2 More Days Until Home Sweet Home

Oh no! I can't believe I missed a day in the countdown! Last night I was SURE I had made a post in the morning, but I must have been quite... wrong.

I was drinking some Gatorade yesterday morning and looking at the bottle while I sipped it. I was looking at the various vitamins and chemicals they put in it and I noticed that it had an extremely low calorie count. All the other sports drinks (at least they are advertised as such) and 'energy booster' are so packed with sugar (and caffeine sometimes) that they only reason you feel good afterward is the high you are on. Thus it is that Gatorade was a happy surprise to be an exception to the rest of the world's sugar boosts. Not having a lot of sugar would explain why it tastes so watery today.

I watched the tail end of "30 First Dates". I'm not sure that is the name of the movie, but it is close. It's about a lady who is in an accident and can only remember one day at a time. Adam Sandler plays the man who falls in love with her. (he meets her after the accident) Every day he works hard to help her through the day and makes her fall in love with him day after day, only to not remember who Adam is in the morning. I won't spoil the ending, but it didn't quite end like I was expecting and that it was a very nice but sad ending. Whenever I get the chance, I'm planning on renting it and seeing it from beginning to end. Warning - the TV channel I watched it on is a clean channel, and anything over a PG13 would probably have been removed. I would suggest you check the rating before renting - Adam Sandler movies aren't my favorites usually and they are often not clean.

Ah, my time to start work has come. The countUP continues with no ill effects. If anything, I feel great. I'm also farther along "Starship Troopers" but have not finished yet.

4 More Days Until Home Sweet Home

The thing that most shocks me about going to the beach on Tuesday is the sticking power of the sea shell fragments that the beach was made of. Even now, I found two more near my right ankle and one near my right Achilles tendon. I guess it is sticking on by suction, but wow, how does it to manage to stay on through socks, pant legs and showers where I know I rubbed my ankles. Maybe, when I get to heaven, I'll make that my first question, "How did those shell pieces stay on so long?", because I've been finding a few every day for the last week, and I'm guessing I'll still find a few for the next week. What could possible make them stay on so long?

But as fascinating as the shells are, I can't imagine anyone else being interested though. As far as Sunday's go, this one was pretty nice. I organized some of my clothes so I know what to take back Thursday and what to leave here. I've decided that over half my books won't be getting read and will come home with me. Part of the reason I'm not reading the books I brought is that there are good books here I'm reading. I've reread part of Perilandra by CS Lewis and I'm in the middle of reading Starship Troopers. I had seen the movie based off the book and didn't think too much of it. The book is much better. It's mostly describing a system where responsibility and duty is the highest ideal - where they will "make a solder of you or kill you trying". It's an interesting book. I'll let you know my final thoughts when I finish it.

5 More Days Until Home Sweet Home

The countdown to home continues! I just learned today that Dan will also be making a weekend trip back to his home, but for him, it will be near the beginning of August. But me!... I get to go back within the week! In other fascinating, but useless news: it took four days after my beach adventure, but I am finally starting to peel from the sunburn I got at the beach. Yeah, yeah, it is a bit ‘unrefined’ to talk about peeling skin, but hey! Jesse would agree with me that it’s cool. Next time I'll save one spot without sunscreen and see what a real burn look like. :-) Or maybe not.

I’ll stop grossing people out with the details of my personal hygiene, but since I’m finished talking about that, I'm afraid there isn't much more to report.... How about some details of things around the house?!! We usually have one meal a day out at Taco Johns or perhaps Checkers. I usually go for two SUPER BURITTOS. In case you're wondering, they are burritos - but super. My boss makes great meals. Usually he's too busy, but he makes a great spaghetti sauce, wonderful chicken, and good beans. That's only once or twice a week, but it's nice to sit down and have a quite meal, because no one talks during lunch, breakfast, or dinner. Somehow, it's an unspoken agreement that meals are off limits for conversations. One little piece of information – apparently last week was the first time they’ve made cookies since they both got married and move into the house…. we’re such a bad influence!

And my other count-up is at day 3. Beat that Mom!

