The Black Journal

May 21, 2011 & Oct 21, 2011 - a load of crap

2011-04-27T09:37:00.001-06:00

I saw a billboard advertising that Judgement Day was coming on May 21, 2011. I thought it was an ad for a movie release called Judgement Day. Apparently it's not - apparently people are taking it seriously, with a bunch of hand-plucked Bible verses and haphazardly interpreted scriptures to support some numerological "clues" they claim to have found in the Bible.

I'm here to tell you, and prove to you, it's a bunch of bullshit - using the Bible as my source. Here's the gist of the story:

The Bible left us clues about the passage of time for God vs that of Man.
The genealogy from Genesis "can be shown to be a precise calendar of the history of mankind in this world."
The Flood happened in 4990 BCE.
God gave Noah 7 days to get into the boat.
In 2 Peter 3, a Day to God is equivalent to 1000 years, and 1000 years is a Day.
Doing the math, 1000 x 7 days = 7000 years to accept Christ. 7000 years after the flood 4990 BCE (removing year 0, as none exists, results in 2011 CE.
Noah was shut into the boat in the 2nd Month & 17th day of 4990 BCE.
Somehow, the tract goes on to talk about how the 17th day of the 2nd month coincides with May 22 as the Day of Pentecost from 33 CE, and jumping 1955 years into the future, the church age came to its conclusion on May 21st 1988 (13000 years after the incorrectly calculated Creation date from Genesis: 11,013 BCE)
Then you have a 23 year tribulation period or 8400 days from Pentecost of 1988 to cover the "awful period of judgment upon the churches" supposedly found in Matthew 24:21. 23 Years from 1988 coincides with May 21, 2011.
Throw in 1 Seal from Revelation that names a time span, say 5 months, from Revelation 9, and then you have a period of 5 months before the End of the World on October 21, 2011.

Now, if you have any common sense (and I know it's hard to come by these days for a lot of people), this should not add up.

I'm not even going to go into the issue with Young Earth Creationists who think the earth has only been around for 6,000 to 10,000 years, and that nothing could have possibly existed longer than the spoken word.

First of all, the Flood is not an allegory or allusion to the end of the world. Second, you can't pluck 1-3 verses, or a handful of verses that aren't even consecutive, and use them to build a case. I know this is a popular "Thing" for pastors to do in their sermons...but it's dumb, wrong, and inaccurate.

If you read the article, as I did [for sheer morbid curiosity] then you'll see that nearly every verse is taken out of context. If you take Genesis 7:4

4 "For after seven more days, I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I have made."

you'll see mention to "seven more days." The tract conveniently uses this as their foundation for spanning from Noah to Judgement Day. But what about the 40 days, or 40,000 years of rain? That extends well beyond the current age of the Earth according to their timeline.

Then, pull in Peter from the New Testament, but be sure to take the 3 verses out of context, just before the key 4th verse starts:

6 ...through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.
7 But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
8 But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.

This seems like a valid explanation of conversion of time when talking about supreme beings in relation to mortals. But it's not. If you had kept reading the verses, you would find that verse 9 has the context for those words:

9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

It is a figurative comparison, simply saying "Hey, the guy who's been around since the beginning of time, and will be around for the rest of time, is not concerned about your petty 24-hour periods of humanly devised timekeeping. Oh, by the way, he's sovereign, and cares about you. That's why he's waiting: for your dumb ass to have a chance."

That pretty much destroys the foundation of the argument right there...but let's keep going.

Judgement Day - May 21,2011: wtf?

So, we've got Creation marked as 11,013 BCE. Throw 7000 years on it for the 7 days Noah has to get into the boat...that puts us as 2011. In parallel, The Church Age began on Pentecost (May 22) of 33 CE, the year Jesus died.

Somehow, Matthew 24:21 is supposed to signify that (according to the tract) "the end of the Church Age would occur simultaneously with the beginning of the great tribulation":

21 "For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.

Except that it doesn't:

15 "Therefore when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),
16 then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.
17 "Whoever is on the housetop must not go down to get the things out that are in his house.
18 "Whoever is in the field must not turn back to get his cloak.
19 "But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days!
20 "But pray that your flight will not be in the winter, or on a Sabbath.
21 "For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.
22 "Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.
23 "Then if anyone says to you, 'Behold, here is the Christ,' or 'There He is,' do not believe him.
24 "For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.
25 "Behold, I have told you in advance.
26 "So if they say to you, 'Behold, He is in the wilderness,' do not go out, or, 'Behold, He is in the inner rooms,' do not believe them.
27 "For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be.
28 "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

See what happens when you pluck one verse out of a speech? Unless you go back and read the entire context in which it is used, you can use it to support anything. The use of Matt 24:21 doesn't even make approximate sense for supporting the end of one age coinciding with the beginning of another. It says if you see the "Abomination [of /that causes] Desolation" in the temple/holy place, THEN you will be on the eve of a great tribulation as a result of what that Abomination will impose on you. You know...like Rome did just before Nero put the people of Israel through utter hell until Constantine made a political move to make Christianity the official religion of Rome, but also allowing anyone to practice whatever religion they choose?

I'm still not sure where the 1988 references comes from, unless it is simply because this guy, Harold Camping, who is promoting this crap, left his last church that year.

But still, let's say 1988 was the end of the Church Age and the beginning of the Tribulation. For 23 years? Apparently that's related to the reign of Josiah through Zedekiah, from 609-586 BCE, when it was conquered by the Babylonian Empire under Nebuzar-adan, captain of Nebuchadnezzar's body-guard. It's quite an interpretive stretch of the imagination to pluck that one period out of history - especially when King David started his reign of Judah/Israel 400 years before that, bringing the timeline of the "reign of Israel" to 423 years.

But let's move on...So we have managed to convince ourselves that 5/22/88 was the end of the Church Age, and that coincidentally coincides with the start of the Great Tribulation, which will obviously take 23 years, because that's how long the last 5 kings reigned in Judah. That puts us at May 21, 2011 where *BAM* the rapture happens, because just as the 17th day of the 2nd month God shut the door to the ark in Noah's time (cutting off any chance of salvation from the flood), so is the 17th day of the 2nd month in 2011 (5/22/11) the day God will shut the door of salvation from hell, and anyone who didn't accept Christ will perish. Jim, let's go to the map, er verses...

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:
16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

OK, that verse is what it is. In Thessalonians, Paul was comforting the folks over at Thessalonica about what happens to their dead Christians. According to the tract, only True Believers will be caught up, leaving the rest of Mankind (billions of people) left behind to experience the awful judgment of God - a horrible period of 5 months of torment upon earth. Where do we find this in the bible? Why Revelation 9:3-5 of course:

3 Then out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth, and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
4 They were told not to hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
5 And they were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment for five months; and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man.

