A bit o' filler

I honestly don't have much to talk about, the last two days have been mainly comprised of work but here's a little bit:

The countertops came out rather nicely and the owners seemed pleased. That is always a good sign. There was another small fire today, started by a truck that had a blown out tire (I assume that the rim causes sparks on the road).

Last night some people from the local Sunday School class got together for a little "end of the year" party. There was lots of finger food such as chips, little hotdogs, some pizza etc. In other words, all great stuff to eat :) Afterwards the women gathered around and played "Cranium" while the men sat in another room playing "Chicken Foot," a variation of dominos. I mingled around and sat in the men's room most of the time, listening and reading from my book (commentary on Hebrews). It rather surprised me that only one person said "hi" to me, I half expected that the people in the Sunday School class my parents go to (and that I went to) would ask me how school went the last semester, they haven't seen me in over three months. But then again I don't feel like I know them very well so perhaps they hadn't noticed I was gone :)

I was thinking about prayer yesterday and remembering my father reading Foxe's book of Martyrs to us children many years ago and the story of James I believe it was, and how his knees were like camel's knees because he knelt in prayer so often (he knelt in prayer immediately before they threw him from the temple if memory serves me correctly). Of course that is just tradition, it may or may not have happened but as I was just thinking about it, the thought crossed my mind, or a question really, why did James pray so much? Why did he have that desire? And I realized that a great part of it would be that he missed Jesus, after being with Him through so much and coming to adore Him, and then being absent from His bodily presence for a time, I can imagine the lonliness there. It was this that made me realize that I have come to miss Jesus too, I do wish to meet Him face to face, to behold His glory and truly worship and love Him. Right now (as I have said before) I feel as though I have a heart of stone, insensitive and hard toward what my Lord did for me, I greatly desire a soft heart, a heart of flesh that I might love Him more, with all of my being! Too often I read the Bible simply for knowledge, that I might impress someone else or not appear ignorant to some others, such pride stifles me, if I am not reading the Bible to learn more of Jesus and try to imitate Him in love, in actions, in humbleness, then I am not profiting from the Scriptures very much. When I pray is it with the realization that I am speaking to Him? Is it that "real" to me? Do I pray because I do want to talk to Him, more and more? Do I miss Him?

The old King mused upon his life,
His rule upon the throne,
He sadly remembered all the strife,
The sins that he had done.

The many houses that he'd burned,
The leader whose death arranged,
The many pleadings that he'd spurned,
The men whose lives estranged.

He sadly shook his old grey head
At pains caused o'er the years.
The cries still heard within his head,
The eyes that brimmed with tears.

A sob burst forth and wracked his frame
Withered by his age,
The bed began to squeak his name
As in accusing rage.

Then in the window slipped a man,
Clothed in naught but rags,
He partly stumbled and partly ran
Amidst great wealth in bags.

"Oh King!" He stammered, and fell to the floor
"I was so afraid to come!
I could not stay me any more,
Or remain asleep at home.

"My Saviour has commanded to:
'Go and preach my name.'
This always will I strive to do
Lest I should bring Him shame.

"My family was roughly torn from me
And I put in a cell,
My wife died in my arms yet she
Still then! Did wish you well.

Oh king, you've done no little thing,
Your heart, no man can heal.
I cannot, myself, forgiveness bring,
Only show you One who will."

Then unto him he folded out
The story of his Lord,
His life and how He went about
As written in His word.

The One, whom though He had no sin,
Died as though He had,
That those who should believe in Him
In eternal life are clad.

Yet in the grave He did not remain,
Kept silent by nails and cord,
For three days after He'd been slain,
He was the risen Lord!

He taught His followers many things
Before He had to leave,
Then left, to prepare, where saints will sing,
A home for they who believe.

The old king's eyes began to brim
But now t'was tears of joy!
The hope of a new chance for him,
Oh dared his soul employ?

"Indeed you may, repent! Believe!
Accept as Lord and Saviour
Him whose life will yours conceive,
In Christ, the great Redeemer."

The king soon died, his lips yet smiling
For he, this Bible-hater,
Had bowed his head to his new King,
A king, whose power was greater.

Et Two?

I'm kind of sorry for not posting yesterday but I didn't feel like I had enough material, of course I could have done the usual and just made up some stuff as I went along (one of those "that reminds me...." type of posts) but I'd rather not bore. I spent last evening reading Pink's commentary on Hebrews and listening to a tape by R.C. Sproul.

My father has been cooking breakfasts so that has been very nice. I usually will eat a piece of toast or a bowl of cold cereal so it's been a treat to have sausage and eggs instead. The day was spent doing some Corian countertops for a couple that my dad is finishing their house for, so I was down in the shop until after lunch and we had set some stuff up for the glue to dry, then my dad got a "buzz" on his pager: there was a fire (we could see the smoke on the horizon) that the local fire department had been called out to go to. It was in another county but apparently it was a pretty big one so they were calling in the firefighters from all around. My father volunteered at the local fire department so he went out. That was what gave me time to read the commentary (I'm trying to catch up to the Sunday night study in Hebrews) and to listen to the tape.

The commentary is pretty good, it is very thorough and has many quotes from other commentators, which I enjoy reading. There have been a few things that I would disagree with but nothing major and it's been very rewarding. When A.W. Pink (the author) was going through chapter 8 and speaking of Jesus being a high priest and then though He died, His priesthood continued for it was only His body that had died, (a continual priesthood) etc. well, anyway, it's a bit drawn out, but the imagery made me think of the new body promised to believers, and how it will be so much better than what we have now. Not only will it be incorruptible, but a greater capacity to love, a greater capacity to know our Saviour, it's just unfathomable to me.

So I've been enjoying that, the tape that I listened to was R.C. Sproul on the subject of paedobaptism. He and John MacArthur had a debate where both side presented their case and then there was a question and answer session afterwards. Apparently MacArthur and Sproul are good friends so it wasn't exactly heated. I've heard MacArthur's side (against paedobaptism) and then Sproul's side last night. It was well done I thought and he did it very clearly I thought. It is exactly what I have been trying to explain to others, though I have such a hard time putting it all into words, there is really a lot behind it. I have yet to listen to the question and answer time though.

The fire was apparently put out as well, my father returned home later that evening after having saved a couple of houses (hurrah!). The Red Cross had shown up and given the fire fighters hamburgers, sodas, and pizza, that was pretty nice of them.

Then my brother and I watched "Superman: The Movie" just before bed. I used to love that when I was younger (and I still love Superman). There were a lot of shots that I saw this time though that I laughed at because they looked just a tad fake. It's been so long since I last saw it. Superman is a great hero.

Then today we did more Corian, glued up some more pieces and sanded and um.... that kind of thing. Honestly, there isn't really a whole lot to say, at least not anything that would be interesting to read, i.e. "we applied the denatured alcohol in order to remove the dust and oils left by our hands before putting the pieces together. This allows for a stronger bond and should be done carefully to avoid getting MORE oils on the piece to be applied to the countertop." etc.

Dear Shadow:
Have you ever made something, out of something?
Bye, Dan from FL.

Well Jerome, one time when I was about seven years old, two friends of mine and myself got together and were playing around. We decided that we would be inventors (or chemists, take your pick) and make an incredible glue that would be stronger than any other (we probably needed some for the tree fort). We went to the tool shed and hunted around for all kinds of good chemicals and such. I can still remember my meticulous and precise list of ingredients:
"little bit of tite-bond wood glue
little bit of blue spray paint
little bit of super deck stain
little bit of tacky glue"

It turned out as a watery grey paste that I applied with an old paintbrush. Amazingly, it held things together. REALLY well! I repaired a couple of toy guns I had and used it for a couple of other things. I guarded my secret carefully. I am sure in retrospect though that it was the wood glue that did the most good, the other stuff was probably there as something to make it harder to duplicate (sort of like Colonel Sanders' 11 secret herbs and spices, most of which don't do anything). My other friend's glue didn't turn out, it apparently wouldn't hold anything. His younger brother though, made a glue that worked pretty good, he buried it in a plastic container (along with the "recipe") to keep other people from stealing his idea. He forgot where he buried it though.

Shadow

It's Monday

It does feel rather nice to be caught up, my habit of trying to write something about every day is perhaps a bit too much to chew sometimes, especially (as my brother would say) if I spend fifteen paragraphs saying what any sane person would do in two.

Right now everybody except my brother and I are watching season four of MacGyver (which the family got for Christmas). It's my opinion that my siblings like to watch too many all at one time where I like to drag it out, even one a night seems extravagant at times. I honestly don't watch many movies, I'm not sure what I do normally actually, read or something I suppose. Lately I've been taking a track or two at a time in Mario Kart and trying to get a good time, once I'm back in Stillwater I'll submit them all online and see where I place in the overall rankings. I just don't spend enough time to really be what most would call an "expert." The people I refer to as experts are also those who spend way too much time playing games, such as a person I knew a while back who took a year off from school so he could play this one game for fast times. It's not like it will benefit him any in the long run, he just wanted to do it. On the other hand, I don't like to play at all unless I have the time to spare and even lately I've been feeling more like reading one of my theological books or doing something that will have more of a lasting value. I wasn't always that way though, I never thought I'd be interested in reading anything besides fiction.

It's kind of interesting that I met Jim (my Reformed friend) through competiing on a racing game (and he was much better than I) and at the time he was studying at Reformed Theological Seminary in NC and introduced me to at least the name "Reformed Faith," I was definitely familiar with the concept! If I hadn't been playing that game (in my spare time in the evenings) and gotten involved due to the recommendation from my friend in California, I would never have met him and probably never gone to the church in Stillwater. Kind of interesting how little things lead to others.

Speaking of which, Jim has apparently been accepted to pastor a church so he is very excited about that and I am too. I've never met him or seen even a picture of him, but I do feel a great interest in what happens to him and his family (wife and daughter) because he is a brother to me, I've been able to ask questions of him a few times and he's been very helpful.

Today we took down Christmas decorations and the tree (my mom isn't one of those who leaves the tree up until February) and looked at money and accounts for the coming semester. It seems like I'm in fairly good shape, I did spend more than I planned to this semester on various things like a printer etc. but overall it went really well and I spent much less than I had allotted to my budget. I think next semester should be even better. I'll just go without any heat or food for a couple of weeks to help keep down the cost. I'm joking, but really this next semester I think my extra expenses should be pretty reasonable.

In the afternoon I worked with my father in the shop for a little while, making some sills for the windows in the house he is working on. I think they will look very nice once installed. So that's about it for today, not extremely interesting.

I should say that Charlie Horse is doing fine, but I have found that leaving him alone all day might not be the best thing, when he has too much time on his uh.... hooves, he makes some REALLY bad jokes up, I mean, some real groaners. Perhaps next time I should leave book with him or something like that. I just hope he isn't too active tonight when we go to bed. Have you ever had a horse whispering in your ear all night, one who just will NOT go to sleep? I'm sure it would get rather annoying after a while so I'm trying not to let Charlie start that habit. I told him "hi" for you D.W. and he wanted to know who you were so I explained and he said to tell you "hi" as well.

Goodnight to all!

Another looooong post

I think I left off on Wednesday, the next couple of days after that are pretty "short" and then leave off with today: Sunday.

In the morning we woke up pretty early, the people we were staying with were very busy with work, they have a shop on their property that they work out of and Mr. HR had to get up and work early and Mrs. HR gets up with him. I'm a pretty light sleeper so as soon as there was any kind of bustle I was awake (before they came down into the room) but I stayed in bed for a bit so I could get some more rest, knowing I would have to drive about four and a half hours back home later that day. We played a few games and I showed her my magazines that Mr. Y had given me. It's nice to be able to share them with someone else who appreciates them as much as I do! She oo-ed and ah-ed over them and had me take a couple of pictures of them for her, which I'll send to her as soon as I'm back to my regular high speed Internet.

We played Mario Kart together (with our wireless systems) and had a lot of fun. She thinks that we are very good racers but I have to say that she DID beat my youngest brother FAIR AND SQUARE on Mario Kart: Double Dash. We all wrote an e-mail to a friend who was in California, letting her know that we had seen the movie, some basic impressions and just generally "hello." The time went all too quickly, she fed us very well and after lunch we really had to get going. I didn't want to get home too late, so we said our good-byes and headed on out. It was a most enjoyable time and I was very thankful that we were able to get the chance to visit.

On the drive home we sang a couple of songs and then my brother lamented the fact that he didn't have a voice of his own, whenever he sings he always is mimicking the voice of whoever the person was who sang that song, and I had to agree because I feel much the same way! When I sing "Chivalrous Shark" it's in a Michael Strange voice, when I sing "King of the Road" it's more in a hobo sounding voice, when "Puff the Magic Dragon" it's in a voice like Peter or Paul, and when singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" it's in a high-pitched falsetto..... but I guess that's understandable. The song would NOT be the same without that. But I guess after doing voices for a long time and trying to mimic other people, it's hard to have a voice that is one's own. I mean, I can deepen and make it sound more operatic, or go flatter, softer, etc. all fairly easily. Perhaps they all don't sound fantastic, but it's hard to say that I have one voice that is my own, even the voice that I have when speaking to others doesn't sound (to me) like a normal one, it seems more "whispery" or something. I guess it's all fine but just an interesting subject to speak about.

On the drive home (which is pretty long and non-interesting for the most part) there was a car that I was coming up on. I could see a girl driving and another girl in the passenger seat so I leaned back and said "watch out for this car boys, whenever you see two girls in a car you have to be extra careful." She was of course spending most of the time looking over and chatting away happily with her passenger and going slower than the speed limit so I passed her and pulled over to the right lane after getting a short distance ahead.

About a few minutes later, she comes zooming past me and then goes into the right lane where after a few minutes, her speed once again starts dropping. I glance down at my speedometer, I'm going right at 70mph and I've had the cruise control on the entire time so I know it isn't ME that is fluctuating here. I had no alternative but to go into the left lane again. Apparently the girl noticed me this time because she glanced over (or so I was told, I was staring straight ahead, I didn't want to be nosy or anything) and then, before I went back to the right lane, she zoomed ahead of us and blew a kiss in our direction (the passenger side).

My brother sat there in shock, mumbling "she blew us a kiss" in a stunned voice every few minutes for the next half hour, I muttered something about crazy girls and just kept driving. It was kind of funny I suppose but I was NOT going to play at their game, whatever it was. It just seemed weird for a carload of girls (it turned out there was four in there, goodness gracious) to be doing something like that but then again..... it WAS a carload of girls and you should always be be careful about those!

After a bit we arrived back home, there really wasn't a whole lot else that happened on the trip. Oh, aside from stopping at a Walmart to pick up a couple of games for the boys. There was only two copies and I really wanted the game to (to play over the break) and actually got it for myself but in the car, well, I was driving and my younger brother just sitting in the back and I knew that I would want to play it in the car if I had it so I let him take that copy. I'm just letting you know LES that I actually did have a copy for a very short time but I never opened it, I still don't have one yet. LES has been wanting me to get the game so we can play online and visit eachother's towns when I get back to school. Sometime soon I hope.



Thursday and Friday

I'm just going to lump these two days together because they are essentially the same, I did pretty much the same thing both days, and that is that I cleaned up things that were in the camper and things I'd brought in and tried to prepare things for next semester. Being home again is a bit odd because I'm not sure where to put a lot of stuff, generally it gets stacked up on top of my dresser. In BIG piles. I still haven't gotten used to where everything is in this house, I find myself looking around for washcloths or the hotpads, and wondering where I should put such and such in my room. I've still got so many books in boxes but most of my favourite ones are out, my boys' series that I've been gathering for years. Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, etc. Lots of good boys books that I rarely look at any more but have read to my siblings. I think I'll hang onto them for a while, I may want them in the future.

So that was pretty much it for those two days, just eat, sleep, read a little (very little) and clean up and organize. Not very interesting stuff so I'll bore you with them no further.


Saturday

Now this was an interesting day, I was in my parent's office on the comptuer when a package arrived for me. I was surprised because I didn't remember what it was, I'll often do that, order something and then forget about it until it arrives, I guess I'm not the impatient type...
Actually there were two packages, one of them was another of my textbooks for the coming semester, the other package was.... Charlie Horse! I'd been thinking about getting my own puppet for a long time since I've dabbled in ventriloquism and really just enjoyed puppets for as long as I can remember, yet I've never had one. So I looked around on Ebay and found one that I liked, he was cheap (about $5 including shipping and handling) and so I bought him. We've been getting to know eachother for the past couple of days, he has barely left my side!

Actually it is rather nice to have an actual character now to take on the personalities that I'm making all the time. Charlie is actually rather expressive and very cute. He's also more clever than he looks, and he looks adorable in my opinion.

It's amazing how he really started developing his own personality though, I'll be sitting reading a book and he'll be glancing around, periodically (with a bored look) check out what I'm reading. I don't pay him any attention though, just keep on reading. Then he glances backward to see what everyone is doing in the kitchen and give a big yawn and ask if he can go elswhere and play. It's almost as though my hand isn't moving though, he'll just do things on his own and it's really quite interesting! Oh! He's been showing me his "Aslan" imitation (from the old movies) and I think it's quite good, he's not very good at imitating voices of course, but he mimics the mouth movements beautifully!

My father thinks it hilarious to see a 20-year old playing with a puppet (and loving it). Well I like Charlie a lot and he's just what I need to keep me company in my camper while I'm away at school. He's already learning about a lot of new stuff, such as Linux and other computer things. He led a sheltered life before he came to live with me I think ;)

His favourite movies are westerns because they have lots of horses in them! He had a shocking habit though when he first arrived. He began dancing to the country music that was playing! I had to explain to him that country music was NOT good music and he really should refine his tastes more. I don't blame him though, he doesn't know any better.

That evening we sang a few Christmas songs and then read Luke chapter 1 and played Scattergories. I did terrible on round 2 and 3. I just couldn't think of anything for some reason until after the buzzer had gone off. Perhaps that's my problem, being used to quiet while I think and study and then to play games where I'm trying to concentrate and the buzzer is grinding away etc. I don't know, but I should have done better :)


SUNDAY

And that brings me to today and then I'm all caught up! Hurrah! Mom didn't know that Charlie was coming to stay with us so she get a stocking for him, but he didn't mind too much, I won't let him eat any candy because I've heard it might be bad for horses. He did gnaw on a piece of grass yesterday but didn't care for it too much. We all opened our stockings and then went to church. The service was said to be a "multi-sensory, multimedia experience" and some points were good but for the most part I was disappointed and missing my second family back up in Stillwater and wishing I could be in church that Sunday. It lasted for an hour, three people said "hi" to me and then we left. I didn't see many people I knew though and the place was packed and they had a second service coming up right afterwards.

We picked up my grandma from the care center she is living at. It's actually an assisted living facility, she has alzheimers and isn't doing to well sometimes. She has never wanted to be out here and keeps insisting we take her back (she can get onery). It's really sad to see her like that at times, we were never very close to her but still, she is my grandma. As she was leaving my mom told her "Merry Christmas" and she said "Oh yes, my goodness, it will be upon us quick, only a few days won't it?" Her memory has failed very quickly it seems.