Stay tuned for the next installment where I reveal more shocking details of the day to day life of the recently made beardless redhead!

6 More Days Until Home Sweet Home

The weekend is coming up. I don't think I'll do anything as exciting (or painful) as going to the beach again. In fact, I'll probably end up working Saturday since I took most of the 4th off. Going to the beach was nice to do once, but going to the beach on the 4th of July is not the brightest idea I had. It took almost 45 minutes to find a good spot to park along a 7 mile beach. The beach was a lot of fun when we (again, my programmers in crime were along) finally found a spot on the beach and spread out our towels. I put sun-lotion on, but I definitely missed sections. Along my left should is a spot of sunburn and in the middle of the spot is a streak of white where the sunblock got put on by one finger.

The beach was different than the others I saw. Most beaches I see are sand and waves. On this beach, the sand was broken up sea-shells. It looked like sand, but far more colorful. I dug down about a foot, but all I found were more pieces of finely broken shells. I spent at least 15 minutes just playing with the sea-shell sand. Most sand I play with is... sand. The sea shells changed the whole feel of the sand, and when I played with it, it moved a lot like water when pushing it around. Pushing my index finger into the sand and then moving it was like pushing a finger through water - the shell pieces would flow right around my finger and the trail the finger left was barely visible.

My other favorite part were the waves. After seeing the waves, I was slightly disappointed that I hadn't brought a body board, but the waves were large enough that if I timed one right, I could ride one for 5-10 seconds by just letting it push me along. The key was to push away from the wave, just before the wall of water hit you; that way, the inertia the water imparted gave me enough speed to stay abreast of the wave. Until it finally crashed down around me. :-)

I plan on going to the beach at least one more time this summer and it will be on a easy going, non-holiday date. Don't worry Mom, now that I know what spots I tend to miss, I can make sure to cover them with sunscreen!

To Infinity and Beyond!

Well, maybe not infinity, but the shuttle launch here in Florida was quite an impressive site. After sunning at the beach, my programming associates (ooooo. Sounds impressive!) and I, started driving toward the launch site to see how close we could come before the launch.

We had considered stopping near the beach to watch the launch, because there was a HUGE bridge - at least... 50 feet off the ground. Although it sounds low, I'm guessing it was the highest point around for 40 miles around. We decided to bypass that and go for a closer launch site. We're driving on I-95 (at least I think we were), and there were trees as far as we could see to our left and right with no breaks and high spots. We went for 20 miles without a break in the trees or a hill in sight. Finally, we take a small right turn and see a small, arched bridge about a mile ahead of us. The bridge was 20 feet high or so at the highest point, but it was enough for that area. So we start driving towards the bridge and an announcer comes on the radio saying the launch will be in 31 seconds, and that it had already been delayed a minute. Well... we made it to the bridge in time. :-D

Just as the we heard NASA finish the countdown and say launch, we finished parking... about 3 seconds later we saw the rocket climb above the tree. We were still 20 miles away from the launch site, but the rocket was bright enough that you couldn't look at it with your bare eyes. It was like stepping out into the snow on a sunny day... It's not so bright you need to close you're eyes, but still bright enough that you need to look away until you eyes adjust.... but then there are people like me - with sunglasses! Without them, I would have missed a lot of the details.

I got to see the booster rockets get released and fall off and fall towards the earth, and I saw the secondary power boost appear, and I even got to see the shuttle turn that off and start it's thrusting rockets to oriented it towards it's destination... I'm estimating I lost sight of it about 50 miles up.... After I lost sight of it, I finally looked back at where it came out of the trees and the smoke from the fuel was firm enough and large enough that it looked like a small cumulonimbous cloud that hadn't yet developed it's anvil. :-) It was quite a trail of smoke.

It lasted under 5 minutes, but it was a cool five minutes.

High Bid, Low Bid.

