A New Look

Well, as I promised, I did work a little more on how everything looks and I made the banner look quite a bit better actually. I think I may work on more still, since it's not completely up to the standard I prefer.

I'll start with a few things from yesterday.
Church was wonderful again, I am very blessed to be in a fellowship like this, which is one reason why I don't spend my Sundays down at my parent's house, once you are eating meat it is hard to go back to milk.
There is a young lady who seemed to be very attached to me, she insisted on sitting next to me in church at even put her arm around mine. Now before you go jumping to conclusions let me tell you that she is about 5 years old. I'm uncertain as to why she chose me as her special buddy for the day, I have a hunch it was my new Brut aftershave that did it.
The Bible study in the evening was a very nice time as well. I have been reading A.W. Pink's exposition of Hebrews (I have enjoyed his writings very much) and he made a few good points as to the authorship of the book, which he strongly believes was the Apostle Paul. Ultimately the Holy Spirit wrote the book so it's probably no the most important part. We went through chapter 6 verses 7-12 I believe, about the cultivated ground bearing both good and bad fruit and that which bears bad fruit (i.e. Thorns and Thistles) is to be gathered up and burned.
I enjoy the discussion afterwards at these Bible studies. At the FBChurch where my parents are (there isn't much else around), we had gotten together with some of the families but everything was so shallow and if I didn't know they were from the church, I don't think I would have known that it was a "Christian" gathering. I reflected on that many months ago when this occurred, long before I'd ever heard of the church I am currently attending. It disappointed me though, because none of the talk was about the Bible, or Christianity, it was just jokes and "having a good time." Well what could possibly be better than having a time of fellowship and also growing in the Lord? That is why I love these Bible studies so much, there is much chit-chat about what is going on with school and families etc. but the men especially focus on discussing biblical issues, some different views, what's coming up etc. But almost all focused upon the Bible and Christ and the Christian. I absolutely love it. I go around, like a hummingbird, flitting from flower to flower, trying to drink in as much as possible from the little conversations scattered. I'm more of an observer, I like to sit back and just listen and trying only to speak when I have something extremely important to say and am sure of what I am going to say.

I was also talking with Mr. Van (the head of the family I caught a ride with to the Bible Study last evening) and we discussed a little bit about different views of the Second Coming and what Revelation refers to. He believes that the post-millennial view has some solid aspects to it, but he can also see something of why a pre-millennialist would believe they way they do. Then apparently there are two different Pre-millennialist views, both of which I was aware of but didn't know the terms for. There is the dispensational pre-millennialist who believes in the Rapture before the tribulation etc. (such as Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins have written about in the Left Behind series) and then there is the historical pre-millennialist, which I have actually very strongly been considering, since with the Rapture when Jesus is supposed to be coming down to meet His people in the air, then leave for seven years, then come back just seems a little odd to me. Is it the third coming then? Or the 5/2 coming or what? So that is an area that I should study perhaps. Mrs. Van said she's a pan-millennialist. She just feels it will all pan out in the end, she's not worried. And frankly neither am I! Which is one reason why I haven't studied the issue in extreme depth.

Well, that was yesterday.

Today was pretty typical in most aspect but there were still a few highlights.
On the way to class I just felt so energetic (it's 7:00 AM on a beautiful morning, who wouldn't be ready to burst with excess energy?) that I ran halfway to class on campus. It's fun to do that when the sidewalks aren't crowded (there was no one else) and to just let loose and tear down the street.
In Calculus I felt like the star student because no one else was answering the teacher's "get-the-students-involved" questions except for me it seemed, and everything was falling into perfect alignment in my own understanding, which was nice. We are just going over the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, and that the Integral from a to b of f(x) is equal to F(b)-F(a), essentially the differences of the anti-derivatives, it's really exciting stuff let me tell you!

In Chemistry I got back the results from the assignment we did last week. The TA who grades my assignments must either not like me, or it's just a coincidence but BOTH last assignment and this one we just did, she scored me quite a bit lower than what my actual grade was. I think it's because she grades each problem and gives a score to each, then adds them up at the end instead of subtracting the points you missed from the total. Anyway, so I took it up to the professor (the class hadn't started yet) and he took a glance at it and said he'd fix it. So that means I have a 37/40, which isn't extremely bad, though I had hoped to get 40/40 of course. I missed one small problem worth two points and had incorrect units on another. I am most humiliated.