I believe that if one keeps active in their later years by learning new things, or continuing to exercise their mind, that they will have a much less chance of developing alzheimers or dementia and will be able to survive much better. I hope I never go through it but then again, I love learning and am constantly trying new things out (I hope I do that all my life) whereas my grandma would just watch TV all day, every day and not do anything else. She was set in her ways and didn't want any new-fangled stuff to mess up her life. She wouldn't read or play games or go to the social club etc. so in a way I feel like she has brought it upon herself and yet I of course still feel sad for her. I am almost certain she is not a believer as well, there has been no fruits in her life ever.

We opened presents and had a nice lunch (with sweet potatoes and scalloped potatoes!) and we also watched a movie I had bought recently, quite a famous movie too! It's called Casablanca and my brother and I watched it a few nights ago and really liked it, so I watched it again with the family. During the movie I was worried that the situation would get icky but it turned out very well and I think it's one of my favourite movies I've seen. Lots of little subtle things to watch out for and quite humourous at times as well. I wish they made movies like that still, that were essentially clean and were clever and funny at times without being stupid like the new Steve Martin movies, I don't even want to hear about them.

By the way, while I am on the subject of movies, I'm sure everyone checks out movies before they think of going to them, but I've heard (from LES) about a movie I believe is called "Broke Back Ridge" that is supposed to be coming out in theatres. DO NOT SEE IT. It is disgusting, promoting a way of life that is sinful. And hollywood says this is one of the best things ever and it's about time something like this came out and it's supposed to win academy awards etc. I can hardly believe it's come to this, it makes me really appreciate the old days and how it was good, and clean. The cowboys I remember are Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger, and Hopalong Cassidy, not these horrid cowboys they are making in this new movie. I can't even speak about them further.

Charlie Horse would like to say goodnight:

gudnite evreebudie!

We may need to work on his spelling but I think he's doing quite well considering he's only been with me a day. At least he doesn't say things like "u rock" and such ;) I jest!

Inside Information

I have to warn you that I did three posts (well, four including this one) all at once, so if you're remotely interested, I'd recommend going to the bottom most one and working your way back up to the top post.

And still more!

TUESDAY

Error Correction: Before beginning I should say I was mistaken about having Sweet Potatoes at Thanksgiving, apparently we did have them and my memory is simply so fogged (after all, it WAS before finals) from it being so long ago that I had not remembered. I was reminded of that by my mother, who is also making BOTH sweet potatoes and scalloped potatoes for Christmas!

Tuesday was really quite a special day and I don't want to skim over too much of it. After a breakfast of Garlic Freedom Toast (not French Toast) we cleaned up and got ready to pull out. The boys were going to travel down to eastern Oklahoma to visit some friends: the "mature" gamer lady I keep mentioning, and her husband. So after saying our good-byes to our grandparents, my parents drove the camper away toward Springfield, MO while I took the southern route toward Ft. Smith. We made excellent time in spite of being stuck behind a few cars that apparently had never been on any mountain roads. I don't drive extremely fast but I know how to handle a car and narrow roads don't bother me. Some people get nervous if they don't have a huge shoulder on either side. The bad thing though, is these people never seem to be considerate enough to pull to the side for a minute even though there may be six cars stacked up behind them. It was about a five and half hour drive altogether so we were a bit tired by the end of it.

You know, I always seem to talk to myself in the car and I wondered if anybody else would think of me as being crazy if they were to see me. My brothers didn't mention anything but when I'm thinking to myself I'll often just burst out with some random thought that came to my head. For example, after a few minutes of silence I'll just suddenly say "Probably Sushi" without even realizing that I said it out loud at first. I do multitask better than most guys but I admit that girls are better at it, I tend to focus on one thing at a time and I enjoy doing that! I like to focus on my driving but when I have passengers then I want to make sure they aren't bored (or freaked out with my random comments to myself) so I talk and perhaps don't pay as much attention to the road. Though I have to insert here that a girl driving in a car with another girl (or worse, more than one other girl) is one of the most scary things to see on the road. More on that later, in Wednesday's description.

My brother and I sang songs to ourselves while my youngest brother in the back played a racing game and soon became a bit carsick. Trying to drive in a game while being driven on a windy road probably isn't the best combination ;) Again, it's amazing to me to see how fast some people drive, I always try to keep under the speed limit or at the most, right at the limit, not use that as a recommended speed and then go 10 mph faster than that.

We arrived at our destination at 1530 and stiffly clambered out of my low car. LES (or AL as I call her) came out to greet us, we passed around hugs and then went inside. She is quite the conversationalist and we talked for about forty-five minutes and then headed out to go see "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." I had purposely been waiting to see it with her. We had discussed seeing it when I was out of school, I had made these plans oh, probably at least 4 months ago. So that is why, Boromir, I couldn't go out and see it the previous week. She definitely had remembered but wasn't going to press it with me (i.e. pull the "But you promised" card) but I had been really looking forward to it. Apparently on a message board (on my brother's website) I had mentioned something about "As we learned in Narnia." And she remembers those words even though I do not. It prompted her to check into the books (which she had never heard of) and then ask about them. My friend in California and I really encouraged her to get them and read them. She ended up ordering them and giving them to her husband as his birthday present, and he still hasn't read them but she did.

When reading through the first book (we both recommended that she read "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" first) she was kind of doubting, knowing it was for a third grade level reader and when Aslan was killed she was very, very upset and didn't want to finish it. She did though and started to realize what it was all about. I wasn't telling her much because I prefer to let people discover things for themselves and I do NOT give things away. After reading through some more of the books and especially Voyage of the Dawn Treader (she fell in love with Reepicheep and cried when he left) she really began to see the books as more than books. That's how I feel about them, they aren't simply words to me, or not just for literary critics, there is so much more behind them! There was a guy in my chemistry lab that I saw who was reading one of the Chronicles of Narnia, and he seemed to approach them just like Harry Potter or something. I asked if he liked it and he said "it's below my reading level." First of all, I should HOPE he's above a third-grade reading level, but second, he's missing the point of the books, the beauty is lost on him. It's not just a fantasy, it's oh so much more! I can't describe how much they do mean to me.

Then when she got to The Last Battle, and the dogs fighting with the humans to the last (she loves dogs and has many at her house, all "freebies" that were dropped off) and then to see Reepicheep again, she wouldn't trade the books for anything now. The last time I read through The Last Battle I was quite moved too.

Anyway, all of this to say that we were both really looking forward to seeing the movie together and then discussing it afterward. Her husband paid for both the tickets and then wouldn't let me pay for the pizza we picked up afterward, they were very generous toward us and I really appreciated them. She baked a pie JUST because I had said I liked pie and believe me, it was the best apple pie I'd ever eaten, it just melted in my mouth! For my brother she made a chocolate cake that was very moist and delicious. Daisy, if you ever read this far, you've never had chocolate cake like this before, it was SO delicious. I don't care for chocolate cake ordinarily (too dry) but this was good, good, good!

So anyway, the movie. We didn't arrive very early but were able to get seats easily enough. I sat next to AL on one side on purpose so we two (my other brother had already seen it) could be surprised together. They had a lot of previews beforehand, none of which were worth mentioning except perhaps Cars. I'm dubious though, as I usually am about new movies. I felt the same about The Incredibles but I absolutely loved that movie so this could be good too!

During the opening scene I instantly recognized the Nazi's cross on the planes and I wondered if many others did. I think it should be recognizable but it's surprising to me how much history many kids don't know these days. Such as December 7th, a lot don't know about it and it's rather sad to realize it.

Once the movie had started, all of my former fears and critiques (from the trailer) melted away and I was engrossed in the movie. Some of the lines were perhaps a bit too familiar from the trailers but wow, the whole movie itself was very moving. I didn't really care for the in-fighting between Susan and Peter (she seemed to side with Edmund on a few occasions) and it seemed odd that the beavers were still at their house when the wolves attacked (and wow, they sure made a huge tunnel exiting, considering their size).

Mr. Tumnus was very good, perhaps a bit too tall still but very personable. I liked him a lot. The snow falling, everything seemed so rich. The Turkish Delights looked absolutely delicious. I did think that when they ran away from what they thought was the White Witch and hid in that hole, that it would have been extremely easy to track them, being as it wasn't snowing at all but was actually quite sunny. You know, the book itself isn't extremely long but it is packed with detail and much of it they captured in the movie very well. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The central part though, where Aslan, with a very great sadness that you could almost feel, went up to the Stone Table. He let himself be tossed down, taunted, tied up tightly, dragged up the stones quite roughly, and then killed by the White Witch. At any moment he could have easily broken his bonds and torn them all to shreds yet he stayed there. It reminded me very, very much (as it should have) of my Lord and how He could have come off the cross, He had legions of angels who would have come to His aid, it wasn't the nails that held Him to the cross, it was His love for His people, for sinners such as me. It really brought that home, it's about as close as I've come to crying on any movie even though I knew exactly what was to happen. My eyes watered up. I wish they had spent a bit more time on the "resurrection" scene and let the girls get further away and then come running back (because since they were right there, how would they think that the baddies had come back to do worse things to him?) but wow, seeing Aslan pictured in the frame of the stone pillars with the light behind him. His roar was really good too. Too much of the movie was computerized in my opinion but overall it was really, really good and I'd definitely want to see it again sometime.

Narnia does mean a lot to me. I remember being devastated when younger and reading The Last Battle and finding out that Narnia was gone, but it wasn't the "true" Narnia as I later realized. The books seem to mean much more to me as I grow older, one would think it would be the other way around but it's not.

We discussed the movie quite a bit after getting back to our friend's house. We all agreed that they got the key points in the movie and did them very well. I still like the old White Witch better though, this new one just seemed a bit strange for some reason. I liked the Centaur (I can't remember his name right now) and Mr. Tumnus was very good, but I actually like the professor a lot too, as I said before, perhaps his hair stuck out a little TOO much, but he did a pretty good job overall I thought.

One thing that was interesting, was how they portrayed Susan as already being more of the "grown-up" one, Lucy commented on her getting boring etc. and at first I didn't care for that but I have to wonder if they did that so they could set it up for Susan's ultimate turning away from Narnia at the end. I do hope they make the rest of the series, I want to see The Magician's Nephew, and Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Last Battle (though no movie could do the ending justice) and A Horse and his Boy. I really like that last book for some reason, perhaps it appeals to the boy in me.

Gus, if you're reading this, it's no longer a bedtime story for you, it's got to be an "early morning" story by now ;) I've still got to write about Wednesday a little and then the next couple of days could probably be lumped together fairly easily.

And More

MONDAY

Hopefully this should be shorter than the last post. It's just that I have so much to say about so many things that I don't wish to forget and I'm trying not to take any shortcuts. I can just hear my brother saying "take the shortcuts! Take the shortcuts!" He's offered to make me an "Indenta' Killa" for my blog and limit my posts to three paragraphs. But we all know what would happen then.... my posts would become one huge paragraph and that would be worse than it is now. Of course everyone can just skip it, read the last paragraph and comment on that and I probably would never know the difference so it's up to the reader ;)

Grandpa William loves to see us boys eat, for breakfast we just had cereal but he wanted to take us out to a buffet called "Ryan's" for lunch. I was pretty hungry by the time we got there and ready to "feed my mouth" as my friend in California said. He is always so mild and then one day he sat down at the table (he was visiting) and abruptly demanded "FEED MY MOUTH!" It was so unlike him we all had to laugh, and it's been something of a standing joke especially between my brother and I. He was just playing around of course but it honestly caught me off guard! Oh and what a lunch we had! Fried chicken, sweet potatoes, spaghetti with delicious meatballs that nearly melted in your mouth, fried Okra, which I actually do like quite a bit. My great-grandparents used to eat it, being from Texas and Missouri respectively though I'd never really tasted it until coming to Oklahoma, where apparently it is almost a staple in many people's diets. I had three platefuls but didn't eat to the point where I felt I would be uncomfortable, I'm not THAT much of a glutton, only a little glutton I suppose ;)

It was very good and my parents say I have lost weight at school so I need to put some back on over the holiday break. I don't know if I have lost any weight or not, but I suppose it's better than what I usually hear about people going to a University for the first time, and that is that they put on about 15 pounds the first semester! Partially that is due to worry I think? I guess that wouldn't pose a problem for me because I rarely worry about anything and then it's only for a few minutes at the most, save a few times in my life where I have felt actually distressed. Mostly I feel that tomorrow will bring what it will and I can't really do a whole lot about it. I know a lot of people worry about grades after they finish a final exam and while I admit to curiousity, I don't worry because which of you by worrying can change one C to a D? Or make your percentage go up one point? What's over is over and though I do hope I did well, I can't change anything so why worry? Sometimes I'm perhaps too lax though, hopefully I don't seem like I don't care about anything, because I surely do, it's just well..... trying to look at things in a biblical view, it isn't that I don't care about anything. It used to drive my grandma crazy, she would tell me she got me a Christmas present that she thought I'd really like. I'd say "that's nice Grandma." And she'd ask "aren't you going to try to guess what it is?" and I would say no, I was patient and could wait, no use torturing myself!

The rest of the day was spent with our grandparents, they gave me something of a board game called Sudoku. At first I had no idea what it was, it was just a 9 x 9 grid of squares composed of 9 smaller 3 x 3 squares. But after reading what you were supposed to do I got really interested in it! My brother and I did 4 of the easier puzzles. Apparently this game is taking the place of crossword puzzles in many newspapers. It's interesting because you start off with a certain number of tiles on the board and from there on, every row must contain one and only one of each number from 1 to 9, each column must have the same, and each 3 x 3 square must have the numbers 1-9. So for each "puzzle" there is only one solution but it is logically deduced if you work at it. I thought it was really fun, much better than crossword puzzles where you apparently have to know about the lives of a bunch of hollywood actors and who is married to who etc. I have NO idea what goes on in modern "culture" these days. I think I'd do well at crossword puzzles if it wasn't for that! Singers, actresses, actors....

It reminds me that in the newspaper at the University (which I have only read a couple of times) they usually have crossword puzzles like that and then a cartoon as well. The cartoon is really not funny though. For example: in the first frame two guys with baseball caps are standing looking out of the picture over your shoulder and saying "looks like the cold front is coming in." In the next frame, both have snow on their caps and shoulders and the other guy says "the cold front came in." And I'm sitting there scratching my head and wondering what on earth posessed the cartoonist. Did he stay up at one of those parties until 0400 until his brain was fried and then drew it the morning it was to be published? No idea. That in turn reminds me of a Homestar Runner cartoon, where Bubs is talking about the Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum, he says:

"I never get the comics on those bubble gum wrappers. I mean, the first frame is some guy saying 'Look! The sky is fallin'!' and in the next frame, some guy in a sweater gets hit on the head by a rock and I'm sitting there thinking 'what just happened?' And before you know it, I've swallowed my bubble gum!"

Our Grandparents had a little dog that was named "Dixie" and was a "Puggle" apparently, a cross between a beagle and a pug. She was pretty active but by the end of the day she couldn't be dragged out of her bed, she was plumb tuckered out!

We also were able to meet two of our cousins for the first time! There are five children in the family and when we first met the family about 5 years ago (it's a long story) we only met the two youngest girls. Now we were able to meet the oldest girl and our cousin who is a Senior in high school I believe. There really wasn't a whole lot in common though, he is just celebrating his "six-month anniversary" with his girlfriend, they have been dating 6 months now. I'd never heard of such a thing, he's something of a ladies man I believe. I asked the girls what sort of music they liked and they said that (with my cousin Chris) they liked Rap and hip-hop... I think it was. I'm not extremely familiar with either. They took my brothers and I to their house so we could see their rooms etc. They said a small tornado had gone through their area a few days before and I think it must have stopped by one of their rooms, because honestly, it was the kind of thing you read about in books or see in a movie, clothes everywhere! Haha, nothing is safe, eventually all gets posted on the Internet!

Anyway, on the drive over he was trying to find some music and he asked what kind I liked. I chuckled to myself and said I preferred classical but I also did enjoy some Big Band music as of late (Glen Miller) and some soundtracks. I know I must have seemed extremely weird to them but I honestly don't care too much. We both agreed that we didn't like Country though, so that was good. To be a country singer you have to sing about a beat-up pickup, sing with a twang, and sing through your nose. It's handy to play a "gee-tarr" but not necessarily a requirement ;)

I found out that my eldest cousin (whom I had met for the first time) is to have a baby in a couple of months, her husband was there as well. I'm not sure if that would make me a second cousin then or not, anyway, it was a surprise I thought. It was getting late so they left and we all went to bed. I have to say that I was reading in one of the old Nintendo Powers that Mr. Y gave me and I came across a game that I read about and it literally had me crying I was laughing so hard! Things have come a long way since then eh? It was called Blaster Master and while it looked pretty fun, the story line was ridiculous, here it is, transcribed for your enjoyment:

"This is the story of a boy named Jason and his frog Fred. One day Fred jumped out of his bowl and escaped into the yard. Jason ran after him, but was unable to catch Fred before he jumped onto a huge box marked: "Danger--Radioactive." Jason watched in horror as Fred grew larger and larger until he became a huge monster frog! He then disappeared into the earth. Jason jumped into the pit after him, but Fred was nowhere to be found. Instead, he found an armoured vehicle designed to foil the plans of the evil Plutonium Boss and his band of radioactive mutants. Jason jumped into the cockpit and sped into the cavern beyond."

Now the story line is just riddled with gaping plot holes. I thought it was quite convenient to have a box of some radioactive stuff outside the window and then to find a special machine designed specifically to foil the plans of the enemies. Really, I was tired that evening (and always laugh harder then) but still, this made me laugh so hard I had to share it. Frog named Fred. Pfft!

It sure seems like I'll never get caught up. I've got a lot of things to relate that happened this last week yet.... today is Saturday and I have yet to speak about last Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, let alone write about today! Gah! I'll never get all this done!
Well let's start this post with the day that started the week:

SUNDAY

It took everyone a little bit of time to get ready to go to church but there was plenty of time and my father worked on putting things inside the camper for storage and underneath and securing everything. Then we put in the slideout and hooked it up to the truck and hauled it down to the church. It is difficult to find a spot to park a Ford truck and a long fifth wheel, especially when I related that there was another church that met in the community centre and there were usually lots of cars. That is why I started parking my car outside of the parking lot. I figured that there were many people who could use the convenience much more than I, particularly the elderly.

I really enjoyed the Sabbath School, Pastor gave a very good overview in the time he had. In one sense I am always disappointed that we don't go into more depth, but on the other hand he probably went into more depth than he was "supposed" to, considering that it is merely a survey of the New Testament, or in other words, a big picture sort of thing and definitely not for discussing individual doctrines to any great length. I should have warned my parents though because I could tell they were just shocked at the speed with which everything has been going. This is his third week though (if I recollect correctly) and he has already spent more time than he "should have," relatively speaking. I really appreciated that he reviewed a few things (such as pulling out his sheet of paper with passages corresponding to different doctrines in the Corinthian epistles) for the sake of the new people, or more specifically, my family. I noticed that as well in the main service that followed, that Pastor would review a few things and it was mainly for the sake of my family and the Yule's cousins I am sure, and I appreciated it.