I know, I know. It may be shocking to see two posts go up within one day of each other. Try not to get too worried; it won't happen too often. :-)

I went to an auction yesterday. The auction lasted about 4 hours, though I didn't stay the whole time. It is a weekly event, but there isn't much I'm interested in at the moment. It's mostly glassware, furniture, pictures, silverware, tables, and anything else that could be seen as an ornament for a house. 45 seconds per auction, $30 average price, lasting four hours.... = ((60 * 4) * 30)/ (3/4) = $9266.66 dollars spent that evening. It is just an estimate. We were only there during the early hours, where they spent a lot of time getting rid of the small bookends, glassware.... The final number could be a lot higher.

Hmmm. Redoing the math again in my head... $9600. Which is right? Are either right? I'll leave it up to someone else to do the double check.

Last night I stumbled across gidol, where videos people put online compete against each other to be "The Best". I've seen it before, but I've never really looked through the videos much. Of what I saw, nothing was outstanding. My favorite section was the webcam competition, where people mouth the words to popular songs. The expressions on people's faces are extreme. The people who make the best videos are the people with the best and most variety of facial expressions. The high bandwidth required does mean I can't watch (aka skip) through them as fast as I might like, but I still enjoy browsing it. If you do look at the webcam section, vote for Lynne & Tessa!

Same Old, Same Old

One definite improvement over last week is the heavy rain. About every other day, we get a strong show, and there are two big windows by my workstation. Every time I look up or to someone else, my eyes pass over and out the windows. At the moment, I'm looking out the window to my left, looking at the at the garage roof. All along the top of the roof it's like a blurry whiteness from the rain hitting it. The window ahead of me is right in front where water tends to drain off the roof, so I have a heavy sheet of drops. The only downside is that there isn't much lightning... but that really should be a plus, since lightning isn't safe for human contact. :-)

Dan and I will try to go play racquetball again today. We've found a place that has 2 courts, and we'll go and see how full they are. As it turns out, neither one of us called the YMCA, so it is possible there will be courts there when we call, if this place doesn't work out.

I spent most of last week learning about threads and implementing them. Although this exact implementation of threads may not be useful when I get another job, it will definitely help me on any big projects with which I'll work. Ah, my time has run out. I had to clean and rebuild the project... and it took as long to compile as it did to type this. It's no small program at this point

Doing some work in Florida

The sun is shining, the humidity isn't too bad, and the temperature isn't as hot as it could be. I couldn't ask for a much better climate.

The plane arrived at Orlando's airport around 10:00. Everything went smoothly. We got our bags... except one of mine. Apparently one of my suitcases was left in Pittsburgh and I had to fill out a form. The traveling bag was sent to me the next day and I received it around 3:00.

Things have started settling into a rhythm. I aim to start working around 8:30 and try to end around 5:00. Some mornings I sleep past my wake up time and don't get down until 9:15. Allan and Judy have been pretty understanding so far, but I don't think I'll try for a 10:00 arrival. :-)

Two days ago, Judy walked us around the neighborhood for 2-3 miles, showing us the local fauna and where to see the alligators if we feel like getting up at 6:00. Yesterday, they took us to their aerobic workout gym and it's challenging enough that I will be becoming a member for the next 2 1/2 months.

There is not much else to say. I and my workmates are still settling in and haven't done or planned any major activities. I'll try to keep updates coming though. We're not too far out of Orlando, so there should be lots of activities to do in the evening... hopefully a shuttle launch in July - assuming it doesn't get delayed again.

Everying is Going (almost) Great

As I sit here, my mom and dad are sleeping. My nephew is sleeping. Even the Victoria is sleeping. But yet I sit here and blog - I need a life.

The weekend has gone well. I just came home from the family reunion (future blog - I promise) and a day and a half later, I'm off to help my parents at a craft show. All and all it is a wonderful way to spend the weekend - except for one little problem. I have a bad cold. The headaches aren't too bad (except at this moment) and the sore throat isn't too dreadfully painfull, and I'm not increadibly tired, and I'm not too low on energy, and the sunburn doesn't hurt too badly... :-) Add it all together, and it makes for a hard way to spend the days, even with family and friends.

Check out Victorias blog in the link on the left. She is due to have a baby girl or boy any day now! Go Vic!

