Parents and Philosophy

My parents are at a craft show right now, unloading, unwrapping, painting, organizing, and tarping their work, just to name a few of the things they need to do before Saturday comes around. I think this is the first year that Mom and Dad have done all the setup by themselves. They've usually had me or one of the other kids to help out with the work. I hope everything goes well for them - four days of setup may sound like a lot, but the time flies while setting up.

I'm readying a book right now "Voyage From Yesteryear". It's a pretty good book portraying how the author sees a near-perfect human world operating. There are problems that come in from the outside, but by the end of the book, you see that the "Chironians" (residents of the planet Chiron) had everything well in had, and there wasn't even much worry about the final outcome from the Chironian side. I would like to quote from the book, a line I think is pretty accurate describing man and his capabilities.

I said the mind was an infinite resource, but only if you don't squander it. Don't you think that makes an interesting paradox?

My lunch break is almost over, so I need to get prepared for work again. I hope everyone has a good weekend. I'm planning to go snorkelling again this Saturday. Remember I said I had some friends down here, just not my own age? Well, it looks like there is an outside possibility one of those friends would go snorkeling next weekend/July 4th - around that time. Time will tell. Now I must go exercise my brain cell through work.

The Unplanned Life

I've been down in Florida for five months (almost). I can't say that is has been anything special, but there are a few things that I've learned/grown used to.

• I've gotten used to washing my own clothes on a regular basis. I don't go home weekends any more, so I can't give my mom the joy of doing something for her kids. :-)
• Sandals have become a new love in my life. I had to wear them after I had my surgery, and I found I really like wearing sandals. Getting used to the sandals was a three day process, but after breaking them in, I wear sandals all the time now.
• Excess weight keeps stalking my every move. If only I could give up Taco Johns. It is still a work in progress.
• Gave up cable TV. TV just sucks up all the free time in an evening, and I enjoy working on my hobbies far more than sitting in front of a TV - so I gave TV up. I still watch movies though.
  
• Web sites are tougher than I thought. I tried designing one for my sister, but I just couldn't keep slogging through it. I tried designing one for myself - that didn't even get off the ground. I assumed it would be like programming, but I can't keep up website design like I do programming. Maybe I just need to get better at HTML and CSS.
• Programming is enjoyable. I've found that I really do enjoy the challenge of programming. I especially enjoy moving from topic to programming topic - I don't master any of them, but I do learn enough to be satisfied before I move on. Example: My IO language kick earlier moved into some OpenGL push which is moving into a vector graphics format interest (all done within the framework of the cool IO language). Why are there no general purpose vector graphic formats available?
• I found that I enjoyed scuba diving and snorkelling. I'm planning to go snorkelling again this weekend if anyone wants to join me.
• Without constant extemp pressure, I don't keep up on current events nearly as well as I should.
• It is definitely lonely without someone to accompany me on weekends or evenings. I have made a few friends, but none my age with my interests, so the friendships are more a "I'll say hi and ask what's going on, then leave". After mulling it over this weekend, I'm going to go swing dancing to meet people my age. At least conversation won't center around what work is like... and hopefully conversation won't center around sports either.
  

Snorkeling or Snorkelling

I went snorkeling ( spelling can also be snorkelling ) at Blue Springs this weekend and found it to be a blast! When I was doing my training dives, I did some snorkelling then, but with the wetsuit, I could barely go 15 feet. Without the wetsuit, it was quite easy to dive down deep. In fact, I go lower than I did scuba diving. 60 feet down to be exact. Getting down that far though didn't give any time to look around though, so usually I tried to hang out about 50 feet. There were some rock ledges that I could hold onto so I didn't start floating up. There really isn't much to see at that depth other than the rock formations the spring carves.

If I ever go snorkeling with a scuba diving buddy, I want to try a cave that is thirty feet down. I don't know how long it is, but it took the scuba instructors about 3o seconds to do it with scuba equipment. At only thirty feet down, I figure a 30 second jaunt through the cave is definitely doable, but I would want someone to be able to rescue me if I didn't come out!