I know my mother really enjoyed talking to Mrs. C and Mrs. N a lot and my Dad with the men. I had always felt right at home with the church, it is essentially like a family to me and I felt among brothers and sisters. As I sit here writing this I actually do miss my "family" but I shall (D.V.) return in January, about 2 weeks from now and I'm looking forward to that. I never fit in at all in the Baptist church here, there are some really nice people but there was never any depth, I would be asked how school was going, what I was doing, etc. but I felt as though they were just stiff questions to ask simply because it was the "thing" to do and the outcome would have been the same whether I had answered the question or not. That may be a bit unfair though because there are at least a couple of families that do ask about me when I'm gone from here and I do know they care, but for the most part of the people it seems to be mere politeness, it's usually really easy to tell if a person is sincere or not. Which reminds me of a quote from George Burns.....

"Sincerity is one of the most important traits in a man...... If you can fake that, you've got it made."

Just before the service, I tried to gather enough chairs so my family could sit all together, not a very easy task! I would have been content with two rows even but for my family being essentially a "newcomer" to the church, I didn't feel like splitting it up into two or three (as it would have been) groups and spreading them all over would have been very pleasing to my parents! There were more visitors that day so that helped the problem I'm sure. It actually wasn't that hard to find extra chairs and I made a row of eight in the back and grabbed about 4 Psalters for the family. I really enjoyed the sermon on Psalm 148, Pastor has a way of making it relevant to the children especially and I appreciate that, it's not "dumbed down" like a lot of people will do, but put into terms that children can understand. Children can understand a lot that we don't give them credit for and just as with a language, the quickest way to learn is to fully immerse someone, in the same manner, by immersing a child in issues of doctrine, he or she will learn quite a bit. In so many churches the children are "shooed" out as soon as the service starts and go to play somewhere because they wouldn't understand anyway. Come to think of it, the adults in those churches are like babes themselves at times, desiring milk when they should be eating solid food.

I have been growing a lot lately myself. At the Baptist church here I had often felt as though I was more knowledgeable than most of the people here and that set me up in a prideful state of mind I believe, looking back upon it. I seriously need to work on my abundance of pride constantly! Even as Mr. Vaknor said a couple of Sundays ago, we often tend to be prideful of what denomination or who we follow (the "I'm of Calvin" argument) and I admit that after really enjoying certain aspects of my church, I will look at others as being a bit below or something, less enlightened so to speak. How appalling it is to look back at that attitude though, and frightening! It's a constant struggle of my mind and heart, to act in love and sensitiveness and not pride. Hopefully that doesn't come out in my speech with other people (I don't believe it does) but I know it is in my heart. Coming alongside as a loving brother in Christ is vastly different from standing aloof in disdain.

Afterwards was the lunch. There was plenty of food, Mrs. Yule had promised to bring extra enchiladas (which I have to state that my youngest sister really, really enjoyed) and my family had brought a large pot of spaghetti, which I didn't know about until the day before. So there was plenty of food and all very good! I think my next oldest brother agrees with me that when you get in a group of homeschoolers you're almost intimidated because it seems like they are all so intelligent! We're used to being around other kids and when you get around people who actually understand puns and "intelligent" jokes, it's quite a difference! Usually it's just my brother and I telling eachother things that almost no one else would "get." There are many well-instructed youth at the church and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

I also must say that I was able to meet Mrs. Yule's mother, it wasn't very much in depth but she asked Mrs. Yule
"did you tell him?" To which the response was negative and then she said "Well good, don't tell him." And I'm just standing there, not quite bewildered but just er... slightly on the curious side might be a good description? I must admit though, I'm not extremely dumb and put two and two together rather quickly, along with some previous questions to some key people and I am sure I know the "secret" since she did mention my blog and I knew everyone who has commented save one. ;)

Pastor offered to discuss communion with my parents and I appreciated it very much but my father was already stretching himself by letting us stay for lunch (I would have stayed all day and taken them to the Vaknor's if I could) and since it was a six hour drive to our destination, that didn't work out. We had to get going so I said goodbye to the boys mainly and those who happened to be near and we took off. I was going to miss the people at the church for the next three weeks.

The drive was good, I drove with my two brothers in the car, the younger one played games in the back etc. but my brother and were able to talk about a lot of "important" things that we'd not been able to for a long time, getting a lot of good "geeky" jokes out of our system etc. As we drove through towns it was somewhat amusing to look at all the different churches, "Glansing Liberty Freewill Baptist Church" or something like that, the names were very long and odd sometime, I guess they wanted to differentiate themselves from the other churches. I imagine that there must have been splits. My Grandpa William told us that there was a large church way back, a long time ago when they were making machines that would create ice and there was half of the church who didn't believe it and the other half that did believe it. The "non-believing" half split off and formed the "No-ice Baptist Church." He sounded serious but one is never quite certain with him. In any event, I wouldn't be surprised if something like that did happen, many churches will split for silly reasons such as that.

It took about six hours to drive to our grandparents house, perhaps a bit more and by the time we arrived we were all a bit tired. I like my little car for long trips but even so, after that length of time in the car I start to feel a bit stiff and cramped. It was good to see Grandma and Grandpa again, they visited this last winter at our new place here but it seemed like it had been a while. My next oldest brother and I spent the night in their fifth wheel in the large bed (much, much nicer than the floor!) and some of the family was in the house and some was in our fifth wheel (I almost say mine because it has been my home for so long).

And that brings that day to a close (only 5 more days to write about!). I must say that after a day or two of being with our grandparents, which I enjoy by the way, I was feeling like I wanted to go home. I didn't really want to drive anymore and I didn't really want to sit around, I wanted to go home! But I realized that my home is the fifth wheel, that is where I have been staying, where I have lived for the past few months and that is where I wanted to go, back to my trailer park in Stillwater. I shall be a visitor for a few weeks at my parents house but I do honestly feel like a visitor, my home isn't really there any more and in a way it's sad and in a way it isn't. Perhaps it is time for me to grow up and become an "adult," but hopefully not a boring one, Daisy ;)

The Past

I apologize for the delay, there have been some things I wanted to get done when I got home, cleaning up a semester's worth of collected papers and computer-related things (how did I get five keyboards?) and generally trying to get my stuff all organized for the next semester. Hopefully I can remember enough of the past few days to have a bit of material to post!
Let me first fulfill an old promise by filling in the gap that occurred during Thanksgiving.

The drive down to my parents house was just about as uneventful as usual. I left Thursday morning (the previous night being a Psalm Singing time at Pastor's house) and thankfully there wasn't much traffic at all, which I enjoyed. It makes me jittery driving through "The City" (as everyone refers to it) because it seems like every driver is out to get me or something. I still don't understand the obsession with nearly every driver to go AT LEAST 10 miles above the speed limit and apparently they dislike anyone who doesn't do the same, considering them to be a hindrance to traffic.

It was good to see my family again, since it had been a while since my last visit but it was pretty much say "hi" and unload a few things from my car (computer being a necessity) and then getting ready for company that was arriving for the Thanksgiving afternoon.

There were two families that came over, from a fellowship of believers nearby, they are very nice families but I honestly don't know too much about there beliefs. I visited their church twice on Wednesday nights and the teaching seemed solid, at least as much as I heard of it but there was some things that seemed a bit strange or out of the ordinary in their beliefs, I shouldn't say too much because I couldn't say that absolutely for certain. But our families get along fine. They have one older boy who is about between myself and my next brother (no, my brother is not taller than me) in age. It's hard to find things to talk about because he is NOT interested in any kind of electronics, I don't even know if he touches the family computer at all. He apparently doesn't like to read, his favourite pasttime is riding his motorcycle and "souping it up."

When we visited his house last, he showed the boys and myself his motorcycle, he had modified the muffler so it would be really loud (can't have a quiet MUFFLER now can we?). His friend came over with his new quad and they took out the baffle inside the muffler to make that one really loud too. It made me think of old Mr. Boyd, the gentleman I used to do yardwork for. I always loved his small Toyota he drove, you could hardly tell that it was running becuase it was so quiet. That's the sort of car I like, I don't really want the entire neighbourhood to know when I am driving past, I'm more the "sneaky" or "spy" type I suppose. Creeping along as silently as a Shadow.....

Back to the point, there really wasn't a whole lot in common I suppose. One of the families had brought their deep fryer and the fathers worked on cooking the turkey outside in that. It was actually very good, extremely moist and the flavour stayed in very nicely. Not quite like a traditional turkey but certainly a pleasure to eat! Of course there were the usual mashed potatoes but there were no scalloped potatoes! And (even worse) no sweet potatoes! How can you have a Thanksgiving dinner without sweet potatoes? If you haven't guessed already, I think it's safe to say that I like to eat potatoes.......

After stuffing ourselves as full as a christmas goose, we sat around and chatted for a bit. There were some girls about my age there but I'm not really the type to go up and start chatting with them, I stuck around the boys (even though the conversation was extremely lacking) and eventually the men headed outside to go shoot some clay pigeons with the shotguns (something of a Thanksgiving tradition for some reason). I was doing very poorly for some reason, I only hit about four out of ten, but I was having fun. Some of the older men were good at shooting. One of the dads (his name was Bernie) wanted to shoot, he plays the drums at their church, has glasses, looks like a computer guy or something. Well he gets all settled and ready and suddenly fires the gun, before anything was in the air, he was just as surprised as the rest of us! THANKFULLY he had it pointed in direction of the woods but I was (understandably so) rather uneasy after that whenever he had a gun in his hands. He said he was surprised, this gun didn't have as hard a trigger as his at home did. That's kind of a poor excuse though because he shouldn't have been "testing" the trigger out before he was ready to shoot!

So after about a half hour, the group dispersed and some of the boys went riding on the motorcycles. I stayed in the room and cleaned up a few things and got my stuff organized. I do feel rather badly because I am sharing a room with my brother and when I come home, I often bring in a bit of stuff that I don't really have a place for so it stays on the floor by my dresser until I can organize it and put some things away. I wasn't trying to seem like a recluse, I just had some things I needed to get done and well.... the boys were all out riding and the girls seem to do fine without me, and besides, girls I don't know are very scary.

After the boys got back, we settled down to a couple of games (just the boys). There was Jesse (the motorcycle guy) and another named Joseph who tends to be closer to my own likes and dislikes. He works for a computer company but is also handy with physical labour. So Joseph and myself were on one team and my brother and Jesse were on another and we played Outburst. Joseph and I actually didn't do too badly at all but I felt sorry for the other team. I love trivia games and like my friend has told me, I do have a lot of useless knowledge so I love games like this but Jesse wasn't interested and I don't think even said anything the entire game, just sat there but my brother was doing pretty good by himself anyway. After that I was feeling a bit tired after having been up late the previous night (playing some silly, outdoors game called "football" where they apparently have a million rules to take ALL the fun out it and I broke every single one) and having gotten up early that morning so I was yawning. My brother and Joseph played a game of chess. I enjoy chess but didn't feel like thinking too hard at the moment.

I believe my brother won, but the game was horrible, both people were not thinking properly and so many goofy mistakes were made it was funny. Jesse's dad came by and asked me if I played checkers, I said that I did but I hadn't played for a long time (probably about three years). He said to play against Jesse because Jesse was pretty good. Apparently it's about the only board game he likes. So we broke out the board and the pieces and set up. He did have a couple of strategies for the start but generally he seemed to take each move as it came whereas I tend to (at least try) to look multiple moves ahead and imagine what the move would be countered with, carefully weighing the costs of each move so when he made a move I would expect it and immediately counter with my move (which would usually put him into a tight spot). He was the first to get a king, actually he made two kings but I had already made a tight attacking force and was able to protect my flank (with a "rear guard" of course) and the tables very quickly turned. I could tell it was a disappointment to Jesse and I felt badly because I know he had expected to win. Afterward my brother played with him and also beat him, rather soundly I must admit. After him being bored through the entire Outburst game, and then being beaten not only once, but twice at his favourite board game, I was feeling kind of bad and definitely not a good host.

The evening soon wound down and the guests left and I was able to go to bed. The next day was pretty ordinary, I worked on getting my project done (the projectile) for my Engineering class and organized a few things on Friday, then I left to go back to my "home" on Saturday.



The Present Past

Now to go back to this last Saturday, in the month of December, where I last left off posting. The morning was spent organizing the camper (seems like I"m always having to organize something since I get so messy) and getting ready for my family to arrive. I always get excited about them coming up to visit me but once they arrive and there is suitcases and bags littering the floor everywhere, my table is made into a bed so there is no place for my laptop and I get "deposed" to the floor instead of my ordinary queen-size bed.... one starts to contemplate not inviting the relatives back..... I'm just kidding of course. I enjoyed it and they did take me out to dinner (at the Chinese buffet) that night. Afterwards I took my oldest sister and two brothers to the Game Night that was at the Y's house. We had arrived late and I had promised to bring burritos too! I did bring them but apparently everyone had eaten so it was rather pointless. I set up my Nintendo GameCube by the TV so the boys could play (I had told Pastor's boys that I would introduce them to my brother's playing). My brother really enjoys Smash Brothers and he's quite good at it and I wanted Boromir to see how it was to play against someone who was actually good at the game, quite unlike myself! The boys took turns with the controllers and I think it worked out pretty well.

Meanwhile, there was a group composed mainly of girls playing Taboo in the same room and it became hard to hear oneself think after a time. I think people just like getting into the game and don't realize it but to an observer (sitting on the stairs with a munchkin who is chowing down on chips) it seemed very loud indeed! I periodically checked back upstairs to see how my sister was doing with all of the "new" people (new to her at least) and my youngest brother, who was going back and forth between the games up there and the games down where I was at. I joined the next round of Taboo but I have to say I wasn't much of an asset to the team. I tried and normally I'm decent at word games but like I said, it was hard to even hear oneself think in that room! Yup, that's my excuse.... er.... F.B. did well at the game... come to think of it, most of the girls did very well at the game, though they used some descriptions that really never would have made any sense to me, but they could understand eachother perfectly. Kind of like a personal language I suppose.

When Mr. Y had his turn though, I was able to understand what he was trying to get across! We were much closer in thought patterns. I was reflecting too how it is nice to have family members that are on the same team as yourself (which I didn't have) because there are a lot of things you share with them. My brother and I think very much alike and can each almost read the other's thoughts at times. I think part of my problem with that game is making myself understood (when it's my turn) and I really don't like to guess wildly at what the other person is trying to say, I like to get enough information so I can make a rather close guess, which often takes longer.

It was rather amusing listening to the descriptions other people thought up. There were some very creative ones! I felt like a silent observer much ofthe time, I can still remember F.B. "dozing" on the couch, Violin sprawled comfortably in her chair, head thrown back against the head rest, Dark Warrior bouncing up and down on the big ball, Daniel going back and forth from TV to Taboo and joining in whenever he felt like it (which was all the time) and Raychel walking around happily chowing on potato chips. When I was sitting on the stairs at the beginning, she came over and sat right next to me. When I moved up a step, she moved up too and sat next to me still. She didn't offer me any chips at first but after a while she gave me the whole bag, but it turns out she was just getting in a more comfortable position and once she had done so, wanted it back.

F.B. already described how Raychel enjoyed grinding away on her head with the toy egg beater. I found that quite amusing myself. Everyone was having fun and I truly did enjoy myself but by the time 2130 came around I was ready to go, it was late, I was a bit tired and didn't want to let that interfere with my Sabbath. There have been times where I've been tired Sunday morning and had trouble keeping my eyes focused and I always regretted it, my concentration wasn't at its best as it should have been. I remember an old pastor speaking of how he would tell his children to never let their Saturday night interfere with their Sunday and it has really stuck with me.

It really felt good to get outside and into the cool night air. I don't think I'm a recluse but I do enjoy some quiet time, quite a bit of quiet time actually! I must admit I do like where I am living and the general peacefulness that is around. The most noise I hear is what I make while singing to myself or listening to music while reading or doing some homework. I'm not a "lights and sirens" type of person, I don't know, I enjoy quiet family settings.

That night I slept on the floor, at least what little I did sleep. I had a very restless night for some reason, different "family" noises and a lot to think about I assume. My neck was sore for two days after...

You know, I am realizing that I'm simply writing about me, trying to make me sound interesting. I guess that is somewhat self-centered after all! Sorry about that.....

More later. I'm tired right now, as I'm sure you are.

Flash! In the news!

We interrupt this bit of monotony to bring you a special news bulletin! We have it from a very reliable source (code named M.O.M.) that the results are in for a certain students Chemistry grade, and it's an A, a Four-Point-Oh, a success. The student is reportedly very happy about the grade and wishes to thank all the people that were praying for him during this rough period.

Admittedly the teacher did have a bit of a lower standard for an A in the class, but still, it is exciting for me. So that dreaded "B" is still looming out there somewhere, waiting to nab me...

I guess that last post really wasn't the last post for a while, in fact, it didn't last long at all as a last post. Due to an expression of interest in the continuing of the blog, I shall try to continue during the next few weeks while I'm away. That's not a promise though, it's just a good possibility. It's flattering to know that someone enjoys your blogging (really, what is it more than a diary of ordinary events?) but at the same time it's a bit intimidating. Now I have *gasp* EXPECTATIONS to live up to! So Gus;, this is for you.

My family should be arriving in about an hour or so and spending the night here in the camper with me. It will be slightly crowded but I always did enjoy a "close" family nyuk nyuk. Today I did a bit of laundry and sent some e-mails out and then got one from Boromir saying that he and the boys were free to come over (I had offered to bring them over to play some games sometime). So I gave them a "buzz" and soon headed over to bring them back. We had a jolly time smashing eachother to bits. Boromir was the best at Super Smash Brothers, probably because of his naturally violent tendencies ;)
After getting pummeled for a while (it's really not my favourite game, though everyone else loves it) I suggested we play Mario Party! It's something like a board game, with a little bit of strategy and skill involved but the main game centers around these crazy little mini games at the end. For example: There might be one game where all four of the players are running wildly around on an icy pond (sliding all over the place) while snowmen throw snowballs at you, if you get hit by a snowball, you're frozen! Last player who can move, wins!
Another one (since this is winter after all) has all four players skiing down a slope with an avalanche tumbling behind them, nearly everybody trips over a rock and then gets swallowed up in the avalanche but the player who gets to safety first, wins! The other players are stuck inside snowballs with just their heads showing. It's ridiculous fun and right up my alley (I can't keep serious for very long it seems).

I ended up winning that one by a wide margin so the other boys voted for going back to Smash Bros.
When I play that game I feel like a pinball or a punching bag, getting tossed from player to player as they take turns beating me up. My brother should be coming tonight and I'm hoping to take him to the CY game night and er... turn 'im loose on a couple of boys, he's much better than I am at the game, perhaps the best player I know personally. I'll just sit back with a smug smile on my face as I watch Boromir get pummeled as soundly as I was this afternoon :D
He shall crack thy pate and give thee a sound knock upon thy back!

