learned my lesson about driving with tires that are balding. 

• In any blowout situation, it's most important to first remember the 2 things you should NOT do:
• Do not step on the brake. As instinctive as it may be, it's the worst mistake you can make in any tire blowout situation. Applying the brakes will cause an even greater imbalance on the vehicle's stability.
• Do not abruptly release your foot from the accelerator. This is the second worst mistake you can make. Rapidly releasing the accelerator causes the vehicle to transfer more of its weight from the rear tires to the front tires. With a flat tire, this can lead to loss of control of the vehicle.
• Instead, in any blowout situation, you should follow these 3 steps:
• Gradually release the accelerator .
• Correct the steering as necessary to stabilize your vehicle and regain control. Look where you want the vehicle to go and steer in that direction.
• Once your vehicle has stabilized, continue to slow down and pull off the road where and when you judge it\'s safe to do so.
• Remember, no matter which tire blows out -- front or back -- the do's and don'ts for safely maintaining control of your vehicle are exactly the same. The only difference between a front and rear tire blowout is that you will feel the force of a front blowout more in the vehicles steering, while you'll feel a rear blowout more in the seat or body of the vehicle.

So this morning I was doing some work and looked out the window and saw several cops blocking off our parking lot.  What is going on, I thought to myself!? Some co-workers and I went down and then knew something big was happening... there were about 30 police cars, a life flight helicopter landing and cops taping off a huge area.  As it turns out, the police captain pulled someone over just before 9 am (I had got to work about 15 minutes before that).  For some reason, she opens fire, hitting the police captain in the head.  Other officers who were just arriving on the scene engaged the woman in a firefight where she was fatally gunned down.  So when me and my co-workers go out to the gas station just north of our parking lot, theres a dead lady in the road and a cop being put into a life flight helicopter.  Whaaaaaaaat!?  I am seriously in dis-belief still.  What would possess this lady to shoot a cop for getting pulled over!?  There must be some more to this story, drugs, alchohol or something... I will be watching the news tonight for sure.   It was kind of surreal to have the police officers scouring our building looking for witnesses and looking for clues to where some of the rounds may have hit! 

Finally an end to the NBA-thesbian club.  (Hopefully.)   The league announced today that starting next season there will be fines and possible suspensions for flopping or over-reacting.  The NBA has had a problem for several years now where players try to sell the foul by jumping, falling, screaming, etc and it is really lame.

During the Spurs and Lakers game the other night, Brent Barry was obviously fouled by Derrick Fisher, and no foul was called.  Announcers and so-called-experts said he needed to sell the foul better.  That is ridiculous!  If its a foul, its a foul- and trying to sell a foul ruins the game.

I think this is good for the league, and can't wait to see who gets fined the most for flops!