*BAM!* Except there's one more thing. This is the 5th Seal. FIFTH! This is not the last thing that happens before the End of the World. It's not even the account of Judgement Day. It's it 1/21th of a series of events (#19 of 21, Rev 9:1-12) leading up to Armageddon with Jesus' Return to Earth as a warrior (#21 of 21, Rev 11:15-19).

So in reality, if May 22, 2011 is the trigger date, then the world should be prepared for a giant ass swarm of locusts that have stingers like scorpions, to bother (but not kill) you until October 21, 2011.

Wow. What a bastardization of an already misinterpreted book of ancient literature. I guess Harold Camping can join Terry Jones & others among the misinformed and misguiding religious authorities in the on-going discussion of "What went wrong" when they get to Hell.

Autumn: A Season of Change

2010-11-15T16:13:00.000-06:00

I caught a show on Cartoon Network that I used to love as a kid. It was one of the first all-CGI, 3D cartoons to be a series on TV, called Reboot! From what I can remember it was about a civilization that lived inside a mainframe, and when ever the user wanted to play a game, it would crash down on the city in a huge purple block, and who ever was trapped inside it had to become a player in it. There was also an Antagonist who's sole purpose was to shut down the "mainframe" and if things got too hairy, the protagonists would simply call for a Reboot - but only if necessary, because everything would get destroyed.

Looking back on it, it sounds like the entities in the game were just bits of RAM trying to live their life uncorrupted without having to reboot the system - since that causes all the RAM to reset. But I was a kid back then, and I didn't know anything about computers. I just saw it as a flippin' sweet cartoon. But watching it now on TV doesn't hold the same excitement as it did 15 years ago.

In fact, many things that I once loved I can't get into any more...even things that are fairly recent. I guess it's just that time of year again, just as a Freshman English paper I wrote was titled - "Autumn: A Season of Change."

With the wedding being less than 365 days away now, most of the big things are taken care of. We have picked out the date, the venue, the time, most of the guests, the caterer, the colors, the concept, the honeymoon, and most of the people in the wedding. All that's left are the flowers, the clothing purchases, the ring purchases, and all the parties/get-togethers in between.

Yet, people on the outside don't get to see all of that which is already in place, they just want to ask questions about the frilly stuff...which is all the stuff we haven't picked out yet. The reason we haven't picked it out is because it doesn't matter if we don't have an infrastructure in place for the wedding first.

Going through all of this planning, with the understanding and realization that there is a pretty good chance we're going to have to pay for it all ourselves, puts many things into perspective. It requires a change in how we live our current lives, what we spend our time doing, and making sure that things get taken care of (especially on my part) so that we have an uncharacteristically smooth wedding day, and first couple months.

All the sudden, playing World of Warcraft is much less important in our lives. However, its time allotment has been filled by Sims 3. The game is cheaper (since I didn't pay for it) and it helps put things into perspective. It shows you just how much you focus on your character versus the other characters in the house - especially if the other character is designed as closely as possible to your future spouse.

Both times that I have spent a significant time playing the game, I have found that once my child character has lived to reach her true potential, I am no longer concerned about my character and am ok with it dying. It was strange the first time I played it, because it felt like a piece of me was dying - but I was ok with it since I knew that my kids would live on to be successful.

I guess that is the kind of experience that actual parents have in some form or fashion when they realize that they aren't the 20-somethings their mind's eye thinks they are - but are actually 40-50-60-somethings who are biding their time, enjoying the rest of their life, knowing that their kids were raised right, and will be just fine when their time is up.

Something else I can't seem to get that into this season is sports. With the Official NHL Team taking over the Dallas Stars twitter account, and posting updates manually (as well as Twitter changing their authentication methods, breaking my simple bit of code I was using), I don't really have much reason to keep up with the Stars as often as I used to. I'm sure that comes as a disappointment to the couple thousand people who follow The Dallas Stars and Dallas Stars Live, hoping for live updates during the games...but it's just not there for me. I think 3 years is a pretty good run, and enough time for the actual team's marketing department to pick it up.

I was very hopeful for the Cowboys this season as well, but after going 1-7 in the first 8 games, that quickly went out the window, until their most recent game put them at 2-7. I was glad to see that Wade Phillips was fired - it sucks for him, but he wasn't able to cut it with the Cowboys. Perhaps Jason Garrett can pull them out of this ditch and get them to round 2 of the playoffs next season.

I'm also finding it hard to get back into photography. I picked up the FlipVideo camera, and that goes with me nearly everywhere these days. However I record very little with it - and mainly intend to use it for important events related to the wedding and family firsts. When it comes to photography though, I am forced to rely on the technical shots instead of the artsy ones - I just don't feel the art in me any more. Maybe it's because I've all but lost my Muse, or perhaps I have just been out of it too long, I lost my touch.

Whatever the reason, stuff is changing for me, only this time it's different from the others. I guess it was like when I moved to Plano back in 2008, and I wanted to cut ties with just about everything that tied me to Fort Worth. I didn't do anything the same as I did back at my old apartment - I wanted to feel completely new. Perhaps I'm getting to that point now, with this marriage on the way, and plans to move into a Rental Home somewhere in Plano the month after.

It's nice to have a season of change every once in a while; I just wish it would progress a little faster sometimes.

A fairy tale beginning...

2010-10-18T10:52:00.000-06:00

A little more than a year ago, I posted about my "new girlfriend" and how everything came to be in the process of meeting from match.com, and meeting all my friends, going to Quakecon, and then making it official.

During the past 14 months, 10 of which were spent living together, everything has gone pretty smooth. I've been able to adjust to having someone else around the house with me - which has been aided with her busy schedule, giving us each some alone time during the day, but also some time together. I think it has reached a good balance.

We have our share of tickle wars and face-noms (think: goldfish lips on your cheek, with each "nom" counting as a fictitious +1 point.) games while laying together on the beanbag. Things have been about as easy-going as I suppose they should be.

I am pretty sure that there is no one else who could fit my personality better than her, except myself. We provide a good balance for things we see differently, and share enough common quirks that it keeps things fun.

So this past August, I started looking at engagement rings trying to match what she was interested in (and not interested in)...I wanted something red, without much diamonds, and uniquely her. My original thought was to find the reddest pearl I could get, but after a search online, most of them were a light pink, and difficult to find. So I turned to the gemstone variety. But the ring I wanted was out of stock until October. So I had to wait.

Meanwhile she kept dropping hints including the phrase "I have to marry you." If that's not a big enough hint for a guy at a positive answer, that guy doesn't need to be in a relationship. October came, and I had enough money saved up, so I bought the ring...a 10k Gold Garnet ring with very few diamonds on it.

When I ordered it, it was scheduled to arrive the following Monday - so I ordered a couple other things so that I'd get a barrage of packages, hoping to conceal its arrival amongst all the others. I bought a customized FlipVideo ultraHD digital recorder (to record everything from the Engagement, to the Wedding, to our kids first what-evers...since I've never owned an actual video recorder), and (what turned out to be a dud) a VGA-to-RCA/S-Video adapter to connect my laptop to the tv in the bedroom.