After some recent correspondence and just my own thinking, I decided to write a little of how thankful I am to be in the church here. To give a little history.....
I was tired of the language and other things going on at the junior college I was attending and was thinking about a Christian School. I looked at going to Bob Jones University and asked someone who had graduated from there. He said that yes, the school was strict but there were certain things that went on. Some examples had to do with something of a work-based theology. He started quietly discussing it with a few friends and someone "turned him in" (apparently it's encouraged to do that to your fellow students). He simply said he didn't think that wearing a collared shirt or something like that was necessary to being a believer. Well, he was put on the "black list" (literally) and given a paper that said he was unfit to lead any Bible studies on campus. From what he described to me, it was nothing bad he was doing at all, he still wore collared shirts but just didn't think it was necessary that you HAD to. So I did NOT want to be in a school such as that. Of course that is just one person's story.

Next I thought about LeTourneau University, down in Texas, there were good reports so I actually went and visited the campus. The campus itself was beautiful and I enjoyed being around it, I stayed in an apartment with four other guys (who were hardly there, a couple were always out somewhere until 1:00). The first night they had some kind of a rock concert. Now I don't know about anyone else, but I actually feel physically ill with that very heavy bass beat and the screeching guitars, my entire frame feels as though it is being torn to pieces from the inside out.
But I could avoid that. One thing that was required was "chapel" everyday. I thought that well, that was kind of neat, until we visited it. The first day there was a rock band there and then a very short, shallow "sermon" about how if you downloaded illegal music it was.... well... illegal and if you were convicted of this in your conscience, you should go home and erase it. One of the roommates I had said that he didn't like it because you can't MAKE people come and worship God. The classes opened with prayer, which I enjoyed (I was able to sit in on a couple) but then you have good professors and you have bad ones. The people at LeTourneau are not very strict as to what kind of Christianity comes in, so you have some conservative people to the really liberal ones as well, all under the banner of Christ supposedly.

The last day were were there, it closed with professor being asked to speak and he gave something of a sermon and then said "I feel that God wants to speak to us today, so I want three people to give me a Bible verse that comes to mind."
One person timidly spoke up and quoted it, so he marked that down, another person said some other verse, and finally a third person spoke up. Then this man took those three verses and certain words and phrases out and pieced together what "God is trying to tell us this morning." I was very angry at that! I couldn't believe someone would do that, it's almost like doing the ol' "let the Bible fall open where it will and let your finger fall on a verse to seek God's will" sort of a thing!

Then he said that he was also sure, he felt in his heart that someone had a question they wanted to ask, God was telling him so. And he sat there and waited for a few minutes but no one said a word. Then (with regret) he said that he was still sure and would wait around afterwards and closed.

That was the last straw for me, I went to the University asking God to show me if I should really go there, I went away with a definite answer: NO! When I asked to stop the application process I was given a sheet of paper with a spot to give comments on the process and why I wasn't going to go to LeTourneau. There wasn't enough room on the front so I covered the entire back of the sheet with the reasons why I wasn't going, and the entire argument centered around Chapel and the "freedom" that the professors had, to teach Christianity as they wanted.

I decided that I would much rather go to a secular school where one could very easily discern the truth, than go to a "christian" school where the truth was diluted to the extent that it was barely recognizable.

So when my family moved to Oklahoma, it was a choice between two schools really, OSU and OU. I liked the idea of a more "laid-back" or "hometown" feel that I kept hearing was in OSU and then they had a better engineering program it seemed, so I applied to there and that is how I wound up in Stillwater. I must say that all of these "random" circumstances have led me to this church here and I think that it is one of the main reasons I was led to come to this college and I mean that very seriously.

The doors opened, there were a couple of minor scholarships, I applied for residency rates even though I was about 3 months short and was accepted. I had been talking to a friend of mine (that I met through video game competition) and he was studying theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (rts.edu) in North Carolina. I had always told people I was a "biblical" christian because I didn't want to put myself in a box, but he told me I was "reformed theology." Something I'd never heard of before. So after moving up here and looking for a church that Sunday and having just "happened" to be discussing that with him recently (after almost no e-mail contact for a year) I did a google search for "reformed stillwater church" and guess what was the first result? The more I looked through the pages (which had much more information than any other church website I'd been to) the more conviced I was that I was going there that Sunday. My mother had told me of some churches that other people had recommended in the area, mainly recommendations from people from the Southern Baptist church down where my family lives. I listened to part of a sermon too and was glad to see it was biblical. I could hear a very young girl in the background, so I must say that I heard young Miss Y before I ever saw her!

The first Sunday was truly a blessing, I arrived for the Sabbath School, stayed for the service, went through lunch, and then continued on into the afternoon service. Mr. Y said he was surprised I stuck all the way through it but I was in ecstasy, finally, a church where God's Word was taught with devotion and reverence. The Psalm singing was new to me but now I feel as though I have been missing something very great all my life. I had never thought of it before but when it comes to singing something to God, what could be more honouring than Scripture? Scripture: that which reveals God perfectly as nothing else can!

By the time the service was over, I was ready for next Sunday. I came home and wrote excitedly to my parents about it. We have been in some good churches before but they seemed to be few and far between and most of the time the Word was watered down and the congregation didn't know what they were missing.

I have already been growing a lot here and very grateful for what I have found and the graciousness of the people. Within a week or two, Mr. Y had told me, rather gingerly, that there was another congregation that had some former members of this church here and they seemed to like the worship style better. He personally thought the teaching here was unparalleled but he didn't know my tastes and just wanted to let me know about it. I had to suppress a huge grin because even though I was struggling in my own life with an issue that had arisen (one that I had never considered before) there was no way I was going to leave a treasure after I'd just found it! I appreciate the genuineness I see, it's not just a "godly face" put on Sunday that you never see the rest of the time, it's genuine!

I love being here, I do believe I am growing here. I am very grateful to have been brought to this congregation and hope to continue here for at least as long as I am going to school. I just cannot describe how wonderful it is to be among brethren like this. I have felt that I was truly among people who cared for me and I for them, not just a face I politely say "hi" to every Sunday morning.

Now this is seriously all I can write for at least a few days. I will be out traveling for a bit and probably not near a computer for any real length of time. Hopefully the length of this post will last for a little while anyway :S
I tend to be long-winded when I have the time.

Game Over. Press Start to continue

And so concludes another semester in the life of The Shadow. It's almost with a feeling of sadness, mingled with relief that I realize I don't have any more studying to do for this semester and I can't do anything about my grades now. It's finalized. Now all I have to do is wait and see what I got on everything! I have high hopes but often those give way to reality and that reality is that I make mistakes, more than I should.

The final exam for my Calculus class was at 0800 hours and I actually stayed for the entirety of the exam. I thought it was much more difficult than any of the others we'd had, which was odd because she had told us we weren't allowed to use graphing calculators, so I expected something easier. I believe I did fine on all the problems and there was also 10 possible extra credit points so I'm not worried about the results of that exam. I appreciated my instructor's cheerfulness and willingness to explain the subjects to her students. I was very much blessed by some great teachers this semester and I look forward to the same next semester!

So moving on.... after that I came home and hung out a bit, cleaning up some more until 1:15, when I went and picked up Boromir at his house and brought him over and it was my intention to play video games for several hours, which we did. I enjoyed the time but more players would be nice. I'm not much of a "party" type of guy in most cases but in this case, it's almost essential :)

I feel as though I have nothing to say this evening so instead of rambling I'll cut this short. I may or may not be able to post over the christmas break because of our poor connection at home, but since I'm writing this mainly for the folks at home.... it may be best if I just put a hold to it until the new semester begins. So actually, this may be my last post for a while, I'm not really sure yet.

So good night and have a blessed Christmas season as you are reminded of our Lord's birth.

My final Final is finally here!

The exam I took today went very well I thought. We were allowed four (!!) pages of notes for the class, 8.5 x 11 too, I only used one side of one page because I honestly didn't know what else to put on there. I could have put several complete programs if I wanted to. So this morning I spent about 15 minutes writing down a few extra things I "might" need and then called it good. I don't think it's being lazy, it's just there was not really anything to study for, there was no "cramming" to do, none of that. Just take a test upon what we'd learned.

The test itself went very easily, it was a matter of copying a few section of code I'd written down and looking at a few simple problems. It was worth just as many points as the previous three exams and only slightly more difficult. I finished in about 30 minutes and we had an hour and fifty allotted. It's just that perhaps my sheet of notes was better prepared, I'm not sure. I'm definitely not that quick normally! I was finished at 1030 hours.

Then I went to the Student Union to wait for Pastor and J. Nathan, the meeting was scheduled for 1345 hours and I had plenty of time. Three hours to wait I guess. I spent it in reading "The Puritan Hope" by Iain Murray. I got up to page 108 I believe, nearly halfway through. I also read a chapter in the weekly book we're going through in this meeting and answered the questions at the back (talk about waiting until the last few hours). And I also went to the registrar and asked about a course schedule and listing of buildings they were in, which I received. The lady was a grump though. I went up to the desk and she stared at me. I smiled (disarmingly) and stated that I wanted to get a listing of where my classes would be and was wondering if I could get it here or possibly when I paid for the next semester.....
she interrupted me right there and said that she would print it out, she needed to see a photo id.
I whipped out my wallet and handed my student ID to her with a smile (the picture isn't the best) but she just took it, typed in my name and asked me if I was so and so (which I was) and then said "it will print out here (pointing to a printer beside her) in a moment. " It soon did, she was back to doing whatever it was she was doing on the computer so I reached over and took it myself, glanced at it and then (again smiling at her in the best way I knew how) said "Well, thank you very much! That was easy and painless!"
She just glanced at me for a second and then went back to the computer. No smile, no nod of acknowledgement, no words, nothing. I slunk out feeling like I had done something worthy of disgrace. All I wanted was to see her smile, to cheer her up? I bet if I told her a joke she'd have called the campus police. Scrooge.

Eventually my waiting upstairs paid off and Pastor and J. Nathan arrived, we had a very good discussion and I appreciated it very much. It was on the Christian Life and dealt with the Ten Commandments etc. I was especially interested in number four of those, dealing with the Sabbath because in the past year or two I have been convicted of that myself and in the last few months have been able to actually do what I wanted to, and that is devoting the day to the Lord, not just going to a morning service and then feeling like the day was wasted because it took out "such a large chunk of my play time" but actually spending it in worship, fellowship, and learning. I have been tempted to study for a coming exam on Sunday but decided to just study a bit more during the week and have that entire day to spend at church and at the Enid Bible study (in between I'll sometimes read a book such as the one I'm working through now). Even though it seems like there should be less time because of that "sacrifice," the rewards are far greater than I'd imagined. Yes, Sunday is not a day for "me" to do what I want, but a day for "me" in that I can spend more time learning and fellowshipping with other believers. I can't explain how much of a blessing it's been but it's something I desire more and more and never grow tired of. Sunday is a blessing indeed. Also I've been convicted recently that if I feel that way, by going out and buying things at Wal-mart on Sunday or doing something similar to that, I'm supporting others who are required to work on Sunday because of their jobs. In Oklahoma it's a bit different than in California because in many towns, the stores to shut down for Sunday, or perhaps the morning (like the Wal-mart down where my folks live). Isn't that kind of odd though if you think about it. It's like just half the day is devoted to the Lord then, that's all we can spare.

It hasn't "just" been devoted to the Lord though, the benefit I cull from it is so much greater than I would imagine. Yes, give unto the Lord and He will richly repay, I do pray for my focus to be for His glory and not just my benefit.

So that was what the discussion centered on quite a bit. Afterwards I went home and have been answering some more e-mails and listened to a sermon etc. Not much else really.

Before I forget, I wanted to mention that on my Economics test, the teacher had a question that dealt with two people in a market: Rose, and Sharon. I gave an involuntary glance at the teacher when I saw that. I still wonder if it was a "coincidence" or if it was intentional. So that was a bit of an easter egg for me.

Now, I've been storing up a few quotes for a little while, so perhaps now would be a good place to use them. Speaking of Economics:

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.
- Errol Flynn

And not gross as in "disgusting," but as in... exorbitant, just to make it absolutely clear! I liked Errol Flynn in a lot of movies.

My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That's almost $7.00 in dog money.
- Joe Weinstein

That one is pretty self explanatory. For some more funny quotes.....

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
- Alice Kahn

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
- Russel Lynes

That last one is amusing because I think just about everybody aspires to write a novel. I used to dream of doing it myself. After some very poor (and corny attempts) I decided that it would perhaps best be unwritten. My "stories" were entirely too ridiculous, or too predictable. Much like myself I'm sure......
And for a more serious quote,

Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
- Ronald Reagan

Yes, that is true and I often wonder how someone can say that they are "pro-choice." What if their parents had decided to murder them while they were yet unborn? Does that idea bother them? I think they choose rather to not dwell on that idea but still stubbornly stick with their "beliefs" that women have a right to choose. Choose what? Death or life for an unborn child? As soon as a child is born, it immediately becomes a crime to murder him or her, but while unborn it's acceptable to most. Why? I was going to write some differences and show why they are meaningless (I remembered the acronym "SLED") but this person does a much better job so I 'll simply quote.

1. Size or Physical Appearance – Do humans lose value when they don’t look right? Does size equal value? Men are generally larger than women. Does that mean men are more human than women? Shaquille O’Neil is larger than Hillary Clinton. Does that mean Hillary Clinton is less human than Shaq? The term used to describe the destruction of groups of people based on their physical appearance is ethnic cleansing or genocide. But human value transcends physical appearance. Therefore, “not looking right” cannot disqualify a human being from being valuable.

2. Level of Development – Is a person’s value defined by his abilities, by what he can or can’t do? Do we forfeit our rights as human persons because we don’t have the capabilities others have? Do stronger, more capable, more intelligent people have more rights than others? Do human beings become disposable simply because at their level of development they are helpless, defenseless, and dependent? Human value transcends abilities or the lack of abilities. Therefore, missing abilities cannot disqualify human value.

3. Environment – Do humans forfeit their worth when they change locations? Baby Rachel was born prematurely at 24 weeks. She weighed only 1 lb. 9 oz., but dropped to just under 1 lb. soon after. She was so small she could rest in the palm of her daddy’s hand. She was a tiny, living, person. Heroic measures were taken to save her life. If a doctor had killed Rachel we would have recoiled in horror. However, if this same little girl was inches away from the outside world, resting inside her mother’s womb, she could be legally killed by abortion. Clearly, one’s environment can’t be the deciding factor. Changing locations is morally trivial. Environment has no bearing on who we are.

4. Degree of Dependency – Is human value determined by our degree of dependency on others? The unborn’s dependency on his mother for sustenance is irrelevant to the baby’s value. No baby is “viable” if degree of dependency matters. All babies need their mothers for feeding whether via blood (an umbilical cord), breast, or bottle. Human beings may be dependent on others for their survival, but they aren’t dependent on others for their value. All physically dependent people are at risk if degree of dependency determines their value – those dependent on kidney machines, pacemakers, and insulin would have to be declared non-persons. Dependency does not determine worth.

I just simply don't understand, and never will understand. People, in their depravity, wish to make themselves their own gods, and to live in a lifestyle that they desire to with as little consequences as possible, even at the cost of a baby's life. That is very sad and discouraging.

I didn't mean to end on such a sorrowful note but it is an extremely important issue and one which most American simply ignore even if they don't agree with it.

Twas the night that was past........ my bedtime.

Oh, it's late! I want to go to bed! Do I have to write a post mommy?
Actually it's "only" 2100 but I feel drowsy for some reason.

My Economics final was at 0800 this morning and it went as well as could be expected. I definitely didn't think it was as hard as it could be. I had my 3 x 5 card sitting on the desk I was at and as the teacher handed out the tests, she glanced down and said "minimalist" and smiled at me. I guess I really didn't have much on there. The girl behind me said she got her sister to write out her card for her because her sister's writing was smaller than hers and it seemed that almost everyone had their cards filled. With what I don't know because there really wasn't any formulas to know, just the knowhow on interpreting different graphs and problems. I could have put my information on a stamp. 3 x 5 centimetres?

Anyhow, when I got to the exam I lent my calculator to a young black student next to me (as I did the last test) and then as I was looking through my folder, I realized that when I had cleaned it out I had forgotten to replace the scantrons back into it! I was horrified, especially so because the teacher carries extras which she charges a dollar for them but I had absolutely nothing, not even a penny! What was I going to do. Timidly I asked the student next to me (who seems to be very studious) if he happened to have an extra one and he said "sure! I've got plenty." And after he handed it to me I stammered that I didn't have any money with me (and it being a final exam, when would there be time for repayment) but he said "no worry brother, you look out for me, I look out for you." Phew. I mean, it was only about $0.15 and I HAD lent him my extra calculator for two class sessions but I was very thankful for his generousity!

The test went fairly well. I try to go through the questions slowly and methodically but I'm still amazed when students walk out after only 15 or 20 minutes into the exam. Either they are blindingly fast or just don't really care too much. I should have been able to get almost all the questions but we'll see. There is always that factor which says that I'll miss few I shouldn't have.

I went to the book store afterwards and found out the titles and authors of the books I needed for the Spring semester (yes, I got a late start on that) and also the prices charged. Then I went online at Amazon and Ebay and did some shopping. I got some great deals and I should be able to have all my books for next semester for about $200, give a Jackson or two. Which isn't bad at all considering at least two of them are very heavy duty books, dealing with Physics and Electronics. If I had bought them new it would have been nearly $400 for all of them. Thankfully my Calculus book holds for the next class so I didn't have to buy that.

There was one book that was written by the instructor of the class I'm taking so I had to pick that up at the bookstore. Apparently it isn't sold anywhere else. Talk about a monopoly!

I asked how much they would be willing to give me for my economic text book and study guide (both of which were in almost mint condition) and was told $33 for the both of them. They sell that set used for $68.50 or something like that. I'm getting less than half of what they sell for it! It's certainly not operating where marginal cost equals price so it's definitely not a perfectly competitive market! That's quite a profit they're making! So I decided to hang onto the books, put up a couple of posters and then go around to the first day of classes and I'm sure there will be students who haven't bought a textbook yet and will want to get one cheaper than they could at the store while I'd still be making more than I would at the store. Though how I'm going to collect is a problem. I suppose I'd have to hang onto it until I received payment (possibly at the next class meeting) because otherwise I might never see them again. I doubt many of them will be carrying $60 in their pocket the first class meeting. Anyway... but I am willing to do something like that for the sake of a few extra dollars (or a lotta extra dollars in this case!).

I also helped Mr. Y move a couple of things, lifting and such. It sure is handy to have two people do something at times, especially when it is heavy. He invited me to dinner but I had to decline because the Yule's had already done so! I am really overwhelmed by the graciousness of the people here in the church. I certainly don't deserve any of it but I am grateful for it.

Various things were discussed, the dinner was excellent as was the dessert: delicious butter scotch brownies made by F.B. They were really, really good! Not only that, but they looked good too! Unlike some of the things I've attempted to bake before...

The Bible study went well though we ran a little short on time and had to skim the last few sections. It was on Luke 9 which has quite a bit to cover. I was thinking today about the Transfiguration and just wondering why it was Moses and Elijah. I think I might have expected Abraham or David to be there as well. There was definitely a purpose though, I'm just not sure what it was. The law and the prophets embodied, Mrs. Yule suggested. I don't know, I'll have to look into that further.