For those of you who thing snorkeling might be fun - some warnings.

1. Don't hyperventilate to hold your breath longer and stay under. Hyperventilating fools your body into thinking there is more oxygen than there really is. When you reach the point that 11 percent of the air in your lungs is oxygen, your body realizes that it got out of sync with your brain, so it knocks you out so you don't keep trying to do crazy stuff like hold your breath too long: unfortunately for you, you're underwater at that point, and the body's technique fails. This usually happens about 15 feet, because divers tend to cut the dive close, and 15 feet is where your brain and body happen to catch up.
2. Don't accept air from a scuba diver. The air at 60 feet down is under 3 atmospheres. If you hold your breath at all coming up, your lung can be damaged from expanding air. While scuba diving, we're told not to hold our air at all, because even while we're floating, waves on the surface can be changing our effective pressure. Even 4 foot differences is enough for small damage. It takes years for that much to be a problem, but snorkelers can cover 15 coming up within a second. (The rate you rise continues to increase as you float towards the surface)
3. For the same reason as number two, don't use air pockets you find underwater. The cave I want to dive through has an air pocket. If desperate, I would use it, but then again, I already know what to do if I'm rising to the surface with compressed air in my lungs (blow small bubbles out constantly.) This year, a kid had a problem because he used that air pocket at blue springs and didn't know what scuba divers know.

There are some advantages that you get while snorkeling, that you don't get above the surface. When you put your face under the surface, a few survival features your body has kicks into gear

1. Bradycardia - a 20 percent drop in heart rate occurs while under water - nice!
2. Vasoconstriction - your blood vessels start supplying the vital parts of your body by constricting the vessels in your arms and legs. If you're in and emergency and in cold water a long time, this can save your life (at the cost of your appendiges possibly.) While snorkeling, it just means your oxygen consumption drops.
3. Splenic contraction - One function of your spleen is to hold oxygenated red blood cells in reserve until needed. Diving underwater triggers this mechanism and boom! You have even more oxygen saturated blood cells than you did before! Apparently in seals, the spleen has been seen to contract to 16% of it's original size. I have no idea how much contraction occurs in humans
4. Blood shift - occurs because of the pressure drop. blood plasma fills up the vessels in the lungs to reduce volume. This keeps your lungs from collapsing in on itself at depths greater than 30 feet. Doesn't help you stay under longer, but it does mean you can have a fun experience if you go beneath 30 feet!
   

That is all folks! Hope it was an informative lesson on snorkeling. If you have any questions, just ask in comments. I'm sure Wikipedia also has something very informative and better arranged than my lists.

Fun fact: Umberto Peliazari's heart rate drops to 8 beats a minute while diving.

IO Language - Open GL

I've been experimenting with the OpenGL addon for IO and my result is below.
There is no actual code behind this to enter text or anything. This was just a test program to see if I could get IO's implementation of OpenGL running. I don't know the problem was before, but the last version of IO I had was a bit buggy when importing addons. Last week I downloaded a new version, and everything in OpenGL was working wonderfully.








Here is my IO code for those who are interested.

Planned Parenthood Problems

I've never been a fan of Planned Parenthood. Their whole philosophy is against what I believe as a Christian. Their "birth control" options include emergency contraceptives and abortion, both of which happen after conception. They go so far as to say that "Today, abortion is legal nationwide and is one of the safest of all available medical procedures.

This is hardly a newly acquired dislike of Planned Parenthood, but yesterday I came across some more information on Planned Parenthood that was chilling - the operators on the phone were willingly ignoring rape and doing all they could not to know about it and telling the person on the phone to not tell anyone about it. This wasn't just one or two instances; apparently over 800 operators country wide were found to ignore statutory rape AFTER they knew about it (and told the reporter how to not get their boyfriend in trouble) . The setup was a 13 year old girl getting pregnant with a 22 year old boyfriend.