Unfortunately, the video recorder arrived while she wasn't at home, but the ring and adapter arrived when she was...and the ring came that Friday instead of the following Monday. Since she intercepted the package, I had to go find things that would look like I could have ordered them, but didn't want her to see. Fortunately, that Friday was also the company cookout at work, and I needed to go to the store to pick up some food to bring for the lunch. I grabbed some bags of chips, and happened to see Iron Man 2 on DVD while checking out - perfect! She loves Iron Man, and Robert Downey Jr. even more.

Once I had that part of the package, I had to find something that could have represented the bulge in the envelope where the ring box was, since she got to touch it. It was off to Toys R' Us to find an Iron Man action figure that could have fit inside the envelope. It turned out that the Toy's R' Us shut down where I live, and was converted into a Halloween City. Lame. So it was off to the Target right across the street in hopes that they too would have some toys. And they did...

While I was about to leave, I decided to stop by the Video Game section to see if they had Boom Blox for Wii, since I'd been wanting to pick that up for a couple months now...and I needed a reason to have a Target Bag in my possession...and as luck would have it, they did! So then it was off to her work to tell her that I finally got the video game we have been looking for, and that I had "some surprises at home for you. You'll have to wait and see what they are when you get home. I'm not going to tell you what is in the envelope."

[After everything went down, she said she remembered the name on the envelope from the ring website. So she didn't really buy into the notion that I ordered anything Iron Man in the mail. Oh well...my fault for not having the ring sent to my work instead of home.]

When she got home that night we watched Iron Man 2 and she opened her toy, and everything went as planned.

After about a week of sitting on the ring, I couldn't think of any special events going on in the coming days, to actually base the proposal on. I did find out via one of my friend's blogs that he was also working on his "big news" for next month - so I had to get mine taken care of now (in time for it to wear off for his) or push it back till December. But sitting on a perfectly good ring for another 2 months, when she could be wearing it didn't make any sense to me.

She mentioned that she had Saturday night off since she only worked during the day - so I figured we could go to Downtown Fort Worth, to Sundance Square and have some Uno's Pizza, and then I'd go to a little gazebo area between a couple restaurants, and if it was secluded enough, I could propose there. Then afterward, we could hit up the Theater, and watch RED.

The Plan for notifying everyone was to check in at Uno's Pizza with "pizza with the gf @ Uno's Pizza", and then to check in at the theater with "going to see RED with the Fiance @ AMC-9" and let people gleam the excitement from just those two posts until I could update my status on the computer.

It didn't quite work out like I wanted, because my phone couldn't get GPS coordinates inside the pizza building. While we were eating though, we did shoot a video for her sister to show just how deliciously messy the Pizzaria Uno's Chicago Classic pizza is...

Then we headed off to find the gazebo since we still had another 2 HOURS before the movie started. The gazebo was full of people eating from all 3 restaurants, so that wasn't going to work - and I was at a loss. Things just weren't coming together quite right. On the way to the car to drop off the pizza left overs and pick up her sweater, we happened to see a Cinderella Carriage pulling some folks down the street, and she commented "that would be fun to do if you had to ask me, say, an important question *wink wink*" which I laughed off and commented that I've never been on one before, but since we have 2 hours, we could check it out.

I flagged the driver down and found out where they were loading, and then we headed over there to find out how much it cost and played with the video camera a little bit. The guy that was handling the transactions was also taking pictures for people with their cell phones, and I took a couple shots to make sure my phone would produce a decent picture.

Jenna had a couple sips of some Sangria at Uno's and I had some Raspberry Colada. alcohol doesn't affect me at all, but for her, just one drink will do it...and she started getting goofy while we were waiting for the carriage to return...

I don't remember what started the "in the butt" phrase for that video, and I wasn't intending on recording anything she said - I was actually testing out the night-capabilities of the FlipVideo ultraHD and she just started talking.

The carriage arrived, the guy took an unflattering picture that included my unflattering belly, and then we were off. During the first part of the ride (when the camera was on) I found it difficult to not look at the camera to see if it was pointing correctly...but I also looked nervous because it was a 10 minute ride, and I had to find a time to sneak the ring box (which had a lot of purple frilly wrapping and a tassel rope) out of my cargo pocket, while she wasn't looking. Fortunately, we passed by the Reata and the roof-top plant sculptures caught here attention. So I pulled out the box, and after a few seconds she finally noticed it on my lap by our hands...

And the rest is history. We finished the ride, then went to hang out at the Barnes & Noble/Starbucks where I finally updated all 3 check-in's at once, and about an hour later we saw the first movie of our Engaged lives.

I didn't think any girl would actually want to have a Cinderella Carriage ride - I figured that was too cheesy. But she said it was perfect, and even though she knew I had ordered a ring, she was still surprised that it was happening.

I Write Like Results

2010-10-01T10:18:00.001-06:00

After submitting my three most recent blog posts to the I Write Like text analyzer, I apparently have different writing style for each post - these three I can definitely see as being the ones I write like:

Faith like whose child...?

2010-08-27T15:26:00.001-06:00

If you're new to this blog, this post will probably hurt your head as it will pose an idea you may not be familiar with. You've been warned.

Ever since adopting my most recent perspective on life, everything has just made more sense than it ever did before. I no longer have to struggle with the same things I used to deal with when trying to solve life's issues. Things have just become easier to accept and understand now that the complexly abstract (and rather unfounded) anomalies have been removed from the equation.

Unfortunately the same zeal I used to have for convincing people to believe has been hard to subside when it comes to convincing people to question what is going on around them. It's also a little difficult to see people putting complete trust into something that doesn't intellectually make sense (i.e. prayer).

To read that someone has made an attempt at something, and is now awaiting the outcome while fastidiously praying and asking others to pray seems like more of a reliance on Luck than a request for a "divine intervention." They would actually have a better chance of getting their outcome if they do something to work towards the outcome they desire. This reliance on prayer gives me a visual of sitting in a windowless room, alone, rehearsing pleas in their mind - essentially thinking "please let this happen, please let this happen, please let this happen." It's the same chant we did as kids, fingers-crossed, and eyes tightly shut after we ask our parents to take us to the arcade pizza parlor, Chuck E. Cheese. The only difference between then and now, is that if it doesn't happen, we chalk it up to "oh it just wasn't God's Will" whereas a child will ask "Why not?"

Doesn't the Bible talk about seeing the world through the eyes of a child? That only one who has faith like a child will get to Heaven (Matt 18:2-6)? Surely this doesn't mean someone that "believes blindly." If you're around any child who can form a complete sentence with a cognitive thought behind it, there is no such thing as blindly believing. The path of questions quickly goes from the simple to the completely abstract and existential...all with the simple, one-word question: "Why?"