I forgot to mention that the last time I visited the Y's, Rachel took me up to show me her room and then sat down in her little chair and began (very patiently) to read some of her books to me, showing me what each thing meant. She has a short attention span so if I tried to read it to her she'd just turn the page (or clumps of pages at a time) and keep going. She must be a very good speed-reader because each book only took about 25 seconds max! I like to dwell on each page a little more, you know? :)

Here's some thoughts of today:

On "Who Want to be a Millionaire" (I had lots of time today) one of the questions was:

Which of these animals is warm-blooded? $8,000

a. bull frog
b. garter snake
c. goldfish
d. guinea pig

And the guy did get the correct answer but he had quite a pause on it! Isn't it instantly obvious? It seemed so to me at least.
There was a guy who said in his introduction that he worked on/with computers a lot and was writing a novel and gave talks to college students, helping them learn how to take multiple choice exams and such. The advice he had was to eliminate the answers you know are incorrect and then you have a better chance of choosing the correct one.

Pardon? Um... isn't that kind of common sense? Is there anyone who WOULDN'T do that? Do people actually need to be taught that these days? If so, then no wonder the test scores are so poor! Guessing an answer that you know is wrong? That's bad man.

This guy had a question that went like this:
How many dominoes are in a standard "double six" set?

He used his "ask the audience" and his "50-50" lifeline to get it. Now I don't know the number off the top of my head but it's a matter of simple logic. Since it's a double six, if you have a six on one side, you can have either a 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, or 0 on the other side. So in other words, the possibilities with a six on one side is equal to 7. For a five on one side would be 6, etc. The sum looks like this:
7+6+5+4+3+2+1
and I did that in my head really quickly and was shocked when a computer guy (who works with numbers and sequences if he's ever done any programming) was having problems with it! Just think about it a minute! It's not just a magical number, there is logic behind it!

He went with the audience which said it was 36 (most of them said so) and the correct answer was 28. I sitting here with my jaw open. He lost all that money on a simple logic question like that. A Computer Science guy too! Oh well. I think being on a gameshow would drive me nuts, all the contestants act like little children. That's another reason why I enjoy Jeopardy, the contestants act so intelligent, instead of screaming "come on, big money!" while clapping and screaming.

I digress, here's a few more quote that are pretty self explaining.

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.
- Larry Hardiman

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
- Al Capp

Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches per sec.
- J. Hart

And I think it's time to say good night. I'll leave with a Homestar Runner cartoon as promised to Dark Warrior.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail80.html

Twas the night after last

Er... creative title. Anyway.

There were no final exams today, I have one every day from Wednesday through Friday though, but they are all relatively easy so I'm not concerned. I added up my total scores throughout the semester to calculate the grades I need to get on those exams in order to get an A in the class and I figured that on Economics I needed an 86, which sounds okay but still, I tend to make very stupid mistakes on those questions. I need to really, thoroughly read the question instead of just thinking I understand it. If I can do that I should be fine. We are allowed a 3 x 5 card to take into the Final with us with whatever information we think we'll need. I scanned through my book and well, remembered almost everything. Just as a matter of necessity I wrote a few things down but they cover an area about the size of a postage stamp on my card. I'm sitting here trying to think of what else I should put on there.

In my Java programming class I was surprised, I only have to get a 62 on the final in order to maintain an A in the class. Those points for all the programs we did during the semester sure added up! I think I should be able to at least score that! Encourage by how all the "little points" had added up (though I did do fine on the exams as well), I decided to add up my Chemistry points and found out that I could miss up to 9 questions on the Final exam and score an A, so there is hope yet! This Chemistry class is something like an emotional rollercoaster. I think I do great on an exam, get the results back and they aren't very encouraging. I think I've done an assignment well and it turns out the person helping me must not have understood very well, which didn't help me too much I suppose. Then I think I might be able to get an A after the final, then I think I probably didn't, now I think that I may have a chance. Gosh! It's enough to drive one crazy! I must put it out of my mind. Stop thinking about it. Just let bygones be bygones and let the results come when they will. Still.... it would be nice......

Today I cleaned the Fifth wheel thoroughly in preparation for my family's arrival. The laws of entropy had certainly been at work. There was chemistry papers strewn on the couch, the desk, the table, by the sink.... boxes on the floor, a basket of clothes that I STILL hadn't folded since last week, Wal-mart bags on the floor where my groceries had been before I ate them, it looked like Katrina had taken a vacation here. Well perhaps I'm exaggerating but it was much, much messier than I liked. For some odd reason I had a kind of a feeling as though someone might show up at any minute, so I should try to get everything organized and cleaned. No one did show up of course but I still had that feeling.

Today's tech support job was fairly easy, there were hardly any out of office responses, but a few from irate customers who wanted to unsubscribe (and said so in not so nice terms) and one e-mail that simply said:

??

And I'm sitting there, staring at those two question marks trying to determine with my awesome psychic powers what the person intended to convey with those two enigmatic symbols. Nope, my powers must be broken or something because I can't figure it out. There must be pages of meaning behind those simple symbols though.

There were other people who responded to the "tip of the week" by merely sending it to me, hitting reply but not saying anything themselves (I checked thoroughly). It's as though in some strange way they thought they could get revenge on me by sending me my own e-mail and see how "I" liked it. HAH! Maybe that's just my imagination but it would be funny that actually happened.

Then I did a little flipping through my Chemistry study guide and taking a few random questions here and there and I was able to answer all of them easily so I feel prepared for it. I probably studied about 20 minutes for this exam. There's no new material and really, what we have learned has been fairly easy so what is there to study? Just my little postage-stamp sized bit of writing I guess.....

So that was today, pretty uneventful, pretty boring. I think I may now read a little until bed time, I borrowed a book from the church library called "The Puritan Hope" by Iain Murray that I am very anxious to read.

Twas the night before last

All right, to speak about what went on Sunday since I have not yet written about it:

Morning was pretty much usual. I was slightly tired from the previous evening/day when I had studied for my Chemistry exam after helping the Y's move. I spent about 6 hours looking at molecules, VESPR models, orbitals, hybridization etc. etc. and I think the preparation helped (it had better have helped) but anyway, it was wearing on both body and mind ;)

I arrived at the community center at about 0900 and started to set a few things up. Since I feel often that I'm being treated so well by the church members, I want to help in whatever ways I can. Besides that I have a hard time standing around when there is any work to be done, I think I get that from my father. Anyway, I didn't get a whole lot done because the Yule family arrived pretty quickly after that. Things went very fast from there on.

We had a guest who was at the moving the day before and also came Sunday morning. He is from Ireland and I loved hearing him speak because even though his accent wasn't very strong, I have wanted to really hear an Irish accent for some time now. I think I've got my Scotch accent down decently but the Irish was eluding me. I'd stand listening to his words while mentally imitating, tongue trying to form the words in the same manner behind closed lips. And that's not to say that he had nothing interesting to say, no indeed! But I must admit I was very attentive to his accent in particular. Anyway...

Pastor spoke in the Sabbath School on 1 Corinthians but we were not able to finish the survey of that book due to time constraints. Which is fine with me, I'm never one to rush things, I'd rather take a month on one verse than run through it and miss the point, though I do realize this is a "survey" and not an exposition of the New Testament, which would be very lengthy indeed!

Let me fast-forward a bit. In the afternoon service the Irishman (Mr. O'diet let's call him, out of no disrespect at all!) spoke about reaching the Jews for Christ. And I agree whole-heartedly with him! There was a series of sermons that John MacArthur preached recently on if God has forgotten the Jews. It was very good and yes, the descendants of Abraham are still loved by God, look how they have survived through the generations against all opposition! I used to think, when I was younger, that it was most desireable to be a Jew, after all, I was just one of the gentiles, one of the "dogs" eating scraps that fell from the table. Yes the natural branches were broken off that I might be grafted in so how much the more should I be thankful to this people of God who preserved the Scriptures, who were God's instruments in writing them! I wonder how I would speak to a Jew if I met one? I pray I do some time.

In the evening we (myself and two passengers) rode to the Van's house and then piled in their large vehicle for the ride down to the Vaknor's. I was back with the "boys" and it was really fun that we sang Psalms on the way until it became too dark to see any longer. I knew all of them I believe (at least the melody) and most I could sing (or er... croak) the bass line, which was really a very nice thing to be able to do. I feel sometimes like I have no range at all. When I hear Pastor hitting "high" notes I'm almost envious because I can't go above a high C. And it's not as though I can go super low either, about a Low G I would guess, so just about two octaves or perhaps a little more is my range, I'm somewhat limited. The front of the Van kept getting out of sync with all of us in the back. It was their fault, we were perfect of course.

So we had a good time, went to the Vaknor's and there was quite a few people there. I sat in the special seats: on the stairs. I really have a very hard time sitting in a chair if I see someone else on the floor. That should be me down there and I really don't mind sitting on the floor at all! This time I compromised and sat on the stairs instead. It was quite comfortable being able to stretch my legs out, the only difficulty was seeing around the corner where Mr. Vaknor was speaking. After the study (which was on the everlasting priesthood of Christ, forgive me if I cut the description short, there is just so much to that passage) we had a bite to eat, some chit-chat, and some singing afterward. During the discussion time I tend to just listen but every once in a while I'll try to join in with a comment but it's hard to be heard. My targeted "audience" seems to ignore me, what, am I just a uh... shadow on the wall or something? Had to get that in there folks ;)

On the ride home I tried to doze a little as I was feeling the effects of Chemical degeneration in my brain (that's studying too much Chemistry). I made a claim to my two passengers that I should be fairly alert on the ride home however. A statement that was proved false when I challenged a stop sign's authority to do its intended duty. But good brakes are a man's friend so it wasn't too bad. At least I hope my passengers didn't think so... hmmm.... and on the way over I almost ran into a bicyclist who was going the opposite direction of traffic. When there is traffic on a one way street, I guess I just don't really pay much attention to the other direction, I'm just looking at where the cars are coming from! That will teach me. I heard a sharp intake of breath from the passenger in the backseat, I know not whether it was coincidental. In any event, I wasn't the most impressive driver, and I usually try to be so cautious too! Perhaps it was the added distraction of having someone to talk to instead of myself ;) Oh boy, you should HEAR the conversations (or lectures) I have with myself! It's a good time to practice different accents and voices but if anyone ever saw/heard me, they'd think I was nuts!

Well, I'll cut this post short right here and start on today's happenings, which weren't much.

Late night out

I should write a little about yesterday, or at least what little I remember of it. It seems so long ago...... a grueling Chemistry test has a way of making this morning seem like ages ago.

Speaking of which, I woke up this morning at 0600 as is my usual custom now, and took my shower, did my daily things, and jumped right in to studying a little more, sort of a brushup on the things I studied WAY back, maybe even as far back as 3 days ago. There were some questions I was dreading being on the test because I'm not completely comfortable with that type of problem. So when 0730 rolled around, I left for class. The students were rolling across the streets in bunches, or waves as the case may be. I was surprised at how many there actually were. I was caught in a group as we started across but by the time we had crossed the street I was a good 3 metres ahead and just kept going. Ah! How good that brief reprieve was! Just walking down the street in the brisk morning air (and today was a beautiful day).

So arriving at class I was struck by how many people were there. It's a large class but still, that was more than I'd seen the entire semester, except at the beginning. As Mr. Yule has said, I think some students in there must have skipped class the entire semester, only showing up for the final exam! There was some trouble getting things organized, partially because there were so many students and partially because so many of those many students were not using common sense at all, or not paying attention. The professor would explain something and write a correction on the board in huge letters "Answer D on question 23 should be 1.20" And then someone would call out less than a minute later "Answer D should be WHAT?!" Apparently they can't read, or are just not observant!

I've noticed that often the professor will get there early and write on the board "pick up assignment at front desk" in huge letters. Then the students wander in, find their seats, sit there for a few minutes and then suddenly realize there is something on the board. Or even though he's written it, he'll announce it as well and then there is a mad rush to get down there. People are so amusing if you take the time to watch them. I've arrived early to class before in the Engineering South and stood up in an empty classroom on the second floor, surveying my "domain," watching over the passers-by with a hawk's attention. Every other student has white ear-bud-style headphones, which either indicates an iPod hidden away, or someone trying to make other people think that they have an iPod instead of a cheap, generic brand mp3 player :)

And 90% of the students seem to be talking on their cell phones. I was behind one girl who was talking with a friend on her phone and then said "Oh, I see you" and she was just ahead on the bench. Personally, I am almost proud of the fact that I don't have a cell phone and I honestly don't want one. I understand it makes it easier for people to contact me but it's almost like a little curse at the same time. Your life begins to revolve around your phone.

Oh, and one more observation before I get off of this tangent: The favourite place to walk (especially for those absent-mindedly talking on cell phones) is right in between those white lines. You know, those lines that are designated for bicycles? Then some biker comes whipping by at breakneck speed, weaving in and out all of the pedestrians, I hear that every year a few get run over and I wouldn't wonder. I've had a few bike riders charge me on the sidewalk before, I stand my ground though. Plant your legs firmly like tree trunks, legs spread apart and challengingly declare "You shall not pass!" Or er... something dramatic..... *mumbles

So anyway... chemistry, yes I was coming to that! The test went better than expected I suppose, but not as well as hoped of course. It was okay. I knew most of it but there were a couple of problems that I honestly had no clue where to begin. And when I have a few problems like that, chances are that those I thought I knew how to do, would be ones that I miss. It was a multiple guess exam, so several times I'd narrow it down to two possible answers and then have to pick the one that seemed most logical. Whenever I do that though, I seem to fall right into Murphy's laws and the 50-50-90 rule, which states in the simplest terms that whenever there is a fifty-fifty chance of getting something right, there is a 90 percent chance you'll choose the wrong one. And that ALWAYS happens to me! Just not born lucky I suppse ;)

I know I missed the bonus questions but those are usually very, very difficult anyway. In fact, they are so difficult that only those who are very advanced in chemistry would be able to answer them usually, and if they are able to answer them, then they don't need the bonus points anyway, so it almost defeats the purpose in my opinion. Anyway. I probably got a B in the class then. We shall see. Now I shall forever be a source of shame to my parents.

After that test I felt like going home and letting my brain just melt. I ended up watching a few more episodes of "Wanted: Dead or Alive" and messing around with various other things. At 5:30 I went to help Mr. Y move some more things from the old house to the new. It's kind of funny, I am a little but taller than him but I have long arms like my father so while he would be out getting the ladder to bring down some things from the shelf, I was able to reach up there and grab it. I know GW is taller than me yes, but perhaps I'm not really short after all!

Once we had everything packed, we went to the new house, unloaded it, and then were trying to figure out how to program the buttons in their Honda to open their new garage door motor. Mr. Y says THAT is man's dominion, pushing a button and opening his garage. That's power and control right there. He was looking at the manual and I was standing back after having tried a few things and suddenly the garage door started to close.

We stared at eachother and he said "did you do something?" I said no, I had not pressed any buttons for a minute or so. He checked his pockets to see if perhaps he had the remote controller in his pocket and had accidentally pressed it. No..... Then the door started to open again and stopped halfway. I thought perhaps a button was stuck on the car's programmable buttongs and Mrs. Y suggested that perhaps a neighbour might be opening their garage and I had seen a neighbour just pull up a short while before so I stepped outside, nothing. Meanwhile, the door is opening, then shutting, then opening, stopping, then shutting and we're scratching our heads.

Finally, it dawns on us all at the same time and Mrs. Y opens the door to go into the house and there is Rachel, holding the controller and pressing the button. A 2-year old had us all perplexed and spooked for a couple of hilarious minutes there! My but that was funny!

They served me dinner, which I gratefully accepted. I still feel like I'm mooching off of people but when I told Mr. Y that I had hoped to invite some people to my place perhaps and not simply be a "taker" all the time, he said that no one expects me to and besides, what would I serve? Raman noodles? I suppose. Either that or Macaroni and Cheese..... I can cook but I don't want to spend the time on it. After all, it's just me that I'm feeding right? That falls into the "after all, it's just me that I'm heating the camper for and I'm not that important" category ;) If I have guests or passengers in my car I try to be sensitive to whatever they prefer because I honestly have a high tolerance either way, cold or hot. Same thing if there was someone else visiting me in the camper, I would definitely heat it but when it's just myself, aw... I hate wasting money on me!

When getting boxes out of the attic and putting them into the new attic at Mr. Y's house, we came across a box that said "Nintendo shelf." Now I was curious, being that I've had quite a history with that sort of thing. I have a great book about the history of Nintendo if anyone wants to read it, it's actually quite fascinating! David Sheff was a very good writer for that sort of thing. Anyway, he said I could have the box as payment. It was really neat, there was some old games I'd never heard of and a few old Nintendo Power magazines! I bet those are collectible and it will be interesting to take a closer look at them. For me, it was a treaure, I love old electronics like that. I may have mentioned this, but I took the past Nintendo systems, wired some switches in parallel with the circuit boards and made my own wooden box to house all of them. It will play 7 different types of games technically. Just plug 'em in here and there. And actually if you do a google search for my name and append "Nintendo" to it, you'll probably see it. It actually isn't nearly as much as so many people made it out to be.

Oh, there is a funny story connected with it though. When I made this I casually mentioned it to a fellow gamer online and sent him some pictures, he wanted to share it and then it was posted on a huge "nerd news" site that gets over 60,000 views per day and then people posted about it all over the Internet on blogs etc. I had an e-mail from a guy with G4 Tech TV who wanted to do an over-the-phone interview with me for one of their shows and another guy wanted to interview me for his news site that he had. I was quite overwhelmed because I had NOT intended for this to be anything but a fun project for myself and it honestly isn't difficult to do, it's just that most aren't willing to try.
Anyway, the one guy who wanted to interview me for his site, contacted me on the Instant Messenger but didn't have enough time and so was going to try again later. A few weeks after I sent him an Instant Message and asked him if he was still going to do that interview about the "NEC." He said yes, he was hoping to but he still hadn't gotten back to that guy.

Well when I realized that he didn't figure out who I was, it opened the door for a lot of fun! So I said "yeah, that thing was neat and all but it really was kind of clunky looking." He said "lol, yeah, I suppose so."
Then I started bashing myself saying how "that guy who made it though, what a nerd! He probably is one of those guys who never goes to school, only sits at home and does goofy things like this."
"yeah, probably, I mean, it is kind of a nerdy thing."
"And I talked to him a while back. He seemed kind of stuck up to me, almost proud of himself and didn't really want to answer questions."
It was here that he disagreed with me and said "Well actually, he seemed like a nice sort to me."

I couldn't contain myself any longer. I said "you don't know who I am do you?" He asked who and I said my name and there was a long pause. Then some typing and "man, I am sooooooo stupid." I told him he did great and we both laughed about it. I guess that is one way of finding out what people think of you, when you start talking about yourself in the third person....

Ah, such good memories, but yeah, people seemed to take the idea and run with it. Most hadn't seen any pictures so their imaginations went wild and they called me a genious who came up with something the engineers at Nintendo hadn't thought of and I probably laboured for months on this (actually it was about 5 days and that was only because I had to wait for the glue to dry in stages) and that it was with incredible electrical knowledge. Uh... I took one class and er.... this was only soldering two wires onto a connector so no great skill there. Like I said, people are funny sometimes if you'll only stop to observe.