Then in Economics the professor, before class started, asked me if I would be willing to kind of oversee the Professor Evaluation that she was going to hand out and then take them to the Business Building and turn them in. She isn't supposed to be there when this is going on so I was kind of in charge for a very short period of time. I am uncertain as to why she chose me but in a way I felt rather honoured! In another way, I had to walk across to the other side of the campus to turn the evaluations in, but I'm a fast walker. I didn't mind.
On the evaluation sheet they have a few bubbles that you are supposed to fill in regarding different aspects of the class such as :
"Was the teacher prepared?"
A. Very yes
B. Mostly yes
C. Refuse to specify on the grounds that you can't make a decision
D. Pretty much kinda no
E. Unequivocally and irrevocably no

Well, they weren't EXACTLY like that, but something to that extent. To continue (if I have some sort of an audience left), I spent my time filling out the bubbles on front, then went to the back where there was a few section where you could write out comments, which I proceeded to do. By that time though (just enough time to finish with the bubble part on front) everyone was crowding to the head of the classroom to dump their papers on the desk and leave. I was rather disappointed, I mean, here you have a chance to voice your opinion and either keep a good teacher (and I would call this teacher unparalled to anything I've seen in Economics before, she is excellent) or if you think it's a bad teacher, you have the opportunity to say so, or offer some constructive criticism. Besides that, we have about a half hour left of the class period, but most would rather leave early, forget the evaluation and fritter away their time.

Needless to say, I was the last one in the classroom, still working on my evaluation paper for a bit after every one else had left. I really appreciated this teacher's explaining of the subject, the only other experience I'd had with Economics was basically a teacher that used the class period for political statements that were forcibly pressed upon student ears. Today for instance she was talking about monopolies and while many times a monopolist will use their market power to produce less and thereby drive up the price, not all monopolies are bad, because when they are large, they can produce more at a cheaper, per-unit cost. My other economics teacher would have ranted for the entire hour on how every monopoly was horrible and we should outlaw these large companies and Wal-mart is a crook and it's destroying America. Well, maybe it's not in the best interest of some, but I think it is in the best interest of the vast majority of the population and I wouldn't call them a monopoly anyway. Besides that, no monopoly lasts forever, eventually they crumble, in the long run.

Let's try to pick up this train of thought from the last place it derailed itself...... Ah yes! So I gathered up the evaluations and placed them in the envelope and struck out for the Business Office, desposited my precious load faithfully upon the desk inside on the 3rd floor and my duty fulfilled, left the premises to return at an undisclosed future time. Translation: I went back at 1:00 that afternoon.

In the engineering class we did some critical thinking problems and then discussion of our new project. Our task is to create a projectile that he will launch from his "cannon" that he has made, and get it to stay in the air as long as possible. Now this means both figuring out how to decrease resistance so it will be launched as high as possible before beginning it's downward journey, but also trying to come up with something that will deploy at the projectile's peak, floating gracefully down. And the whole thing has to weigh less than 3 ounces. Sturdy, light, sleek, graceful. We'll see what happens. I don't have much of a workshop at the moment...... in fact I don't have any workshop at the moment but shall that stop an indomitable spirit? Never! Well, okay, I hope not.

Tonight at 1900 hours I plan on attending a help session for Chemistry, basically it's one last review before the test this Wednesday. And I've more practice problems I want to work on and some Calculus homework and such, so I shall have to bid adieu to my audience........... for the evening.

I would like to highly (very highly) recommend a program called "WordWeb" to everyone, it is available at
http://wordweb.info/
and while the pro version is $19, they have a very useful slimmed down version for free. It resides in your system tray and whenever you want to look up a word, just click it and it brings up the dialog box and you can search. If you want more definitions, it will look on the Internet for you.
Some nice features include crossword puzzle compilers and wildcard searches (if you type in "?a??g?roo" it would come up with "kangaroo" for example) which I'm sure is useful in many cases. It also shows you synomymns for that word. I wouldn't be without it and you shouldn't be either! If you prefer something like the Oxford English Dictionary (as I do) then you can install that on your own, it will read whatever 3rd party dictionaries you have installed.

And so ends one "little" installment in the life of The Shadow I apologize for the sore eyeballs of all who lasted to the very end.

Solus Ayedroppus

Edit: I should say that the above phrase is very definitely inspired by a man at the church, Mr. Y.