So, what if "Faith Like a Child" meant putting in the time, effort, and questions to find the real answers to problems...answers that dive to the nth degree of the problem? What if there is a nugget of truth to some of the Far Eastern religions related to reaching "Enlightenment" by obtaining a more complete understanding of the world they live in? What if the end result of those questions is coming to the conclusion that you are what you are, and the world is what it is, and that in the end the circle of life just goes on and on...that the only thing you have control over is how you live your life, and nothing else. What if Heaven and Happiness is finally letting go of everything except that which you're responsible for, so that when your life is over, you have reached the realization that this is inevitable, and you've done all you can with what you can - and are able to go in peace?

I don't know the precise answer to these questions, nor do I know if anyone else actually does. I do know one thing though, and that is the less I have worried about how other people act, and the more I try to understand my own personality and thought processes, the less stress my life has and the faster my time flies by.

For me, prayer was never a big part of my life. There were phases during which I would go through the motions (before meals, at church, prior to reading my Bible), but never would I find myself praying for help, or things, or anything else that I could take personal responsibility in achieving myself. I also never asked others to pray for anything related to me, as prayer requests (especially requests made by proxy for third-parties) seemed more like gossip than a plea for help. And even those that were pleas for help were only prayed for in the capacity of "Lord, you've heard all these things mentioned here today...." Really? Then why even bother bringing them up?

We were taught in Church to turn everything over to God through prayer, but that always seemed burdensome and weak to me - especially when it was taken to the extreme during prayer requests for the stupidest stuff. "No, I'm sorry, I will not pray for your family member to change his mind about something...I will not ask God to override his free-will to meet your whims and limited understanding of how this experience is going to redirect his life's path."

The only benefit I can see from prayer is to turn over something that is ailing your mind and causing you to worry and stress. It's the same benefit that Forgiveness brings, except the issue is internal, and not against somebody else. Sometimes people need an outlet to vent their stress and talk it over. Mine is a blog, for others it's a friend, and for still others it could be prayer.

My concern is not that people pray, but that they let it become the sole decision making engine in their life. It would be akin to me posting a question on my blog with an expectation of an answer or request for an item at the end...and then I sit back and wait for comments or for someone to send me the requested item. And if I don't get them, I assume the answer is "No"...

...when in reality no one read the post at all.

How I see it (part 4)

2010-05-14T14:35:00.006-06:00

This is the last segment of this series.

So why is it that some people have to tout these stories as absolutely true, instead of a possible 40-chapter parable? And who told them these stories were true to begin with? And what basis did that person give for them being true?

The main issue that I have with people who want to pronounce things as absolute truth is that they are doing so using the material in question as the authority of it's validity.

People say the Bible is true because God wrote it through man. How do we know that? Because in the Bible, it is written that these words were inspired by God, and thus are true.

That's circular logic, and being a programmer I cannot accept that.

Then there is the chronology of Jesus. Now, I'm not so bold as to claim that no one ever existed named Jesus - I am inclined to believe that the stories about his life were embellished over time. Consider the "man to legend" of common-day individuals: all the Chuck Norris jokes, the stories surrounding those who fought in the Alamo, or those that lived in the American Frontier. Those people haven't been around nearly as long as Jesus' legacy has, yet they are already attributed fantastic feats.

If one portion of the Bible is to be taken figuratively because "that was the writing style of the time," then it would follow that all books in either Testament of the Bible were meant to be taken as figuratively or literally as any of their adjacent books, because they were all written around the same time.

In conjunction with that, is the fact that written records were few and far between. And the finding of the dead-sea scrolls merely indicates that there was a point in which the stories were written down - but up until that point, they were passed down generation to generation by those charged with maintaining the historical folklore.

Then there are the many religions across the world that share the same stories. My reaction to this is that it was because up until Issac and Ishmael, the Middle East followed the same teachings in the Old Testament. After that point, it split. My concern comes up with the similar stories told in different ways, for example the two stories of the Flood of Noah.

Both Flood stories in the Bible vs Koran are similar, except the Koran shows that the flood only covered the known world. The Bible indicates that it covered the *entire* world. Same event, two different tellings - each with different implications.

If the flood covered the whole world, where did the water go? We'd be crushed by the atmospheric pressure if it is all in the sky. If it did not cover the whole world, what else didn't actually happen as described in the bible?

These exaggerated stories make for good examples of the Power of God, but they don't lend credibility to the book they're in when it says one thing happened as described in infallible text, when something else actually happened.

And if it's meant to be a hyperbole to describe some kind of life lesson, then one cannot take that explanation for one story and but revert to a literal translation in other areas where it fits better.

I guess my main concern with all of this is whether or not I want to choose to give up my life - the only one I have - to follow the instructions of one of many religions, with expectations of a reward after death. That's where the Faith part of it all comes into play - whether you choose to believe and have faith that the things you've read in the Bible are true, and will actually take place.

If that were the case, and there weren't so many exaggerations in the stories of the Bible that people get upset about when you counter them with reality, then I probably wouldn't have an issue believing it.

My second concern though, is whether or not I will get to enjoy the "afterlife" period or if my behavior on earth is merely for the reward my soul will get, and I'll have no participatory privileges when the time comes to transition from the physical to spiritual realm.

If I am not going to be aware of the reward or punishment my soul must endure (just as I was not aware of any spiritual existence before birth), then I don't care if it goes to heaven or goes to hell. If I do get to participate in the resulting consequence of my life on earth, then obviously I am strongly inclined to do what it takes to make sure I am on the right side of the pearly gates.

Either way - heaven or not - Jesus says in Matthew 7:13-14

¹³"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. ¹⁴But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

If the gate to heaven is narrow, and only a few will find it, then how crappy it would be to find out you wasted your life on earth avoiding things, and doing other things that you might not have otherwise done, only to find out when you died that you didn't make it on the guest list to heaven? Why do Christians think they are automatically going to heaven when it's clear that only a few will make it?

I think this is one of the more overlooked passages related to Christian lifestyle and the promise of eternal life. Live a good life, live like Jesus, and follow the rules, and *maybe* you'll get into heaven.

I'm not going to deny the existence of Jesus Christ, or the possibility of God, but I think from this point onward, I'm going to live my life as I see fit, and make adjustments where necessary from a logical/physical standpoint. I just don't see it anymore, when it comes to the spiritual realm and things of the supernatural. There is too much reality getting in the way of faith.

As Lewis Black said "I would love to have the faith to believe that the world was created in seven days... but I have thoughts... and that can really f@#$ up the faith thing...."

How I see it (part 3)

2010-04-19T13:26:00.007-06:00

[[This is a blog series - if something doesn't make sense, wait until the series is finished]]

And as such, I have often tried to explain these kinds of things to people who attribute them so, and encounter a closed mind (of which I have been a victim during my religious hay-day), and an unwillingness to even consider there may actually be a physical explanation for things.