Dear Shadow,
Have you ever tried to fly?
-Bumble Bee Bill

Yes BBB, when I was about four years old I had just seen the movie "Pinnochio" and so I decided I would grab my umbrella and jump off the porch and float down just like him, it just looked like so much fun! Unfortunately I wasn't as graceful as he and thankfully the porch was not very high. Note to oneself: Do not try this from an airplane or cliff.

Really movin' now!

I'll try to make a few notes before I go to bed. Interestingly, I noticed that this is my 31st post. That's a lot! I can just see my brother commenting on that last statement...... "Tell me about it."

I got up this morning, went through my usual routine and then at 8:00 went overy to the Y's house to help them with their moving. Mr. Y and I had planned that I should come over early and get some things done but pretty much all I did was untangle that mass of cords that was the computer corner and where the TV was. I can't recall my kite strings ever being that difficult......

Then we went and picked up the UHaul truck and brought it back. There really wasn't a whole lot to move and it went very smoothly and very quickly considering. There were a lot of people there to help and I thought at first that it might be too many (i.e. tripping all over eachother) but it worked out very well. Unloading went even easier it seemed and soon we were through with the bulk of it. It only took about 3 hours to move the main of their belongings and that was both loading, traveling and unloading. Not at all bad! Not in comparison to a trip I remember a certain family making while traveling to Oklahoma.....
The bulk of it had left the day before in a large truck but yeah, we felt like real Okies there.....

So now, not much interesting has happened since I finished helping the Y's move, all I've been doing is answering a few e-mails, looking for a couple of thing (in between Chemistry chapters) on Google and well... drinking and eating a few bites here and there. So I'll fill up the remainder with some ponderings on news articles I saw today.

"A study by S.G. Cowen & Co. says that Google users tend to be richer and have more Internet experience than users of the other search engines, including Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft's search, according to an article on Infoworld."

That's true! Except the wealthy part. I remember when I first was (timidly) trying the Internet and in a class I heard someone recommended Dogpile, another recommended Lycos I think, while another mentioned Ask.com. I preferred the last one for most things because I could ask good ol' Jeeves a question and he'd help me find what I wanted. Good ol' Jeeves! I vaguely remember wondering if there actually were a bunch of guys at computers answering questions all day......

Someone wrote to mention an ABC News article indicating that hampsters feel the same effects during the winter months as humans do. Known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.), winter-related depression affects up to 20 percent of Americans.

WHAT?! People get depressed during that lovely cool weather? I remember reading about how humans become depressed if they don't have enough light. I have a very hard time getting depressed though. So er... what did the study find? Personally I think that since Hamsters are nocturnal, they get up more when the days are shorter (more night time) so during the winter months they would be spending more time awake than asleep, giving a reason for drowsiness and depressed-like behaviour. I mean, how do you tell a hamster is depressed? I never bothered to ask mine. Americans become depressed so easily and I am positive it is the effect of a "life is meaningless" society. There was another article today that made me very, very sad, yes, even close to depressed for a few minutes there.

It was how a professor had resigned from a Kansas school because he strongly opposed Intelligent Design being taught and made some pretty harsh remarks about Christians etc. then apologized and resigned. Anyhow, the people who were discussing the article were making all sorts of remarks about how stupid Christians were, fighting against science and that THEY probably made bad remarks about the other side but do they resign? No!

One guy said he was listening to a couple of "Christians" discussing how evolution was bad and giving extremely poor analogies and defying their own logic every few seconds. This guy said that according to these Christians, this book here couldn't have come into existence on its own so poof! It must have been made by a magician. He missed the point of the analogy, it wasn't as to the means of creation but the creation itself, did the universe create itself or was it commanded to come into existence by Someone higher? The book doesn't pop into existence or evolve on its own, it had someone who put a lot of thought into it, an intelligent designer. The person went on to say that if there was a God, he must be a stupid God to create such dumb creatures as humans. Not only did he "zing" himself, he missed everything completely. He is SO intent on perceiving everything else as dumb and meaningless, that he has blinded himself. In the name of tolerance and "open-mindedness" he has shut himself off to everything he doesn't agree with. Huh. His e-mail address was listed, it had the words "satanicpuppy" in it. I was very, very sad.

Another person said rather smugly that the existential problem proves that Christianity is false, if there was a being that created everything, then He would have had to have a beginning as well etc.
Well, that misses the fact that according to his view, the universe has always been here in some form of energy. How did the energy get there and how has it always been here? It's impossible for the human mind to comprehend but no matter which view you take (and obviously the belief that there is a God is most logical), you're going to have to face the fact that something has ALWAYS been there. He said it so smugly, as though he had proven that there could be no God. Oh foolish man, how long will you drown yourself in your own abundance of "wisdom?"

There was also a couple of people who posted and said that they were "fundamentalist Christians" and don't bash them, they believe in evolution too, it's only those "radicals" who seem to reject all logic and reasoning and take the Bible at face value, and he laughed at those "ignorant" people. It seems in the rush to be acceptable to the world and to be respected as being smart and cultured, they have abandoned the Bible for what it is. It goes back to being God's Word, is it truly God's Word or not? He would probably say yes but then go into some lengthy discussion on why it wasn't actually. The whole discussion was full of poking fun at the dumb Christians who obviously don't know what they are talking about, just holding to some irrational belief because they think it will save them and they want to live forever.

I was extremely saddened by the discussion. I did not join in at all, it would have been a flame war I think. Most were making so many errors that it would have been no trouble to pick their "arguments" apart. Logical? I think they have blinded themselves. They just don't see and cannot see because they refuse. If they would just take a step back! I feel like Lucy in The Last Battle, who is trying to tell the dwarves "but just look, here, smell these lovely flowers!" and they jump back screaming "you just tried to shove a bunch of dirty straw in my face. I hate this damp, musty stable."

So much smugness, so much knowledge, so little willingness to listen. You know you've got a problem when the only reason someone is reading what you write, is so they can make fun of it, not to try to see the other view at all. The ones who claim to be open-minded are the least so, it would seem.

Well, let's close on a lighter note, I'm going to do a mock "Dear Shadow" e-mail where someone sent me a question and I answer it (like I've been doing for years in my make-believe "Dear Shadow" column).

Q: Dear Shadow,
Do you actually read the e-mails you receive thoroughly, or do you just skim and reply without finishing the entire sentence?

A: Yes.

Post be nimble, post be quick

I'm studying Chemistry for my exam Monday, there is a whole lot of new material that is to be covered and well, basically all the hardest stuff from the past exams so things will be hectic tomorrow and the rest of this evening (if I can keep my eyelids open).

This morning was very chilly, I had turned off the water to my camper and left the heat off, that bottle of propane has to last at least another week! There is a small wall heater that doesn't put out much but at least it takes the sharpness of the bite away, all that to say that it was 32F in the camper this morning, nothing was frozen though, least of all me! After taking my shower at the stalls here in the park, I came out still slightly damp from the steam and shut the door behind me. My finger froze to the handle. Not badly, just enough to make me think "neat!" and try it a few more times. Yup, handle was cold all right.

Driving was the worst part because you get into an icy cold car and the heater is blowing cold air for at least 5 minutes (below freezing air) and the steering wheel takes whatever warmth out of your hands that is left. I didn't have the sense to use my jacket sleeves as gloves, though I probably should have.

Calculus class was basically a review of things past and it was helpful but I could do everything we covered so I'm pretty confident about the test. Calculus is actually quite fun, more so than Chemistry. Ugh. Speaking of which, I had that class directly following and was handed back my paper from the last assignment and found out I had missed more than I should have. That'll teach me to never trust a TA, whom I worked every problem out with to "make sure" I understood it!

And Economic class would have been a review today so the teacher decided that she would extend her office hours to go during that time and beyond so if you had questions, come and see her, if not, then don't come. I went there to have one situation explained to me. It was good to have a one-on-one time. I believe I was the first one but two others showed up just while I was leaving.

And then to the Math Building computer lab to finish up my program (that is due tonight at midnight, yikes!). I should have done it earlier but Thursday was the only real time slot I had so I waited until then (it was assigned Tuesday). I left yesterday with one bug left so I came back today, figured out that I had invoked a method and sent instance variables that were not the same type as the ones in my constructor method, so that took a few seconds to fix and then I tested out the program and it worked! Amazing after piecing together so much stuff! But then I realized that it wasn't sorting correctly, they weren't being ordered by their prices like they should have been, so looking a little deeper revealed that I didn't create a .equals method for my selectionSort class. The instructions from the program were extremely vague, so I ended up just coming up with my own idea of how a .equals method could work and it did, so after that everything worked perfectly, I just added comments, cleaned up the code, and then submitted it.

In between all of this I helped another guy with his program. He's pretty bright but has been lost on these programs, if I suggest something he's on it and figuring it out right away though, he's just not as quick at debugging as I am (lots of practice with faulty programs I guess). So he finally got his program working just as I left and was pretty thankful. I felt glad that I was able to help, apparently I'm decent at showing what the problem is and how to correct it. I had a printed copy of my program but I wasn't going to just let him copy, I wanted him to see how each thing was done and why, people will do much better in the long run that way.

Then I came home and noticed how quickly it was warming up outside, which was nice for a bit. I actually wanted to take my coat off! I have been reading chemistry and doing odd things around ever since. I will be very glad to get this Chemistry class over with. It has been very difficult, a lot of theorectical stuff and Loads of new material, even the book says something like "and the wave pattern can be found by using this equation, now moving on to electron affinities..." and I'm thumbing through the pages and each page seems to cover a new topic and there are nearly 50 pages to some chapters. Yikes. I'm just trying to digest the bulk of it, there's no way I'd be an expert at it by the end of this course!

Oh, I kept forgetting but here's a self-portrait of myself ;)

Not bad eh? It's the best hat I had (picture-wise). I took a picture of myself outside against the camper side, which was white (camera was resting on top of my car), posed, then added the shading (cartoony look) to it in GIMP, added the hat, and put the canvas texture on. It may not look like much but it took me a long while to get it just right. I'm picky you see ;) That and I'm not familiar with GIMP so it took a lot of snooping around to find what I wanted.

Oh, and I had this strange dream last night..... first I was Batman and jumped off a roof with my wings and glided (hmm, sounds like it should be "glid" there, "glode"?) to the ground. The wind was kicking up so I spread the cape (using the awesome electrode things) and jumped up but of course the wings weren't very aerodynamic so all I could do was jump about 10 feet up and come back down. It at least gave me extra lifting power. Then I walked into the forest and somewhere along the way the conspicuous Bat suit disappeared and I was at a meeting with my brother I believe, in the forest, on logs, almost like a camping thing. It was for family membership in the RP church and my brother and I were representing the family since the rest hadn't arrived. I believe Mr. Yule was there. We sang a Psalm and wow, I knew most of the words! I woke up with the tune in my head I think it was 34A but I'm not positive. Of course I didn't know the words upon awakening though :(
Anyway, I don't remember what happened to the meeting but there was a truck driving very slowly through the woods on a dirt road and a few of us were walking, F.B. and I both started running to see if we could catch up but it sped up or something because though it had been going slowly, there was no chance of catching it running. It was almost as though it was harder to get to it running than walking, sort of like in Through the Looking Glass, where you had to go backwards to get anywhere, you had to run like the wind to stay in the same place. Odd.
Anyway, F.B. was very, very fast and I was trying and my legs were moving super fast but they were going so fast that I was just barely brushing with my tip-toes on the ground and soon I wasn't even touching the ground with my feet at all because they were going so fast. Naturally this meant a loss of traction so I was not moving foward very fast. I was able to hover above the ground a few inches though. I felt as though I should have been able to run faster and was quite willing (I love races) but couldn't. Does this mean that no matter how hard I pursue a truck (good grades) it will be like running in place, never getting good scores while F.B. keeps going. I should say she stopped and came back, probably because I looked so funny running so fast but not going anywhere.
Don't even try to interpret the dream. Me, I attribute it to that bean burrito last night and staying up too late. I always thought it was so funny how a dream will go from one thing to something totally unrelated (like flying as Batman to a church membership meeting) with no seeming discontinuity. Everything flows perfectly "normal" in a dream and nothing seems odd.

Oh, I saw an advertisement today for "Saline Nasel Spray," it's suppose to prevent colds so it's especially "useful" during this season. Okay.... so you spray salt up your nose, that can't feel good.

Here's an interesting quote from a while back,
Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
- Italian Proverb

And in one sense, that is true from a wordly perspective, yet also from a Christian perspective, when we die, our works, our hopes are all for naught unless founded in the only true Hope. The pauper will be judged just as the king, no status aside from having Christ makes a difference. No wordly status is acceptable. Anyway, draw what conclusions you will, I rather liked the quote. And with that, I'm going to close for the evening. I have to.... go... place. (SB quote).

ur splng stnx man.

Not that I've received any recently but I've had SO many e-mail that were difficult to decipher, especially from people asking questions about a game (The Hobbit) that I wrote a guide for a while back. Usually it's more of a task trying to figure out what they are saying than to answer the question once you decipher what it is (or at least take a guess at it) . Then I send a lengthy reply and get "huh?" or "thnx" as a response. *sigh* There's a language barrier here folks. It can be found at
http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rlid=70765&rid=65494
I've had some people tell me they read it for fun, after they beat the game. That's just plain odd when someone will read through a walkthrough for fun!

Let me see... where to begin. How about with a couple of quotes?
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
- Thomas Berger

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
- Mark Twain

And then on to business. This morning was cold yes. In fact, when Oi got up this mornin' Oi said to mese'f "Sef!: It's cowld." At least it was once I got out of my sleeping bag. Ah... my sleeping bag, just thinking about it gives me delightful shivers, the warm kind, not the cold kind.
"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" is coming out this week, apparently at midnight tonight or something. I can wait, I'm actually a little nervous, will it live up to the hopes at all? Oh, I hope they didn't mess it up! I have been looking forward to this for so long!

I just decided to watch the 9 minute trailer since I've heard a few things about it. Funny I'd not heard of it before because usually I'm one of the first to see things like that. I guess my head's been elsewhere... as in studies lately. Comments as I go along. The war-times scene I was SHOCKED to see that they Pevensie family had lights on in the house at the time of the raid, although it makes sense if it was the first raid that the Germans made, which is probably the case so I'm probably wasting my breath (or fingers). Never mind. Ah! Peter said "I will mum." I'm happy. As some may have guessed I like the ol' British ways. At least a lot of things. Mr Tumnus looks cold. I had rather hoped he'd be closer to Lucy's size I guess, but he's not too tall as it is. The scene of the mountains, I hope that's of Narnia after it's begun melting or during the Golden Age of the Northern Mountains or something. I bet it is because there's no snow below. Perhaps I should stop this idle speculation but the reader can skip the paragraph I suppose. I'm typing while I think.
It was rather funny when Peter was holding his hand out to the Beaver, I guess that's an example of "cinematizing" a book. I don't know, the Beavers look pretty good (much better than the others that's for sure!) but they still look very digitized. I hope they clean that up before the final print er... tomorrow. But even so I'll be content. He looked better in his home. Hmm, I'll have to admit I liked the other White Witch's looks better er... that is as far as White Witches go....
Her hair is blonde!
The costumes look pretty good, WETA sure does a great job, they are hard workers. Oh man I'd love to have a sword like Peter's! That "For Narnia, and for Aslan" sounded slightly.... Lord of the Ringish.... but then again I suppose so many quotes sound like so many others. I always liked Peter in the books. I took a character quiz once and I think I was him the first time I tried and Aslan the second or something. Which pleased me on both accounts ;)
I liked seeing the Cheetahs streaking out in front, though I don't recall cheetahs being mentions in Narnia. But it was neat anyway. Does anyone else think the mermaids look "fishy"? I guess I'm used to seeing different looking ones. Who was that flowery-pollenating dude?
Whoah! Riding down on a floating chunk of ice? Not only does that look cold, it looks like that's a "new improved" scene! I expected a few of those...
I was told the professor looked like a dwarf. He looked fine to me. Perhaps his hair looked like mine after I've been in a stiff cross-wind but I didn't think he looked dwarfish. I half expected to see a short gnome.

Overall it was VERY impressive, I liked a lot of the music. Everything was dramatic, I guess they want to show how impressive it is but thank goodness the entire movie isn't one non-stop knife-stabbing, battling action like it was portrayed. Every scene (nearly) in the last two thirds had a sword or something like it, or so it seemed. Boy, now I'm excited again.

Calculus class went well today, we aren't allowed to use graphing calculators for the exam (which a lot of people were shocked at) but I don't mind, I enjoy doing everything by hand anyway. Apparently a lot were doing everything by calculator on other exams so she wants to make sure they know the material. I appreciate her trying to help the students understand the material, most will take the classes and get out not caring if they know everything or not, as long as they pass. I have a slightly more long-term outlook on things. I want to do well especially on the last parts of my Calculus class and my Java class because I'm going to have the second parts to those next semester. Which reminds me, for some reason my Java professor thought that I was a Computer Science major, he had some sheets he wanted to give me before class because I was a "Comp Sci" major he said. I told him I was actually an EE and he half turned and said "Oh, well, I hope I didn't insult you then." Or something like that. He has a very dry sense of humour that I enjoy a lot.

Then I worked on today's lab, early like I usually do. It didn't take too long but then I spent the next 3 hours or so banging my head against the keyboard trying to get the final program to work. The instructions are rather vague and at 12:30 he clarified a lot of it and explained it further so I was very thankful. I've now got it almost completely done, just one thing to debug and then test it out! I could probably skip it because my scores on the others are high enough (and that is probably what most students do) but again, I want to understand all this material for next semester, and I would feel dreadfully lazy if I didn't complete it.

The meeting with Pastor went well, we talked about Repentance and Faith today and it was a good discussion. Unfortunately J. Nathan wasn't there, apparently his phone is not working either so there was no way to contact him to let him know of the meeting time. I haven't heard from him at all myself so I hope he's doing all right.

By the time I left campus and got home it was past 5:00 and the only thing I'd had all day was a piece of banana bread (compliments of the Y's) for breakfast at 6:25 that morning. I don't usually drink during the day either but today I was feeling the need for some liquids by the time I got home. Ah.... good ol' Dr. Pepper. But I wasn't feeling bad at all, I suppose going to the Yule's house and stocking up for the next day by eating cake and ice cream is a pretty good thing!

So I did some laundry and finished the very last bit of my Calculus homework. I needn't have finished it because my 4 lowest scores are dropped (so it probably wouldn't have even counted) but I enjoyed it. I did it in the laundry room where it was warmer, in the camper it's 45 degrees right now and my fingers are getting stiff. It's harder to type at 45 degrees I've noticed.

Speaking of laundry, I'd better go get mine out of the dryer, I'm sure it's done by now, then it's off to bed for me. Time to study some more for Chemistry tomorrow! 'Night!

A few notes

I don't want to spend too much time here tonight unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who's looking at it) but I did want to mention a few things.