Here is one picture from the reunion. We'll call this one a picture of "Cousin It".

Loverly Weekend

I wake up this morning, and all I hear outside is the heavy wind pushing the branches and leaves on trees agains each other. I smelled like it was about to rain, the temperature outside my covers was cool, underneath the covers it was warm, and the air was fresh. THAT is the way to wake up.

My parents are at a craft show for the weekend, and I'm driving down to help them tear down. My younger sister and brother-in-law will be there, so they don't need my help too much; but since my dad isn't going to be there to help, it will be nice to have one more person who is familiar with how the truck and trailer gets packed. I haven't seen much of Ryan or my sister since she got married, and I'm looking forward to this afternoon.

My boss and his wife has been here for the last five days, and I've been busy. Not as busy perhaps, as other times they have come down, but busy nonetheless. I can still hear the trees rustling. It's a good start to the morning.

For those that haven't heard - my brother is now engaged to Charlessa!!!

Sadness and a hope everlasting

First, a addendum to the last blog: the tiny Malcomb hasn't actually arrived yet, I was just excited to get the pictures up. So instead, say hello to the soon to be newcomer!

Last Friday I found out that one of my friends at college passed away in a car accident. He was a professor ( I have had one class from him ) that I have known for almost 5 years now. The last two years I spent at college, I would go on weekend trips with the college debate team, and I was usually the one to stay up with him at night or early in the morning so he could stay awake. During those times we would talk a lot. Shakespeare mostly, but also about what was going on in each other's lives. I was privileged to be trusted enough for his confidences, and I pray that when I get to heaven, I'll have stood for Christ the way Dr. Price did through his actions and words.

None of us are secure from accidents, and I pray for God's blessing on all those that read this, that He would protect you in your travels.

Oddly enough, I don't feel sad at his passing... except that I'll no longer be able to see him on the road jogging, watch him with his coffee, or talk Shakespeare with him. Dr. Price was a Christian and he is spending his days in a far, far, far, far better, greater place than we can ever imagine. What I DO feel sad about is the family he left behind. To have a husband, the one closest to your heart, soulmate, to have him pass away is a blow that no one should need to handle. Any feelings I've had of loneliness can only pale in comparison. So I pray for the wife and son still here, I pray for strength, and mercy, and a revelation of God's overwhelming love and peace. I pray for healing of the ache in the soul and the shock of such the loss... and for the impossible joy of God's peace to come upon Dr. Price's family.

Future family

'Tis a happy day.

Say hello to the newcomer! Boy or Girl.... Boy or Girl.... Maybe I'll tell you in my next post. :-P

Finals, work, busy

The title sums up this week pretty well. I had a test Monday which I did fairly well. This Friday is a final and next Monday I will be done when I finish my Hebrew final. My boss will be coming two days later and then the work really starts. Because other people will be working with me, I'm going to have a more consistent work schedule. Since I don't know what this 'consistent' work schedule is like, I haven't signed up for any classes yet. While Allan is here, I'm going to see what it is like working together with 3 other people and then decide if it's going to be feasable to take two classes. If it doesn't seem feasable, I'm only going to take Readings in Biblical Hebrew and drop Excersice Science Anatomy and Physiology.

Right now, I'm going to finish work up and do a little more studying before I go to bed. I'm looking forward to a long, relaxing weekend at home. There are a few things that need to be done such as getting the weedeater out and using it on some hard to reach areas, putting some new screen on the back porch, and Dad will probably have some things to do at the shop. It's going to be a good weekend.

I'mmmmm Baaaaack!

Finally! I've been trying to blog since.... a long time ago, but whenever I long in, I could no longer access my blog. It's been a sad two months. I search for the answer in the forums, but they never seemed to be addressing my exact problem, thus I turned to the brute force approach. I found the answer in Blogger's answers forum: Answer 656. Yes. I do have a life. I never got that high in the list. I tried searching the user forum again, and one of the forum posts had a link to answer 656. I followed the directions and now have access to Blogger!