It wasn't until I lost my job for the first time, not of my own volition (fired) back in 2006 that I realized what some people tended to do with religion. I was sitting at home, having talked to some people, and found that there were those out there that advised I "pray for God to provide me a job." Pray for a job? Like, ask God to up and give me one? Where's the personal responsibility in that? I've heard it said before that "God is not a cosmic bellhop."

That being the case, there had to be some participation on my part to make this effort come to fruition: getting my resume out there. The odds of me landing a job, simply sitting on my couch praying day and night were extremely slim. Someone would have to do the leg work - whether it was me actively looking, or someone who knew me and my situation actively looking. It wasn't just going to fall into my lap through prayer.

Several other times throughout the past couple years, I've heard similar statements: "It's in God's hands." Or "It wasn't God's Will." And even something along the lines of "You're not asking for the right things."

It wasn't until just recently that I had heard similar after-the-fact statements in a religious discussion on my website, www.the-spot.net, dealing with Job and how God let Satan do whatever he wanted to him, that things became clear. That clarity was how convenient it is to say that something is the cause, after the fact, when really there is a direct cause before it.

If someone dies of cancer, there are 2 ways of looking at it:
1.) They couldn't beat it, and the disease destroyed their body.
2.) God called them home.

But what if they weren't a Christian? Did God call them home? Or did he decide it was time for them to go to Hell, so he pulled the plug. People seem to overlook that part of the scenario when they're at a funeral of someone they know never went to church, and didn't believe in God - they simply look at the crying family members' faces and lie to them about their relative "being in a better place." A lake of fire is a better place than what? Here on earth?

Consider Job from the Bible. Per the discussion on my website, started by others, not me, God let Satan mess with Job - took his job, his possessions, his wife, his family...everything Job had. Then in the end Job got everything back (different, but restored). And throughout it, Job didn't lose his faith.

The commonly voiced theme of the story says God knew Job would be faithful, and he let Satan do all that stuff because God is omniscient and knew Job wouldn't stray. If that's true, there is no Free Will. If it's not true, God isn't omniscient. If it's both true and false simultaneously - then either God knows all possible outcomes to any possible decision branch to infinity - or the story was written after-the-fact in order to prove a particular characteristic of a supreme being that the Bible is in the process of defining to the reader.

I provided the example on my website that back in July of 2008, I knew Obama would become president (for various observances of the national psyche). I also knew that the Health Care Bill would pass, for those same reasons. I could have easily said that I knew the future of both instances, and thus didn't need to vote for Obama, or need to write for encouragement of the Health Care Bill. On the other hand, if they had failed, they would not have shown up as examples in this discussion.

The same goes for various books of the Bible that are often used to pronounce something as definitively true. Saying that I know the future by telling this story is only knocked off its metaphoric-parallel to the book of Job and God by the fact that I am not a supreme being. Writing the story of Job after the fact, and attributing its outcome to God is the same thing as one of my friends writing a blog post about how I predicted the future president and the passing of legislative bills. Creating evidence to prove a case...aka circumstantial evidence.

Unfortunately, extrapolating this throughout the bible brings into question what other stories are circumstantial and written with the purpose of describing God, but after the fact. Nearly every book (if not all of them) in the Bible is written years, decades, sometimes hundreds of years after the fact. Some of them (like Job) are purely about a single person, with a major life lesson in them (and possible other smaller bits one could extract for themselves). In other literature, those life-lesson stories are called "fables." Jesus called them "parables."

So why is it that some people have to tout these stories as absolutely true, instead of a possible 40-chapter parable? And who told them these stories were true to begin with? And what basis did that person give for them being true?

[[Part 4 coming soon...]]

How I see it (part 2)

2010-04-19T10:25:00.003-06:00

[[This is a blog series - if something doesn't make sense, wait until the series is finished]]

Consider this: all the time the earth has existed before you were born, you have no recollection of. That is BILLIONS of years of things existing prior to your cognitive recognition that anything could exist.
Now consider this: our life span is merely 120 years tops...often less - far less.
Finally consider this: when you die, without religion in the picture, there is no more cognitive recognition of existence. There is no realization that you are dead...there is no realization that you were ever even alive. There is no realization period - everything in the world will go on without you, and you will not be the wiser. People will continue to be born, and die, and you will have spent your one blip of life doing things that were supposed to make you happy.

What a bleak picture that paints. Rationally thinking, though, it begs the questions - what if religion was put into place to help people cope with such a bleak result to life? What if people knew this was what happened, but in order to console others they conjured up a place of happiness and joy to give people something to look forward to when they died?

This happens to be the premise of a movie called "The Invention of Lying" but there was a time before that movie was even released that I was contemplating such a possibility.

Consider all the rules in the Old Testament that the people and priests had to follow. The long list of things that were unclean to eat (pigs, aquatic animals with out the combination of fins *and* scales, buzzards, rabbits, hawks, camels, etc) usually were carriers of disease or created health concerns. Sleeping with relatives and being gay produced genetic disorders and/or transmitted diseases. Disobeying elders, or authorities, created chaos for a civilization. Worshiping other gods and introducing other religions into the society undermined those which were put into place to maintain order and consistency.

If read from a worldly point of view, it appears that the rules of the Old Testament were to get people into some kind of civilized fashion after having just come out of an environment of slavery and thrust into complete freedom. Such freedom to do and be whatever you want requires constraint or the result is bad...like a teenager moving out on their own for the first time, and realizing they can stay up as late as they want, go out to eat as often they want, and buy whatever they want - only to find responsibility waiting for them in the morning, and when bills come due.

Consider the New Testament: it's mostly about loving each other and not focusing so much on the Law of the Old Testament. After generations of generations had dealt with the Law for so long, the ones who prided themselves on keeping the Law took it upon themselves to make sure others did as well as they had.

Jesus came, saying in Matthew 5:17-20 that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it...that the law was still in place, but his role was to provide an example of how to live according to the law and what that kind of lifestyle should look like.

He spends much of his time teaching people how to love each other and how to forgive. He also spent a lot of time explaining that in order to get to heaven you have to believe in Him, and get others to believe, and also still live according to the rules. He doesn't go into what heaven is like all that much - and if the thought is followed that it's simply a reward-stimulus, it makes sense not to describe it any other way to that to say it's amazing beyond words. After all, I am not interested in going to heaven to spend all my time singing church hymns and being with my family...that sounds pretty boring and stressful to me. I'm also not interested in the proposed alternative either.

The reason I'm not interested in being around this stuff is the people that I've been around here on Earth. It's so often misconstrued that it is the Job of a Christian to go and recruit people into Christianity, no matter what it takes, and whether they want to or not. I've seen it attempted nicely, through guilt trips, and through insults. I've rarely seen it actually be successful though. Someone has to be looking for something else out of life to take on a religion and belief factor. As an academically-minded person, there are too many things that offer more realistic explanations to the very things people attribute to be Works of God. And as such, I have often tried to explain these kinds of things to people who attribute them so, and encounter a closed mind (of which I have been a victim of during my religious hay-day), and an unwillingness to even consider there may actually be a physical explanation for things.