I found out that I need to get an 83 on my Calculus final in order to get an "A" in the class. Hopefully I'll manage that :) There was a girl afterwards that asked for my e-mail address but not for anything personal, she just wasn't going to be there Friday and wanted to ask for notes or what had happened. I actually admire her for trying so hard in this class, all through the semester she has apparently been struggling, always the one asking confused questions when everyone else seemed to have got it, always asking questions about the homework etc. but as I found out today from the teacher, she has the third highest score in the class apparently! How a lot of those guys (Engineer majors) would squawk if they found out they'd been beaten by her! So I was very happy for her in that case. I've only spoken with her once or twice but I'll be happy to give her notes, at least I know that she would be at class if she could, if another person had asked I would have probably guessed that they just wanted a longer weekend or something.

I also found out that I didn't do as well on my Economics exam as I had hoped. It was okay I suppose but not as good as I should have done. The teacher said it was the hardest exam by far that we've had. The test average was quite a bit lower on this last one.

Then I came home and did a couple of things and headed back afterward to go check out in the Chemistry lab. Basically they counted our things and made sure everything was there and not broken, then we turned in our keys and left so it was pretty easy. While I was there I went to the Chemistry professor's office and showed him the "New Element Found" e-mail that apparently Mr. C had sent out (I got it from the Vaknors). He did find it pretty amusing, as I expected he would.

Tomorrow will be a busy day for me, I've got some things to get done for Friday and then study some more for my finals. I'm really only "concerned" about Economics and Chemistry so that narrows things down quite a bit.

Here's a random quote.... one that I liked.
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
- GM Trevelyan

And that is very true, so many things people read just because it's popular etc. The ability to discern is becoming rapidly lost. Of course it could be argued that education of today isn't even producing a population able to read but that's another debate.....

I was invited to go to the Yule's house early and have dinner with them and then stay afterward for the home group Bible study that was meeting there so I accepted and stayed at their house quite a while actually. I hope they didn't mind too much because I did really enjoy myself. It was Dark Warrior's birthday so we celebrated with a delicious cake made by Daisy (chocolate of course) and ice cream and a few presents afterward. The group study was canceled because of the snow so I was the only visitor and I almost felt as though I was the lingering guest long after the party was over and people have gone home to bed. They gave me a triple viewing of their favourite Three Stooges shows, which I did enjoy I must say, though I must say I wouldn't want the stooges to do my plumbing. Many parts were very funny, much better than a lot of shows of today.

After that was some conversation followed by family devotions in 1 Corinthians 12 and the singing of a Psalm. Everyone sang so quiet though! I enjoyed learning the tune though. I AM picking up things here and there! After that was more conversation. I was dying to ask some questions and hear some stories but I had probably over-stayed as it was but my how enjoyable the time was. It's nice to be among God's family and just to converse. Something I've not been doing much of lately, holed up in my icebox as it is........ :)

So that was pretty much the day and if I may be excused, I'd like to go to bed so I'll be somewhat intelligent looking in the morning during Calculus. Good night!

Fumigated

Well it's late tonight (past 10:00 already) so I'd better be off to bed soon. I'll "try" to keep this short.

Actually not tons happened today, this morning I worked on a couple of things, e-mailed people and such and generally got a lot of stuff done that I'd been meaning to for a while. I even had time to read the commentary I'm going through!

My only class on Tuesdays is at 12:30 so at that time I went to class. The teacher often lets sly little comments slide as he's giving his lecture such as "well, if you didn't like your grade on the last test.... you have my sympathy." or something like that. Today he said that for the final we'd be allowed to use calculators if we wished, for all of the "advanced mathematical operations" we'd be doing, like 27/4 and such, which is hilarious because in Java, those being integers, the result would be truncated so 27/4 would be 6. I haven't had a need for a calculator in the class because the math is so simple, one of the students claimed that he didn't get a perfect on the last exam because someone else hadn't lent him their calculator (he's a show-off smart-aleck anyway). I hardly think that is true though. Anyway, when the teacher said that slyly, the lady next to me leaned over and said "was he being sarcastic?" I said yes. Unless you think that 27/4 IS difficult math.......

Then he said that there would be an hour and fifty minutes allotted for the test time though he figured almost everybody would be out of there by the end of one hour, though there is always a few who hang in to the last minute and they have to manually extract the test from their hands. It seems they sit there waiting for inspiration to hit at any moment and enable them to fill in the last lines they need. I had to laugh because generally I am one of the last people out of the test area, but not because I don't know the answers, but if I have time I feel like I might as well go over everything a bit more carefully.

And yet AGAIN he was talking about Selection Sorts and how while it does sort things, if you have a large list of objects it's really inefficient because it takes too long and too much processing power and we should never use it in a real situation, just as an introductory thing for this next lab. He said you would NEVER make something like this if your employer asked you to make a sorting algorithm for him. And if you did, then tell your employer that you graduated from OU. The students did laugh at that one and I thought it was very funny. Generally he lets funny things like that slip out from time to time but he's so stone-faced that you'd never guess by looking at him that he had a sense of humour. Some people have compared his looks to that of Dr. Death and honestly, there is a resemblance!

I came home and prepared my projectile for the launch this afternoon. When the time came, I left to go to where we were supposed to meet, on the green (or brown this time of year) in front of the Library. It was very chilly, the sun had gone down behind the buildings so we were in the shade and the wind was blowing and it was already below freezing I believe. I had my blue, light coat on and just my short-sleeved shirt underneath. Everyone was cold, I was cold. We stood out there for right around an hour, shooting off projectile after projectile. There were VERY few that had parachutes, most people just launched it as high as they could and tried to get a good time that way. When I tried mine everything should have gone well but the lid came off prematurely as it came out of the barrel and ripped the parachute out, the projectile kept going while the parachute floated away. No one seemed to have seen where the projectile went, which is odd because I saw where all theirs went. I didn't see because I was already chasing after the floating parachute (which was rapidly being blown away), vaulting the hedge in my race to grab it. Anyway, I was very, very disappointed and sad that I'd let my instructor down, since his students were competing against another's students essentially. I tried for about 10 minutes to find the projectile but couldn't, I tried again a while later and finally found it but since the attaching string had been torn, it was worthless to try launching again. There was not enough to tie it on back to the main body. I feel it would have done really well, possibly the best there if only that lid hadn't fallen off in the barrel as it came out. But the parachute DID deploy, and that was good at least.... The best time was about 8 seconds.

Afterwards, most of us (that were left) went inside. Apparently the Tuesday class still had to do evaluations, the teacher asked if I would stay and hand them out and then collect them so I said I would. I didn't know any of the students there however. So I passed them out and collected them. Only two students had left comments (which I er.... happened to see as they turned the sheets in). One said that the teacher was great, the other said that he wasn't devoted to teaching at all (probably from one of the guys who didn't know the teacher's name and had to ask for it, there were a couple of those). Now I thought that he did a great job, the course is supposed to challenge you to think and to strive to excel on your own, not being baby-sat but how you would be in the real world, it's trainging you to become an engineer! With that in mind, the professor would always urge us to e-mail him, come to his office, over and over, let's discuss this, but most didn't want to take the time. When we were given assignments, he didn't hand out much material on how to build something, we were expected to research on our own as though we were designing something that we would turn into him so he could decide whether to produce it or not. We were the engineers trying to design our own things, not being "cookie-cutter students who all turn in the same answers to all the papers and there is only one way to do the problem," sort of thing. I thought he was very devoted to the students, he tried to get them motivated. You got as much out of the class as you put into it basically, and most didn't put anything into it and blame it on the professor. Very sad.

Oh, I forgot to mention that since today is Tuesday, I received a lot of messages to deal with in tech support, though today was pretty easy honestly. I didn't get any exceptionally interesting ones, except for one who in response to the tip of the week said "I could care less!!!!!!!!" Only he had abotu a hundred exclamation marks after that..... Um... you CAN unsubscribe by clicking that little link there sir, thank you for your edifying comments.

After getting back form launching, I only had about 10 minutes before I went to Mr. Y's house. I was going to help him start painting at the new house but I had apparently misunderstood and didn't realize that he had invited me to dinner. But that was fine since I had only choked down a tiny burrito really quickly. Mrs. Y gave an excellent dinner, I appreciated it very, very much! Afterwards (and after many delays) we finally left, picked up a huge roll of carpet on the way and went to the house.

The carpet was 16 feet long apparently (I think....) so it didn't fit in the back of the truck all that well...... it hung over the back and we couldn't fold it up because it was in a long roll. So we put one end in a corner and left the other end hanging (and beginning to droop) while we drove to the house. Mr. Y commented on how he must look ridiculous. The carpet dropped lower and lower and finally started brushing the ground (I could see it out the side mirror) so we pulled over, rotated it, and continued on hurriedly before it drooped down that way! But all was fine (and funny) and we finally got there, much later than planned. But the painting went very quickly and we were out of there within an hour and a half I think, having moved the carpet in and torn up the old carpet AND painted all in that time period, which wasn't too bad!

We cleaned up and headed back to his house where I was treated to dessert and given a chunk of banana bread. I sure appreciate that a lot, I don't ever expect anything and I already feel like I'm mooching off of other people when I go to their house and don't bring anything myself. At least I bring some chips on Sunday but that isn't much at all. I don't want to be always eating and never bringing, but I honestly don't have much myself and it's not like I'm making casseroles even for myself. But anyway, I really do appreciate "real" food which others have very kindly given me.

Well, I must away ere break of day.
Here's something to possibly entertain slightly.
http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail78.html
LGamer out.

Leggo my blogger.

As usual I don't think I have much to write but we'll see if that statement holds true by the end of this post. I'll start with yesterday.

Church was very good, I got there slightly early. Sunday mornings I feel like I'm hanging around so I either study my Bible or a commentary a little bit and then head to church, I like getting there and doing something so I've been helping to set up beforehand. It makes me feel like I'm actually helping!

Pastor did the adult class in the morning, which was very informative and encouraging. He took the place of Mr. Yule that morning and he said that he was no Crescent Yule (that may take some decoding) and I have to agree! I really do enjoy Mr. Yule's teaching, though of course Pastor is great too, they are different and I enjoy hearing them both. I brought my computer to church just in case anyone expressed any interest in seeing e-Sword (I promised I would bring it) but no one mentioned anything. I didn't know if it would be something to announce or spread around. I guess I figured that a few might notice and realize what was happening. Did anyone check out e-Sword? It's really good.....

Mr. Van gave a meditation on Psalm 29, which was very good and heartfelt. I enjoyed his doing that. After the sermon and lunch there was the afternoon service which I always enjoy. I really like singing the Psalms and it has more of a "gathering" feel to it than the actual church service does. More of a family gathered together. More on Psalms later.

I drove G.W. to the Van's house that evening and we took a trip on over to where the Vaknor's live for the evening service. On that note I should say that I really do enjoy devoting the entire day to worship and study. When I go home in between the afternoon service and leaving for the evening study, I try to read a bit in Pink's commentary on Hebrews. He treats the subject very well I believe. There are a couple of things that I wonder at and I know he's just a man but I do think he is a very good Bible commentator. Most of his writings had to do with the encouraging and strengthening of believers around the world, which is why he published a magazine for so many years called "Studies in the Scriptures" of which he was almost the exclusive writer. He never had more than a thousand subscribers at a time but he felt that was his calling and while there was someone who was being blessed he would continue to write. This is a contrast from so many people that I have seen in my lifetime, who are in church either pastoring or doing some sort of teaching and they don't see massive growth so they become discouraged and think the Lord wants them elsewhere. Growth in numbers by itself is no indication of the Lord's pleasure, but rather spiritual growth. I get discouraged from time to time because although I have been to many message boards, posted long, LONG messages and been patient, I rarely see any fruit and I sometimes wonder if it is me being overbearing. But it is an encouragement to me, like on F.B.'s blog, to know that the Word will not return void. My mission is to "unleash the lion" and be a willing tool of God's, not try to do it all myself because I can't.

Anyway, I think I went off on a (Y2-Y1)=(dY/dX)(X2-X2) there......
The trip over to the Bible study in e-Bid went somewhat uneventfully, there was some conversations and I read a little in my book, I'm still behind in my reading for this Bible study so I'm trying to play catch-up while reading ahead for next week at the same time.

The discussion went very well, Mr. Vaknor led it as usual and we went through Hebrews 7:11-21 I believe. It's very interesting and I do understand how the Jews of that time would have had a VERY hard time accepting that their system was replaced so to speak, that there would be no more sacrifices? No priests? 1500 years of history and traditions wiped out? I imagine it would be very difficult indeed and the writer explains how Jesus is the sacrifice, Jesus is our High Priest and a perfect High Priest as that, one who according to the order of Melchizedek will be priest forever and not just for a short time. The new "system" is in every way superior to the old, but old habits die hard.

Afterwards there was some more conversation about various things. One of the groups consisting of the youth discussed geeks for some reason. I asked if I would be a geek and I was told that no I wasn't, geeks were ones who wore thick glasses and graduated really early. I had to suppress a grin. Because aside from the thick glasses I think I might be considered one (though mother refuses to let me call myself that). Graduated early, I sometimes wear a pocket protector, play video games from time to time, generally for competition or when a friend or three comes over, know a bit about computers and spend a lot of time to myself, which I don't particularly mind. I don't talk in a nasally tone about some psynergy upgrade in some RPG that you only get by playing 99 hours and leveling up all your characters though.... I think that's more of a nerd. Oh, you wouldn't believe how often people (in these "Geek central" places) debate whether they are geeks or nerds and what is the definition of one! Me? I'm an American. Violin said I wasn't a geek (I think that's her code name, otherwise online-A.L., not the offline-A.L. who goes by Tlepolemus online but that's not really her name.). Thanks for sticking up for me ;)

About 7 of us, sang a few Psalms afterward, I knew a couple of the songs and I tried to sing. Brother2 (not my Brother2, but F.B.'s Brother2 who goes by G.W. and F.B. goes by A.I.) and I were the Bass. I try to sing Bass and it honestly is my range but I have a hard time hitting the proper notes unless I know the song. Even then I am afraid I spoil it. I recorded myself singing one time and to my horror, though I sounded fine to myself while singing, when I listened to my recording, I was flat! I just hope I wasn't disturbing the others. I try my best.

Then on the ride home they wanted to sing more Psalms, as did I! I love to sing, but it was dark and well... I am still not familiar with a lot of apparent old favourites in the church. That was hard. A couple I knew a line or two from and on more I knew the tune so I would hum along to the best of my ability. My heart was there even if my mind didn't know the words. I grew up with Hymns and can sing those and remember all the words fine, but I'm still new to most of these Psalms and I certainly don't know the bass line on most of them! Mr. Y lent me a CD of New Song that I've been listening to and really enjoy. It helps me to get to know the tunes and words and even the bass line on some of them though it's not always that pronounced. So I really enjoyed the Psalm singing, listening but oh how I wished I could join! I'm learning!

So I arrived at my home and went to bed about 10:00, not too late at all. I broke out my sleeping bag for the first time since I had brought it up here from home. OH! It felt so good to get into my sleeping bag once again! I spent about two years in a sleeping bag (no, just sleeping, not full time) out in a tree house. Just the feel and the smell brought back very fond memories of backpacking, camping, times with my brother and I spent in the tree house. Very good memories. That and the really cold feeling when you first slide in. WOW! So cold it feels great! I also love being able to cinch up the drawstring and have my head covered but my face exposed so I can breathe the cool night air. When I was really young I wanted to have a blanket that I could do that with because on cold nights I would want to go under my covers but then I'd be breathing the same saturated air and after a while I couldn't stand it any more. So I wanted a blanket with a hole cut in it or something and I'd invent it and everyone would want one. Well, I never did, but when I first found out I could do that with my sleeping bag, well, it was love at first night (groan).

So then we come to today, that is if anyone is still with me.........

*crickets chirping*

Anyway, I got up and went to my Calculus class excited because our tests were to be handed back. When I got mine though I hung my head in shame. I had made a very dumb mistake on the last problem (draw circle on desk, bang head here) and was very justly marked off for it. That meant I ended up with a 95 out of 100. A lot of people would have been ecstatic but while I was glad I got a "decent" score, I was still kicking myself for failing where I should NOT have. When finding the area of a solid rotated about the x-axis, I had done the integral from 0 to 2 of pi(4x-x^2)^2, which is ridiculous! I should have taken the outer radius and subtracted the inner, like so: pi(4x)^2 - pi(x^2)^2. I apologized to the teacher. I knew better than that and felt like I'd failed her. She said that I didn't need to apologize, I had a good score! :(

But not one to dwell on it very long, by the time I had exited through the door of the classroom, I'd forgotten all about it and went on my merry way to Chemistry class. Today we were supposed to hand in our assignments that we worked on this last week. I had forgotten completely about it. Not that I hadn't done it, oh no, I had finished it last Wednesday so after it was completed I just put it out of my mind. Lots of other students were scrambling to finish it, copying eachother's papers. I worked out all of my problems with one of the TA Chemistry majors so if I get them wrong I can blame it on him!

On assignment days like this, people usually come in, drop off their assignments and then skip class, feeling they deserve it or something I guess. The professor has commented many times on just how rude it is to walk out on your professor so today he did something about it. After class had started and been going for a little bit, he mentioned the situation once again and then proceeded to hand out little slips of paper with a place for your section number and name. He said it was "pop-quiz" time! Everyone who could fill in their name and section number got at least 10 extra credit points, while those who belonged to the class and yet didn't fill out a slip (which would mean they were absent), when the time came to make the cut in grades and it was very close between a C and a B, guess what they would get?

The students were all delighted, I found it quite amusing myself. Serves those guys right for skipping class, we can all rub it in next time. The guy sitting next to me joked that he hadn't studied for it, to which the teacher replied that well, it was an open-book quiz and we were allowed to use programmable calculators if we wanted. It was rich.

My Economics class was canceled today and I knew that, but I dropped by the room just in case. No one else was there so I guess they all knew today was a day off. Me, I like to check in just to make sure I didn't misunderstand. On the way back to the car I was just dying for the crosswalk to turn while I was still a long way back. Sure enough, as I came over the top of the hill, it turned green and I couldn't help myself. I had to make a dash for it! Students were crowding the sidewalk so I vaulted the grass divider and into the bike lane. There were no cars on the road and also no bikers, but I could outrun most of the bikers anyway). I heard a couple of exclamations as I dashed down the street but I was oblivious to everything, caught up in the thrill of just letting loose, backpack swaying madly from side to side, legs pumping, eyes intent on the goal. I reached the other side before the students waiting at the crosswalk had gone across. I leapt over the curb, across the grass and onto the sidewalk before slowing to a walk. I don't know why but sometimes it is just so fun to well.... run! I don't do it for show at all because I'd do just the same if I was the only person there, I do it for the action, the excitement. And someone out there is thinking "you need a life mate." Perhaps, but I enjoy this one while I'm here. *grins*

Speaking of grass..... (here comes the random thoughts of the day section) I saw some today that was coloured, it's normally brown this time of year but they painted it green. Now that is funny to me, I remember seeing it last year during the winter back where my parents live, but seeing it again reminded me. People paint their grass. Hmm. Okay. Funny!

And in the news!
Renne used a technique, known as argon/argon dating, which measures two argon isotopes. It can date rock from 2,000 to 4 billion years old.