This was only a break and so I can't type long.... I have a test in a few hours. Hebrew is a great language to learn. Compared to other classes, it's an easy class to study for. If you've been doing your homework and keeping up on the vocab and verb stems then the tests are a breeze. If you haven't.... can't help it. Hebrew resists all attempts at cramming. I'm just going to spend a few hours translating and doing some extra Hebrew homework and review stems... and then we'll see. The kids who keep up on Hebrew do NO study for the tests. That would be nice to be able to do that!

Ah............................ It's good to be back!

I'm being brainwashed

Yes. It is true. I'm being brainwashed. Not by the usual suspects such as the government or clandestine organizations... no. This is much more sinister. I'm being brainwashed, in public, with everyone's apparent acceptance.

It started like any other day. Getting up at 7:30 and starting work. Having some cold cereal for break, and using my computer for everything. Simple and routine. Like any other day... but I learned the truth. About the middle of the day, my boss and I were going to go play racquetball, but various problems kept occuring and the time for racquetball kept getting pushed later and later. Finally things clear up and I go to my room to get a better (worse) shirt in which to play racquetball. I start to change, but I wasn't paying attention and took my belt off. Just as the belt is coming out of the last loop I think (warning. Swearing ahead), "Shoot. Where's the undo button?" At that point, I found out who the master brainwashers were... Microsoft. Linux. IBM. CVS. Intel. GFQ. JiY. OOPLs. EDPLs. The Big 4.

"They" are all trying to steel a slice of my mind with this purpose: To take away my initiative, inventiveness, willingness to change and work outside the mold: to make me someone who will no longer think: "Bah, Who needs a belt anyway." :-D

The Day of the Dentist - or not

I finished with classes about 12:00 yesterday, and came home and managed to get around 8 hours of work done. That doesn't include lunch, dinner, goofing off, or talking with the boss. Having my boss here is really helpful. If I hit a problem with something, instead of hitting my head against a brick wall for a few hours, I can ask him a question, and with his experience and skill in programming he can usually send me in the right direction. Just being able to debate and discuss programming problems with other people makes programming so much more interesting. (Time for a Risk analogy Sean ) It's like Risk, you can play Risk by yourself, but the game is most fun when other people playing. In my case ( A computer addict ), I usually pit myself against computer players, but the analogy still holds.

Searching for a Church

Today was a nice, relaxing day. I went to church with my roommate Dan again. The church is very nice, but I didn't get the feeling of vibrant life. Having lunch after church is nice, especially when I know most of the people, but it's not a very good trade off if it means going to a church that isn't challenging me to reach higher. Granted, I've only heard two sermons. Both of the sermons were basically history lessons. We covered Timothy the first time I went and 2nd Chronicles this time; both times the sermon was explaining the why the particular passages were being written but there wasn't a lesson, warning, or message drawn out of the passages. It was just an explanation of the current time. Some of the college kids that go to the church are vocal, strong Christians, so I may go a few more times to see if the problem is me and a hard heart that's not willing to listen to what's being said.

In other news, my mom is on her way to Arizona tomorrow. She's going over to visit my grandma and spend some with her brothers and sisters. In another few months, most of the family will be going over for a big family reunion. We'll have the reunion in Grandma's new house. "New" is a relative term. It's a house that Grandpa and Grandma built together, and it's been 10 years or more since it's been finished. It's in a large valley, surrounded by woods. I can sit on the porch and watch the shadows of the clouds as they cast their reflection on the ground. I can't wait to see it again.

A profitable workday

I've been having trouble working lately. I'm working alone, and the work has all been very similar lately. Today, there was a part time worker so I had some incentive to work while he was there. I made a small breakthrough this morning, and I can start expanding my horizons into a new programming area. My boss is coming tomorrow, so I wanted to get one last detail working before he got here. I finished my programming test Wednesday and have a test Monday so I'm getting in some work because I know I'll need to save some time Saturday for study. I figured out that in the last three weeks, I've basically taken one week off. It was a bit shocking when I counted up my hours. My goal for the next 2 weeks is to make up the difference! An ambitious goal, but aiming low doesn't help and as Christians we should be good stewards of our responsibilities towards others and how we use our time for Christ.