How I see it (part 1)

2010-04-16T15:35:00.005-06:00

[[This is a blog series - if something doesn't make sense, wait until the series is finished]]

I am a programmer and system developer.
It is my job to understand how systems interact, and how data relationships are interconnected.
It is my nature to dissect things and reassemble them to learn how these relationships exist.
I am actually in the process right now, at work, developing a piece of software to manage the intrinsic relationships between our ecommerce store platform, and how we manage our site.

It is with this perspective of dissection, and the culmination of certain bits of knowledge, experiences, and observations that I have taken a serious look at what it is I believe with regard to religion, and what I do not.

Such an investigation was spurred by observing several people I had known anywhere from a couple years to my entire life...having been with the assumption that we were in agreement on many aspects of our upbringing.

The turning point for myself was the morning of January 22, 2009 - when I hopped on Facebook to find that everyone I had shared many ideals with were suddenly standing in opposition to what I considered a fair and inevitable event...the election of President Obama.

My primary concern was the status updates and twitter posts from people who had professed prior that they were Christians. However this morning, there was nothing but pure hatred coming from their mouth just as there was the morning after elections in November 2008.

I did not and still don't understand why this is the case - I can only conjecture that it is for the very same reason I considered it to be OK to shun people who did not believe as I did only a few years earlier.

It was over the course of the previous 6 months that I had finally realized that the very things I was taught to believe in was precisely in opposition from what this country was founded on.

Since I was a child, I was taught that I must go out and explain to people that how they are living their life is completely wrong in God's eyes - even if they were of another denomination than Baptist, it was still wrong...priority was on the people who didn't go to church, of course, but even non-Baptists were still subject to be living in sin.

I had no problem patching up the gaps in the Bible between what I had learned via science and what I had learned in church. To me, the idea was to bridge the gap with some kind of faith-based truth, grounded in the Bible.

If I came across people who didn't believe like me, I would just remove them from my life, which was fairly easy, since my step-dad provided such a great example of how to shun friends and family, and to live independently.

Fast forward to 2003, and you'll find me in the process of being kicked out of my parents' house after being pulled out of East Texas Baptist University. Why am I being kicked out? Because I had learned to question that which was presented as infallible truth by my parents. I felt the need to understand why things were being carried out the way they were because I had just spent the previous year and a half being required to make decisions for myself while living independently on a college campus.

During this time, my communications were cut from the people I had gone to church with, and I was made to go to a previously forbidden church (the Methodist Church with the woman pastor) by these same parents who forbade it. Over the course of 5 years, my mom and step-dad had changed from Baptist to Church of God, to non-Denominational, to a break-away church, to Methodist. This went completely against what I had been taught - but I figured if they were doing it, it was somehow OK.

Jump to 2005, and I had been kicked out in 2003, and living with my dad and step-mom for the following 2 years, trying to go to a previously visited church in Arlington, because I knew my mom & step-dad had gone there, so it must be an OK place to go. Unfortunately during the 2 years I attended it, I felt as if the point of it all was very meaningless. I had one semi-close friend there, and the sermons were not very applicative, and the Sunday school was equally weak.

I moved out on my own in August of 2005, and did not feel like it was worth the 25 minute drive to visit the church any more. I also did not want to try other churches for the awkward introduction phase - I simply wanted to go and be left alone, or just not go at all.

Instead, I watched the Science Channel almost exclusively, and learned a great deal about the world around me - nature, space, earth, and people. I learned how planetary systems form, how stars die, and even the projected time left for the sun's energy to burn.

It was during the next couple years that I came to a sobering conclusion: that without religion in the picture, one's life is as bleak as a speck of dust carried away in the wind.

Consider this: all the time the earth has existed before you were born, you have no recollection of. That is BILLIONS of years of things existing prior to your cognitive recognition that anything could exist.
Now consider this: our life span is merely 120 years tops...often less - far less.
Finally consider this: when you die, without religion in the picture, there is no more cognitive recognition of existence. There is no realization that you are dead...there is no realization that you were ever even alive. There is no realization period - everything in the world will go on without you, and you will not be the wiser. People will continue to be born, and die, and you will have spent your one blip of life doing things that were supposed to make you happy.

What a sobering thought about our petty existence in the universe.

Say Hey!

2009-08-24T22:32:00.004-06:00

Well, since June, time has flown by. If I recall correctly, at times, things were tough at work, lonely at home, and boring all around - it was time for something new to hit.

Fortunately, mid-July, I started talking to Jenna, and after this past weekend, none of that stuff even matters.

Everything started the same night Wizard, Sarge, and I went out on an all-nighter kayaking trip near the Gaylord Texan. I found her profile on match.com (when your social circle is considered to have gotten bigger because your friends had a baby, it's time to start branching out) a few days before, and sent out a wink. Late that night while I was out in the lake, I got a text message - which normally doesn't happen when I'm with all the people who normally txt me. I checked it, and it said "jrdejong has winked back at you." But I didn't recall winking at a "jrdejong" - and thought it was another girl being brave and making the first move, that I was going to have to decline, because I'm not as attracted to Asian girls. So I tossed the phone back into the drybox, and we finished our trip about 6am.

Well, later that morning, I checked my profile via my phone, and found that I *had* winked at her, and she was not Asian - she was, in fact, one of the girls I was hoping would wink back. I happened to be at The Lackey's, and showed them out of curiosity, mainly to see what Mandy thought, because I prefer her to screen the girls I date for any psycho-vibes. She approved, so I sent off a rather unique email with some rather unique and different questions.

For the next week, Jenna and I asked quirky questions to get a different side of each other's personality, until she had to go to Florida on vacation to visit with her family and friends there for 2 weeks.

She came back to Texas the Saturday Sarge and I were supposed to go fishing, but he stayed up too late, and it looked like rain anyway in my area that afternoon. I headed out alone in my boat, and the rain showed up about 5 hours earlier than I expected, and I saw it consuming the lake in a white haze that was moving towards me faster than I could row to get under a bridge.

She called that morning, to set up our date for that evening, and we went to Sweet Tomatoes In Irving, TX as our first date. This might have little significance to you, but to my synesthesia, Sweet is Red and Tomatoes is Green - those are our favorite colors, and I just realized that nifty little connection.

We spent the evening talking about all kinds of things - family, friends, interests, jobs, life, religion, politics, everything. Afterward, she piped up first that we should do it again, and all I could say was "Definitely."

So we scheduled a second date for the following Friday when she had off...but my work nearly put that date in jeopardy when XO Communications and All-Tek Communications couldn't get their schedules straight and their jobs done on time, and I had to stick around after work, yet still make it back home to change/shower from the sweaty task I was suddenly assigned to, and then get to Lewisville in time for a 6:50 movie, during rush-hour traffic.