Widespread corruption and dismissal of laws by Planned Parenthood. Never a good situation, especially in an organization dealing with human life.

Hate Crimes

I've been following/catching up on news lately and there were a few issues that I thought I would share with readers.

The first issue is that of hate crimes. I've always had a strong dislike for hate crime laws because of the principle involved: the government mandates different punishments based solely on what you are thinking. I don't have a problem with differing punishments for the same crime... maybe I should elucidate a few of my philosophies and beliefs first.

beliefs:
1) Sin deserves punishment.
2) Mercy is quality man can show

Personal idea (as far as I can tell it is based on the Bible)
1) The mortal punishment for sin is based on actual action.
2) The punishment for an action may be based on the belief
behind an action, but we're only given physical actions to
judge.
3) Government has never been shown or told to be merciful
4) Man should be merciful (and wise, don't forget that part)

Conclusion ( short at this point, since I spent so long on the first part ):
1) Government should mandate punishment based only on physical action
2) Government can mandate a range of punishment so that the implementors of the law (men such as judges and juries) are able to show mercy.
3) Governments role is not to differentiate punishment for the same actions through the thought, which is the definition of what hate crime laws do.

A general overview of the issue
Overview according to HSLDA
The text of the law at issue - HR 1592 RFS
The definition of a hate crime the above law uses - H.R. 3355

Whew - OK. its getting late now, I'll post the next issue tomorrow. Let me know if I made some huge flubs or if my conclusions or basis don't flow together well

Family Visit Plans

Another big program done for my boss. It still needs to be tested, but I managed to finish it in four days - and that includes a new feature my boss wanted added - user defined pictures displayed on the dialogs. That took a full day. The good thing about it is that features that I would have said were impossible without a big program are now able to be found and implemented by me! Six months back, I had tried the same project of adding pictures and spent three or four days on it before my boss told me to move onto something more productive. Six months later? One day to find, implement, and test!

I know most of you aren't interested in my slowly advancing programming skills, so I'll move onto something a bit more family oriented.... MY SISTER IS COMING DOWN!!!! She is planning to visit sometime in August, and M seems set to come down. It's going to be cool! I guess she just can't get enough teasing from mom and dad - it's up to the master to properly tease and poke her! (Maybe not poke... she's can catch up to me and poke me back. Must be all that lifting at work... or I'm out of shape? Or both! )

I just hope that she has enough fun and see enough sites and enjoys my sophisticated and calm company enough that she is glad she came down. It's a bit nerve racking thinking that she would come all this way to visit and not have fun. :-(

But! Margaret is Margaret and she will do what she wants, and I hope you have fun! I'll see you in August!

And as official notice - Blue Springs this weekend. I am going to try snorkeling, and if my sister likes it enough, maybe she'll want to try it at a spring or the ocean.


A picture of me preparing to scuba dive, I wasn't quite ready for a picture, or I would have shown off my sculpted body a bit better. ;0)

Zoom

I watched "Zoom: Academy for Superheroes" tonight, and I have to say, I'm putting it up there just above "Shark Boy and Lava Girl." In case of mistake, I did want to mention that "Shark Boy..." was high on my enjoyment radar. What I found impressive about "Zoom" was the fact that the producers didn't skimp on special effects when needed. I don't remember seeing any wimpy special effects during the whole thing.

And for a final update on the car... perfect! It has been a full week since I repaired the brakes and wheel cylinder and I don't see any leaks at this point. Whoo hoo!

Workwise, I've spent about sixteen hours working on a big inventory program, and I'll guess another few days before finishing. For a big master program, a week. That portends good things for smaller programs!

Car Repair - Part Two

'Tis done! I had to disassemble the brakes a few more times during the test phase of the tires - but I think I fixed all of my brake fluid leaks. It is extremely nice to be able to pull up to a stop light and push on the breaks and not have to keep pushing the brakes over and over to push more break fluid into the lines. It does make me pay a lot more attention to the small sounds the car makes... "Is that small knocking sound every time the wheel goes around from changes I've made these last two days or was it there before and I never noticed it?"