I tried figuring out what used up so much time, and I can account for about a half of my off time. (and I think I'm quite accurate) All the rest of the time... no clue. Nothing profitable I'm sure. My mom mentioned something that hit me. All the time I spend goofing off and procrastinating is time I don't spend doing what I would do if I really had that time off.

Just a few thoughts I have at the end of the day.

Valentines Day Reflections

Valentines Day has come and gone. I only sent one chocolate bar. Sigh. I'm done being mushy now. The chocolate bar and the note was a hint to get an item of mine back. I don't need the item much at all, but it's fun to make fun of procrastinators (and yes, before you say anything, I am a procrastinator ). It took me almost a year to start getting that backpack repaired, and now it's getting repaired! It's not too fancy, but I've had it for the last 5 years and it's a bit hard to give up on it now. Just because it's has a tear 10 inches long doesn't mean it's time to get a new backpack!

I wish Eric and Victoria were back here at college. There was wayyyy too much PDA going on, and Victoria was the queen of stopping any unofficial PDA.

I don't have many reflections on Valentines day. It's a nice holidy if you're in a serious relationship, and a fun one if you're not. Half the fun of Valentines day is laughing at the commercials on TV. . . after all, what is so romantic about a four-door jeep driving through a waterfall? Or a battery powered razor? As our commie marketing major would say about the commercials, "Ugh. Turn it off. It's so bad I don't want to see it!". She then proceeds to cover her eyes and plug her ears until the commercial is done. Good for her!

On a side note: Hebrew is a great language to learn. I know it's not on most people's "Top 10 list of languages I want to learn", but Hebrew gives a new way to view the Bible. In Hebrew class we were practing out translation and... the verse evades me at the moment. Joseph had just told his brother's about his dream and his brothers said none too kindly, "Will you indeed rule over us?" In a very close translation, it would come out something like "Reigning, you will reign over us?" (This particular Hebrew construct has no English equivilent. We can only get close. ) In Hebrew to stress something, you repeat it. i.e. the emphasis on reigning.

When I read the verse in English, I thought the stress was on 'you'. The brother's didn't like Joseph, so it sounded to me like it was just emphasizing that fact. In Hebrew, the emphasis isn't on the 'you' part. It's on the 'reigning' part. When I read it in Hebrew (after tedious translation. I'm not a good translator. ) I get the impressing that the brother's weren't mad at Joseph. They were mad that Joseph would think he would ever rule over his older brothers.

Maybe it's not a big difference, but it made me look at the brothers in a kinder light. It made me think that the brother's didn't hate Joseph, Joseph might have been quite likable. What they hated was the fact that he might really rule over them - especially when looking at how their father treated him.

Repair service

As I take off my coat, I hear something jingle. Could it be my keys? No. They were in my hand. Any spare change? No. All the pockets were empty. But I'm positive I hear something gingle. I shake the coat again and hear the elusive clinking again. I slowly shake the coat, one section at a time, until I feel keys in my pocket. I reach into the pocket, feel a small whole at the bottom and reach a bit farther to find... the keys to my parent's car. Oops. :-)

Fortunately, Mom and Dad have a backup set so they weren't worried when they found out.

I made a trip home this weekend, even though I was woefully behind on work. To a certain extent, I don't mind not working 40 hours a week, but I told my boss I would be try to work 40 hours a week and those hours are what I use to pay my bills! This week and next week, while my boss is here, I'll be getting 55 to 60 hour weeks. That's how the schedule usually works out (more or usually less). I figure the next two weeks will make up for all my low hours for the last 3 weeks.

I also had my first microwaved lasagna today! I'm not a great cook, but I do find pre-prepared vegetable lasagnas very tasty. Not nearly as good as my mom makes, but tastier than anything I can prepare! I've cooked lasagnas before, but I've have always used the oven. Today, I took a leap into the bachelor lifestyle and decided to try to use the microwave for something other than hot chocolate and tea. The lasagna turned out pretty well if I do say so myself!.