We went to see Funny People at Studio Movie Grill, and afterward, we headed out to the nearby Lake Lewisville. On Google Maps, I found a spot I wanted to drive out to, but when we were actually in the car, I missed the exit or something, and ended up finding the exact same one that Hambone, Sarge, Wizard and I took when we went kayak fishing for one of the first times but and nearly died taking it because of its sharp turn we didn't know about. This time, I took it much better.

I happened to have had some of my fishing stuff in the Cube with me, and that included some catfood I use to chum the waters when I go fishing. So we pulled into the Marina there, wandered out onto the floating gas station, and found a bench to sit on while we tossed catfood into the water and watched some old people across the marina play games near their boat. We got a chance to talk some more, until we had to go - because she ate cheese at the theater on her pizza and wasn't supposed to.

The next weekend was Quakecon - and I invited her to come out to it, since I had registered a second account, like I have done every year since 2005, hopeful I'll have a girl that I can loan it to. During our emails she told me she was into WoW and the gaming scene, which was awesome.

I went out there Wednesday night, but we were firing someone the following morning, so I had to come back home after I dropped my computer off, in order to change the passwords on all the work accounts. On the way home, I stopped by the office and picked up a bunch of boxes and packing materials from the warehouse dumpster that was emptied the previous day, and loaded them up for Jenna to move with.

She came out to Quakecon Friday after she got off work. There she got to meet Wizard and Sarge, and see me in my element...around all the technology one can stand, and without the pretenses of a date or any date-like attitudes. It was kind of a boring night for her though because she brought a Mac - and I have very little experience with a Mac. So we all went to dinner at Whataburger, and we did our best to play games we both could play on my computer. Then I found out she shouldn't eat meat or french fries, so we had to call it a night, and I loaded her boxes into her car.

Saturday she was supposed to register for classes, but they were closed - so, much to Wizard's surprise (after seeing us as we are, and having the very easy option to stay home) she came back to Quakecon! This time I was prepared though, because Friday night afterward, I went home and looked up what it would take to get her Macbook on the DC++ server and in the IRC chatroom...as well as a couple other issues. When she came back Saturday, I also realized there was a Terminal window on her Mac, and that made my life much easier - having been a Linux admin for a couple years. I got her connected, showed her how to use the software, and she had a blast downloading music, and going to the booths with me, and trying to get a Quakecon Girl shirt in a crowd full of no-deodorant-wearing teens.

Quakecon was a blast this year, and afterward, Sunday was as lame as possible. With one exception though: Jenna sent me a facebook invite to help her move. However, quickly thereafter she said she didn't expect me to actually come help her, she just wanted to see me again. I told her that wouldn't be a problem, and we scheduled to spend some time the following weekend together with just some "us" time - no friends around, and since we were more familiar with each other, in a quiet/non-public location - my apartment. Which needed to be re-cleaned, in a hurry.

We both cooked breakfast (I made the waffle batter, eggs, and bacon...she handled the waffle iron while I was cooking the meats). The eggs were for me, though - but she ate one anyway...but I don't think it made her sick this time. And we also cooked a dinner, some indoor Grilled Chicken, and she cooked some white-wine asparagus...both were awesome. We got to showcase our culinary talents and we approved.

The private time during the weekend gave us a chance to talk about other things that needed to be mentioned and between movies and conversations we decided that we're both exactly what we've been looking for...and made it official.

So this would be my first official girlfriend since 2006, and it's a nice feeling to have someone like you more than you would expect someone to like you - but also a little difficult for me to accept it at times. And after all the searching through my past and relationships of the past that I did in 2007 and blogged right here on this very journal, it has finally paid off to know exactly what I'm looking for in a woman, and to know exactly when I find it. Yet, every day I get to spend with her, I learn something new about her, so I'll probably never know everything there is to know about her...

But I know...one thing...

Fear Not

2009-06-23T18:13:00.002-06:00

As I'm sitting here watching a show on the History Channel, called The Next Nostradamus, I realize that the reason the Middle East is in such turmoil is, of course, religious-based - but more specifically, because they believe everyone should believe as they believe. And if they choose not to, the consequences are "death to the gentile."

It makes me wonder, what if the [militant] Islamic people didn't have a clause in their doctrine that required them to go out and convert or kill anyone who accepts or rejects, respectively, their beliefs. What if the [Israeli] Jews weren't so obsessed over a particular piece of land that it rose to heated conflict. What if [Dark-Ages Catholic] Christians didn't go out in their crusades "back in the day" and kill all the "heathens" or perform all those "witch hunts."

What if everyone just lived their life - asked questions to learn what other people believed, why they believed it...and then applied it to their own lifestyle if the moral fit. I'm not talking about accepting a better belief system because of the "mystical" rewards in the afterlife. That should be a separate post about choosing religion based on greed.

I'm simply wondering how the world would be if the militant sect of Islam wasn't militant. If their neighboring countries, including Israel, took it upon themselves to show love (the same Love that their God represents - technically the same God that the Islamic people believe in) and compassion to have the half-brother relationship the two people have. If the old-skool Catholics didn't hate the Jews for killing Jesus (when it was the Romans...the same people that created Catholicism...that did).

Granted I have a very naive understanding of the intricacies of the Islamic, Jewish, and Catholic interpretations of religion. But as with most things, I don't have to have such intricate knowledge to explain concepts - concepts that those WITH the intricate knowledge would understand how to carry out.

Consider a world where there were no wars among different people in different regions, and instead there were talks, lectures, documentation of how a particular society lives their life - why they follow certain practices - how those ideas have developed over time - and provide some kind of quantifiable proof for what benefits and disadvantages their particular methodology has. And then the different nations of the world share their "best-practices" in some sort of forum with the rest of the world to gain and benefit from. How different would everything be?

Different industries do this in business. What works for an automobile manufacturer assembly line does not necessarily work for food production. You can't reasonably pass down a hamburger bun to the next person, let them apply the mustard, the next apply the lettuce, then another tomatoes and so on. However, in concept - allowing particular people to be in charge of a particular part of the meal as a whole DOES work. So you have 3 people working on one meal (hamburger, fries, drink) at the same time and it comes out in 1/3 the time as it does with one person doing it all.

If you have one nation that uses a particular kind of seed it has developed that can produce 3x as much food as the seed another country is using - yet that country has equipment that allows them to harvest food 3x as fast as the first nation - why not combine the ideas of the two. Grow the first nation's seed on 3x the land, harvest it with the second nation's equipment 3x as fast, and you can produce the combined effect of 9x the food output.

There are herbal cures deep in the African and Amazon jungles that a lot of modern doctors probably have never heard of. If they ventured into the jungles to learn about these techniques and herbs...and left behind specific knowledge of other cures to diseases the people die from (common cold, small pox, etc) then both communities benefit...and so does the rest of the world.