The British-led team primarily relied on carbon-14 dating of underlying sediments to come up with their age of 40,000 years. The carbon method can't reliably date material older than about 50,000 years.

Um.... and I just have one question. HOW do you know it's accurate? How do you test it? I mean, I could say that measuring the weight of an object over a period time indicates how old it is. If I weighed it today and it is 3.001 grams, and weigh it again a year from now and it's 3.000 grams, then I can make the assumption that every year, it decreases in weight by .001 grams. So judging by the size that it once weighed about 100 grams, I can correctly assume that it is 97,000 years old! That's ludicrous but it's pretty much how these systems work. They figured in this thing that it must be over 1.2 million years old because it looked like a human footprint and since humans didn't exist back at that period, it must be older than that because of the rock sediment it was found in and not be human. That makes no sense whatsoever. How do you tell if argon/argon dating is accurate? How do you know Carbon dating is accurate to even 50,000 years (which we know from the Bible is not accurate)? You're just making an observation and saying that some action has been occurring for thousands of years. They measure something back in 1950 and then measure it today and get an estimate based upon the difference. Are the measuring instruments used different than they were back then? More accurate? Different methods used? Then how, with something as small as the replacement of carbon over time, can you say how accurate it is? I've heard of many things of which the date was known, being incorrectly carbon dated as being many thousands of years older than it actually was. I guess they realized that the carbon14 dating system was "outdated" so they came up with this Argon/argon system because THAT is more accurate. Men try so hard to blind themselves.

My water is boiling. I've been enjoying a few cups of hot chocolate. I rarely have it and I haven't had any for quite some time so this is a treat! I normally don't drink anything hot, certainly not coffee, tea every once in a while if it's good tea, and hot chocolate perhaps a couple times during the winter. I guess I normally drink milk or water. Today I made my chocolate, went to do a few things for about five minutes and came back and it was barely warm. Kind of like a glass of water at a normal room temperature.

When I went to do dishes today (for er.... the first time in a month perhaps) the water wouldn't come on. Something had frozen underneath so because of that, and since my choclate had cooled down so quickly, I turned on the heat and within a half hour the pipes had melted, the faucet first dripping slowing and finally gushing. Thankfully nothing had broken. I guess I'll leave the heat turned on after this, set low so nothing will freeze over. I did just a couple of days ago switch to my second bottle of propane. It should last until after finals, when my parents will be taking the fifth wheel out and I won't have to worry about conserving it anymore. Not that I really have to worry now, I just make myself believe I do.

Here is a quote from a secular person, but one that I felt aptly described most of mankind:
If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
- Professor Irwin Corey
Now though most people don't like to think about it, that is SO true! This man undoubtedly had another intention in mind. So many are in the town of Destruction yet when warned, they pass it off as fanaticism, or just someone trying to make them lose their self-esteem or something else, deceiving themselves.

The Internet has been down nearly all day today so I'm writing this in TED Notepad (which is much better than Microsoft Notepad, let me tell you!) and hopefully I'll be able to post it tonight. If it's posted late then you'll know why. I guess that's nearly all I have to say tonight. Oh, pray for those with allergies, apparently there is a bit of that going around (F.B., Mr. Y in particular that I know of). And on the subject of prayer, I'm thankful the presbytery meeting went well. I was concerned about that.

I was told that my posts are long. I knew that, I also know that it's undoubtedly boring reading, but since I don't have a journal, this is my place to organize thoughts and share them with whoever will listen. I was also told that some people "skim" through my posts. But then you miss the best parts! When I'm writing to someone on a board, I'll often be completely misunderstood because they skimmed. I try to let every word carry weight, they are ALL (well, almost) equally important! So when a person on a board misunderstands me, it's because they didn't read through my post thoroughly, I can show them my quote. I made it clear, but they didn't read it. Perhaps that's my fault because I write so much. I don't talk much so perhaps it's my way of making up for that. Anyway, I had to insert that random comment ;)

You know, speaking of long posts, I just realized that I have hardly any hair underneath my wrists from resting them on my laptop keyboard here; A sure indication that one has typed too much so I'll close. Good night. :)

Nothin'

Today was rather uneventful, I cleaned up the place a bit, fixed the laser on my Omnintendo (my own creation) and did a little Calculus homework. I did work on my projectile a tiny bit trying to get it ready for the final test this Monday. All I've got left is to attatch the parachute and the lid via a strong and I'm set. Let's just cross our fingers and hope the parachute comes out AND unfolds properly. I'm not sure about that part....

I also had a pleasant surprise, my "mature gamer" friend out East got a USB connector so we were able to play with eachother, me from my camper and her from her house. Now that was fun, being able to do something like that, I had the Instant Messenger on at the same time so we could talk a bit. It's not a computer game by the way, it's that racing game I spoke of earlier: Mario Kart and it's for a handheld system, kind of like a GameBoy you might say, only much better (and made by the same company). She was excited because she didn't think it would be a possibility since she is on dial-up. But her husband found a way to add some initialization strings to their modem and got well... triple their usual speed! So she has "hi-speed dial-up" now and so many good things have come of it, such as being able to play with me! Wait, I didn't mean it that way.....

I decided to take a trip to town to pick up some tape (of the masking variety) and my goodness was the town busy! Wally World was packed, I had to wait in line for a while just to purchase my tape! I don't know why it was so busy... first weekened after Thanksgiving weekend? People are realizing that Christmas is almost here? I'm not sure. What I do know is that after I got out of the store I felt like running to my car, driving home and spending the rest of the day in peace and quiet, away from all that humdrum. Which is what I did of course. I'm not a "man about town" sort of guy. There was a student at my old college who asked me what we did in the mountains, he couldn't imagine how anything could be interesting, it must be boring without being in the city. As for me, I could care less about walking the streets at night or staying up etc. I mean, I like to go to the movies every once in a while or visit the old antique stores on main street but as far as just being out on the town with friends.... I don't see it happening.

Oh, and I watched a few more episodes of "Wanted: Dead of Alive." I like it, I don't know what the reason is for the gun he has but it sure looks nice, his trademark weapon. A sawed off lever action Winchester that he has on his hip like a six-shooter, it kind of swivels out of it's socket really awesome-like.

I really should have written some about last week, but didn't feel like it today. I'm tired this weekend for some reason. And I'm looking forward to church tomorrow (very much as usual) so I'm gonna go now. I'll leave you with a short flash cartoon of Strong Bad!

http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail64.html

Free at last!

I think the hardest part is over. I am actually kind of glad that this campus has a "dead week" (something I'd never heard of before) because it will allow me to concentrate on studying for my finals. Everything that is due next week I've already finished so from here it seems like a clear ride! I'm not too excited about my Chemistry final but he said that the questions should be similar to the ones throughout the semester (it's comprehensive) so I should be okay as long as I can answer all the old questions, especially the ones I missed. Anyway.... I don't have a whole lot of pressing school work to do so I'm happy. I'm actually rather excited about my new classes next semester. I want to meet the teachers and learn new things. Should be interesting!

I just had a thought today. You know, I've been treasurer of the Reformed Presbyterian group on campus for the last couple of months and I have no idea what is going on. There have been no meetings to my knowledge so nothing to do. I'd nearly forgotten about it! Not that I'm anxious to have a meeting but it just came to my mind today.

The Calculus test went fine, I felt very confident on all of my answers. Apparently a lot of people had trouble finishing the test but the teacher DID give us a practice test beforehand if we wanted to well... practice. I bet the ones who didn't finish didn't practice. I did the practice test and thought that the actual one was a lot easier so it helped me a lot. I don't know why but I just get all excited when it comes time to take a test. The students around me are dreading it and exclaiming "oh man! I should have studied!" and I think that perhaps me, grinning like Cheshire, might give them cause to doubt my sanity. Oh well. I like tests because they are a challenge. It's me against the problem.

Then there was Chemistry which was as uneventful as ever. I'm not too interested in the shape of atoms I guess, whether a molecule is tetrahedral, bi-pyramidal or whatever else. I can't really see and test it myself. I suppose it's useful for some disciplines (well, a lot in fact) but probably not Electrical Engineering.
The only interesting thing that happened was a student dropped his pencil (he was next to the aisle) and it rolled down a short ways. Instead of sliding out of his seat a few inches and picking it up (like I would have done) he taps the guy in front of him a couple times, gets his attention and then asks him to grab his pencil for him. He never even looked like he was going to leave his chair. It just seemed slightly lazy to me. It would have cost him almost no effort to do it himself.

Then was my Economics test. Which wasn't too bad but it wasn't incredibly easy either. I'm confident of an A but (oh no!) it might be an A- or something! We'll see how it goes. I think I have all the correct answers but usually I miss one due to my own misunderstanding or just.... dumbness. I hate when I do that and have to kick myself.

I dropped by to see Mr. Yule really quick afterwards but I knew he would be heading out so I didn't hold him up. I just wanted to know how the Reformed Presbyterian meeting went. Apparently it went better than it could have. I'm looking forward to hearing about it in more detail on Sunday.

While going down the building... I just "happened" to pass by my Calculus teacher's office. She hadn't graded the tests from two hours before yet though. I guess I am just too curious about scores. Then I went down to my Java professor's office. Today at midnight is the due date for Program 8, which I finished thankfully but I had a printout and wanted to ask him a question about something in my program. There were a few students waiting before me and they couldn't get their programs to compile so they were asking the professor for help. When it was my turn Dr. C asked what I needed and I said that my problem was that my program worked perfectly, but I didn't understand why one part did what it did (essentially I didn't understand why when invoking the array it used the "toString" method from the Cars class). He grinned and said "Your program working correctly is a problem?" He explained to me, in about a minute why it was doing what it did (because the array was an object in the Cars class) and I thanked him because what he said made sense. I was probably the only student who came to him today with a program that was working correctly!

On the way down from his office I walked down the stairs, saw the number "1" (indicating the first floor) next to the door but I absently kept going. Down the next flight of stairs I saw the sign that said "basement." Hmm, that can't be right! So back up to the first floor. I blame it on the fact that I've been programming with Java and using arrays and the first object in an array is at the position "0" (zero). So the first floor should be the second right? *sigh
No matter what excuse I use, I still ended up at the basement.

Someone had left a small message on the board in Chemistry class, it said:
OSU Brothers Under Christ
Beta Upsilon Chi
Psalm 133:1 Rho Chapter

There was no other information but it may be interesting to check it out. I don't know exactly what it is, or how deep or "right on" it is. Has anyone else ever heard of that group?
Not much going on right now. Oh, I watched two episodes of "Wanted: Dead or Alive" today, with good old Steve McQueen. It was pretty good. For a western that is. ;)

tempPost.equals(this)

I remembered reading this and a recent comment reminded me so I dug it up. I thought it was interesting but certainly dramatized. The e-mail claimed that Einstein was the student, I'm not sure if he was or not. I rather liked the analogy though.


The university professor challenged his students with this
question: "Did God create everything that exists?"

A student bravely replied "Yes, he did!"

"God created everything?" the professor persisted.

"Yes, sir," the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created
evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works
define who we are, then God is evil."

The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the
students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question,
professor?"

"Of course," replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

The professor replied, "Of course it exists. Have you never been
cold?"

The students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact, sir, cold does not exist. According
to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence
ofheat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and
heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute
zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat. Cold does not exist. We
have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

The student continued. "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong, sir. Darkness does
not exist either.
Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but
not darkness.
In fact, we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many
colors and study the various wavelengths of each color.

"You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a
world of darkness and illuminate it.

"How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the
amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to
describe what happens when there is no light present."

The professor was silent, as was the entire class.

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course, as I have already
said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's
inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in
the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist, sir, or at least
it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is
just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the
absence of God.

"God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man
does not have God', It's like the cold
that comes when there is no heat
or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

A boy and his computer

I've got a bunch of little things to mention that I jotted down on the back of an envelope today so I wouldn't forget. First of all, I forgot to say that I went to the college group Bible study last night. It's kind of odd that I'm a visitor in a way, since I started out there the first two weeks of this semester. Anyway, the discussion was very good, led by Mr. S about apologetics and basically how a humanist/evolutionist doesn't have a consistent world view. I have often confronted people online with questions about that, not in a haughty manner of course but just posing the question. If you believe in evolution and survival of the fittest, then what is wrong with Hitler slaughtering the Jews? He was just eliminating those who were not surviving. Why was he "evil" and what is your definition of evil if you believe that? If a pride of lions could eliminate their weaker members and we think nothing of it, then why do we become outraged when something like September 11th happens? All of that seems very hard to rationalize (?) if you don't have a biblical world view. In fact, the biblical view is the only one that makes any sense at all! The Bible reveals man for what he truly is, a fallen sinner whose only thoughts are evil.

One guy on a message board a few years ago (back between September 11th, 2001 and the war in Iraq) said that he thought that if there was no religion in the world then we wouldn't have all of these religious fanatics trying to convert everyone and everyone would be a whole lot happier. That was so far off I didn't know where to begin! I started by saying that without religion (or Christianity specifically) there would be absolutely not basis for morals! What is to prevent me from taking another person's property if it makes me happier? Well, he said that everyone would live by the "Golden Rule" and treat others how you would want to be treated and only seek your own pleasure as far as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Well, I guess all business is out the door, we'll all just sit in our huts and hope no one bothers us and we'll try not to bother anyone else either, we'll starve (because gathering food might hurt some other animal who needs it) and die and the world might be better off anyway.

Mr. S pointed made a good point, that when someone dies, even the staunchest athiest will mourn if it is a close relative. To the evolutionist though, that is inconsistent since their belief is that that person was just an animated mass of atoms that really had no ultimate purpose and was hurting the ecological system of the world so good riddance. To me, the path down that type of logic (?) is very scary, yet one would have to accept that to be consistent. Suffice it to say that last night's discussion was interesting and one that I've often contemplated.

Another inconsistency that I see is the horrible wholesale slaughter of human babies that goes on in this country and around the world, but if you even talk about tying kittens in a bag and drowning them, the animal rights people are on your back and the entire country is in an uproar. I just don't understand and I don't think most people even think of their inconsistencies. They would rather deceive themselves and live in their imaginary world than accept the truth: they are WRONG!

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
- Laurens Van der Post

Oh! Here's an interesting link,
http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/12/01/0042204.shtml?tid=99&tid=14
(you may have to run your mouse out past the margin of the blog to get it all, it ends in "14") about how scientists are afraid that Europe might experience a small ice age because of decreasing currents in the ocean! Oh my goodness! And here I thought global warming was supposed to be taking place. To the believer, nothing like this is in the slightest scary. People always talking about wars and rumours of wars and how we're going to blow ourselves up or fall into the sun or freeze, or overheat with green-house gases or something. But we know it will be here until the Lord's return and that's the important thing. It can blow up after that.

If your post looks too short, throw in a couple of random quotes. They always make good filler space and keep the reader on their toes trying to find the train of thought in the multiple places it derailed.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
- George Bernard Shaw

I forgot to mention yesterday that we also made some soap in the chemistry lab! It was made with some sort of surfactanct and then lard, so it was supposed to be something like lye soap I think but it didn't work too well. Believe me, I tried and my hands were very greasy afterward.

For some reason today I was thinking of a story I read a long time ago, when a man was pulled over by the highway patrol and given a ticket.... for practicing his flute while driving! Apparently it got boring driving back and forth and he didn't want to waste all that time so he was using his knees to steer while practicing playing his flute. Hey! You could clip a sheet of music to the steering wheel with a clothes pin and there you go! It just MIGHT be a little dangerous though, not only is your concentration going elsewhere (like all those crazy people constantly on the cell phones) but if something happened in front of you, a car swerves or something, you'd have to put the instrument down and get your hands on the steering wheel fast, no matter how talented your knees are. So don't try it F.B.

In California, where there were a lot of working ladies and we were building a house for some people who lived near Santa Barbara, my dad would comment on how they would be driving, with a cell phone between their shoulder and ear, a cup of coffee, and putting on lipstick all at the same time! Quite a feat if you ask me (or feet, which they must be using to drive with).

I had my early morning class and then after that about a four hour span in between in which I worked on my Java lab (I did it early instead of in the afternoon) and worked on my program that was due Midnight this Friday. It was a very difficult assignment and I puzzled over it for a long time and after three hours had gone by I still wasn't quite there. I went to the Java class and then came back to the lab afterwards to try some more and I don't know, but sometimes if you leave something and come back to it with a fresh outlook, you see things you didn't before. I had made an error in the logic of my for loops in combination with my while loop which wasn't allowing the proper data to be written to the array, instead it was just replacing the first field in the array with the data that was entered next time, so the rest of the array wasn't being used at all! That's pretty bad isn't it?

So I finally got that fixed, cleaned up, and submitted so I'm done with that. Now all I've got left is the Calculus and Economics tests tomorrow and one section of Calculus homework and then fix up my projectile for Monday! Wow! This week has been flying by so fast and yet things are getting done thankfully.

While working on my program (and already slightly frustrated at my own lack of skill) a guy behind me started "rapping." Yikes! It nearly drove me nuts! He went on for about ten minutes while I tried to drown him out but it was very annoying. Thankfully I couldn't understand any words because it sure sounded like there may have been some bad ones. I wanted to ask him to pipe down but I don't know, he may have perceived that as racist or something, he's one of the lolly-gaggers in the class who never seems to finish the labs and goofs off the whole time. When I stood up to leave a guy asked me if I remembered what I did for my "for" loop on the lab. I said not exactly but went over to his computer and took a look. He pointed to it:
for(numCar ...
And I (smiling inwardly) said, well, first you have to declare your counter, or where your loop is going to start to increment, such as
for(int j = 0; .....
And he said Oh! Like this loop here then? And scrolled down to another one. I said yes and he said "thanks man."
I mean, we're supposed to have mastered loops before the LAST exam, all the "for" loops we have been working ALL started with declaring where your counter was going to start. It's like saying "Oh, you mean THAT sentence starts with a capital letter too? You mean like this one here? Okay, I see, thanks man."

As I was leaving I noticed how cool it was outside, though it was about 2:30 or 3:00, the air outside was still piercingly cold but not too cold to require a jacket. I walked back down the two blocks to my car and when about halfway there I passed by my Calculus teacher! I was surprised because I actually (from the back) didn't think it was her. So I slowed down (yes, I passed but she was going the same way) and we chatted a little while on the way to the vehicles, she parks very close to me in the mornings. There wasn't really anything of major note, just talking about classes and how she's going to be taking Economics since that's her brother's major and she wants to be able to understand him a little when he's talking and things like that. I started thinking that actually, I think all of my teachers this semester know my name, which is actually pretty amazing considering that I have 2 classes with over 200 people in each (they are in auditoriums) and then the other three.... It's just interesting. It's not as though I am constantly in their offices asking for help, I actually don't know why they know my name. Curious.

As a closing note, I turned on the TV for a few minutes today and saw another one of those Trix commercials. I don't personally like Trix cereal but I have to feel sorry for that rabbit. Those kids are ALWAYS taking his cereal and saying "Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!" Same thing with Lucky Charms. The poor Leprechaun is always trying to escape those voracious kids who are after his cereal and then they end up catching him and taking it for themselves. It makes me sad.

Sort of.... ;)