I have a new life's ambition - daredevil gymnastics

When I saw the Chinese gymnastics at the boat races a month or two back, I saw some of the kids practicing, and they did some moves just as neat as these, but nothing quite as risky. My favorite move I saw a few months back was seeing the boy lay on the ground on his back with his elbows on the ground and his hands up, and the girl do a hand stand on his hands. At this point, the boy would roll over and over, keeping the girl on his hands. At this point, I can't remember exactly how he managed to do that while on his stomach? I don't even have a video of it. I'll bring a camera next year though!

Car Repair - Part One

Today I took the first big steps of becomeing self-sufficient: I tried to repair my car. Specifically, my back brakes were leaking, so I'm replacing the back wheel cylinders and brake pads. Starting about eleven, and going until 7:30, I managed to do one back wheel. In the process, I stripped screw and broke a break line. The last two, I'm not going to count against my car repair ability, since my overseer was 99% certain the last car repair place I took my car to did it to make it harder for me ( long story, maybe I'll elucidate one day ).

lessons learned from this experience?
1) Estimations on time are always short
2) You can't repair a car and keep your hands clean
3) Even the cleaning materials get your hands dirty
4) Thank my boss over and over for having me get a car repair manual first
5) A car repair manual for a complicated job like this is VERY useful
6) Not having all the tools makes car repair extremely hard
7) I now know how my back braking system works
8) I have a car repair manual for other fixes ( such as air conditioning fan )
9) I still have a long way to go tomorrow for the other side's repair
10) I feel confident that I could repair something if I needed to do so

Debit, Credits, and Calculator Troubles

The debits and credits aren't so much trouble, but setting up the file access protocol for my program is a bear. I think a solid day would be a big step forward - unfortunately I don't have day.

For work, I've spend the last 12 hours programming a calculator. It's a lot harder than it looks. Most of the time was just trying to figure out how things were supposed to work together. Simple you say? Only a calculator you say? Let me share but one of the problems I had. I STARTED with a simple order of operation, on 3 separate calculators, along with their results. I posted my final version at the bottom.

# - is any number you enter - I tend to use nine because it is the easiest for me to reach.
() - between the parenthesis is the result of the buttons pressed. Try it out on your calculator. See what format you get into. My second boss was also following along on a second calculator and had a different format than listed, but I didn't bother to catalog it, since my boss had already decided on a general format by then.

Casio Calculator
#= (#)
#/= (1/#)
#*= (#*#)
#+= (#)
#-= (#-#)

Window Calculator
#= (#)
#/= (#/#)
#*= (#*#)
#+= (#+#)
#-= (#-#)

Adv Calculator - our old software's calculator
#= (0)
#/= (#/0)(Divide by zero error)
#*= (#*0)
#+= (#+0)
#-= (#-0)

The calculator format my boss chose and I programmed
#= (#)
#/= (#)
#*= (#)
#+= (#)
#-= (#)

Such simple operations vary so much. The more involved such as a double equals, square root, percentage, varied drastically. The "%" especially was loco - though the button looked the same on different calculators, they didn't even do close to the same operations.

Keeping is Lazy

I'm staying lazy involuntarily. I had a hang nail and went to a podiatrist to get it removed, thus I now have to stay away from strenuous activities that involve toes. Fortunately, by carefully ignoring doctor's orders, I managed to bike six miles yesterday... and walked three today. I did make one small concession to the doctor and wore sandles for both activities. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my trip to blue springs this weekend and skip pain class. This coming weekend, I really want to go to SeaWorld, so I'm going to move my trip to Blue Springs back two weeks. I can't wait to try out my underwater camera in clear water - my earlier pictures were too dark.

In other exciting news: I now know the difference between a credit and a debit without a doubt. Very useful - especially since my job is programming accounting software!