I think - no, I know that most of what drives people's division and purported hatred is simply a lack of understanding about something. I know that my parents had a strong hatred for those Magic Eye books (the kind where you crossed your eyes, and an image popped out). They said it was demonic and it was inviting you to relax your spirit for the devil to enter in - and then would scour the seemingly random patterns of dots on the pages to try and find sequences of dots that resembled (in one's mind) the image of a face/demon/devil.

Had they only understood how the eyes actually work, and that one eye sees from a certain angle, and the other eye does as well - the book takes this mathematical knowledge and through the instructed process causes your eyes to find the precise angle for which the image was designed so that the dots on the page became an image in the brain.

That's all it was - math and biology. There's no demons, no devils, no relaxation of the spirit.

Fear is what drives everything apart. Understanding is what brings everything together. If you can understand how something works, you no longer have to fear it. You should still respect it - and the consequences of it's output if used incorrectly - but you don't have to live in fear of it.

The phrase "fear not" appears 62 times in the King James bible...maybe there's something to it.

Just some [vented] thoughts...

2009-05-17T22:49:00.003-06:00

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I need something to do...

2009-05-08T14:56:00.000-06:00

I need something to do. This is going to be a long post.

I'm at a point in the year, where I am in limbo between spending the Winter couped up in the apartment expanding my education and doing tecky projects, and entering into spring/summer where I am trying to be more social and have more human interaction after a figurative "social hibernation," if you will.

I moved to Plano at the on-set of winter, and so being at home, couped up in the new apartment was great - I got to soak in all the newness without having to shun people I'd normally spend time with during the part of the year. Had I moved any other time during the year, it would have been a struggle between spending time elsewhere, and getting things set up at home (I guess girls call that nesting, and commonly do it before child birth...I don't know what guys call it...fortifying? Preparing the Castle for presentation to friends/family/interests?)

At any rate, my social circle in Plano is slightly smaller than the one I had back in Fort Worth...and doing things with them is even more difficult now that they've had a baby. So I'm left to my own devices for entertaining myself.

So, I joined an online dating site, in an effort to meet new people in the area, however, I keep finding people that live back in Fort Worth. I came here thinking I was going to find someone within my apartment complex that I could hang out with - but that doesn't seem to be happening as easily as I'd like...mainly because I don't know of any social functions or any real reason to strike up conversation with anyone that I do encounter.

I can only psyche myself out so long before I snap back to reality. I've tried to focus solely on work, thinking "If I can just get my career in line, I can afford to go out and do social stuff later." I've tried to focus solely on education, thinking "If I can create these extra sources of income, I can keep myself busy until everything is up and running on its own." But those thoughts are only good for a couple weeks or until I finish the project that they are based on.

I set up a server and learned about how to use it in January, but that effort fizzled once it was up and running, and I couldn't do much more with it. I designed two online stores in February, one for work and one for personal gain, and that effort stopped once they were released in March. Then I spent March working with some API codes to learn how to do web mash-ups between Twitter & Google Docs and Wordpress & Ping.fm & Twitter. But once those were finished, that effort lasted about a month until April - which was when the push to become more social took hold.

I've found it extremely difficult to describe myself, especially in 4000 characters or less as the site requires, without sounding too much one way or the other. It's either totally serious, or completely humorous. I may have found a good balance with the description that's up there now - but as I go on these dates, or interact with these matches, I find out other things that I didn't warn them about. For example, my fluid political views that change as my understanding does - or my secular understanding of the purposes and practices of religion. It's stuff that I can't fit into a 200 character box on the side, nor can I just slip into a 4000 character description without leaving out some part of the necessary back story.

However, what I am finding out is that all I really want/need is the same thing I've always said that I wanted/needed...female companionship. It's probably the very reason I'm uninterested in "The Pursuit" these days, and would much rather find someone that I can get along with, talk to when talking to is needed, or just sit and be with when that is needed. The trouble comes in when my multi-tasking ability grants me a lot more free time than it should. And if there is someone new around - a new friend, a new outlet for ideas, whatever, I tend to want to use it as frequently as I can.

Maybe I just need to blog more, and remove my blog from syndication - maybe, and not that I'm interested in doing this, but maybe there is some kind of medication that can suppress an overabundance of thoughts - maybe I need more change/chaos in my life than there currently is, to keep my mind from having all this free time.

I think a lot of it has to do with the stagnation I've run into at work, where I'm expected to take more time to do things than I want. I have sat on the same project for nearly 3 weeks, and the same portion of the project for nearly a week, because I was asked to come up with a requirements document. Granted, while coming up with one did bring up things I hadn't considered at the time - it also brought up the need to discuss things that are WAY beyond the scope of the intended project. What was intended to be a cost-free initiative now may require thousands of dollars in new equipment.

Why though? Well, it's because I was asked to sit and think about it. My mind is creative, and the more I have to think about something, the more complex and involved it can become. This is because as I'm thinking about the feature list, I'm having to write the code in my head to make sure it's possible. As that happens, I discover other things that are possible, and it branches out from there.

The irony of it all is that for those 3 weeks, I sat around and worked on my own websites, drew on my whiteboard, and started a new comic strip - as well as released another comic strip website. I tested the waters with what kind of reach my syndication has, and what kind of traffic a single mention can generate to a specific location. And when it was time to hold a meeting about the project, I did my research in 30 minutes before the meeting because while I was jacking around with all the other stuff, my brain was subconsciously processing everything it takes to make this one particular big-picture work.

I hate stagnation, and not doing anything. I know I fail when God's plan says to "be still" - that's nearly impossible for me. There is too much to know, too much to think about, and too much else I'd rather be doing than to sit and be still...even sleeping is only done because its necessary for me to fit into the 8-5 time frame that I'm supposed to be present for work. If I didn't have to, I might work for 40 hours straight so I can go do whatever else I need to with the rest of my 128 hours in the week.

This is a long entry - and it's because I haven't updated in so long. I've had a lot to think about, but mostly because I haven't had anyone to really talk to. My normal outlet has been gone from work and the Internet pretty much, since March 31. That's a long time to be left to your own devices. And despite the nice girls on I've met on the dating website, they haven't shown themselves to be very good conversationalists. I thought girls were supposed to be good at that.

Thoughts on [My] Religion and Politics

2009-04-17T10:18:00.002-06:00

Last summer, I didn't have any interest in following anything related to politics because it was just too stressful to listen to them argue, and I didn't really like my options anyway. I decided I would not vote, and stuck to it.

But when I started a new job, in a new town, it came up in conversation with my Boss (the owner of the company) what my preference was regarding the political candidates. Being naive about the ramifications of expressing [what would be] opposing views, I said I was leaning towards the economic policy Obama had put forward (because of how well the economy was under Bill Clinton [even though I didn't want him to win], and how well it did under FDR during the Great Depression).

Immediately, I was bombarded with words like "Socialist," "Communism," "Terrorist," and "Corrupt."

Now, I try to trust people until they give me a reason not to trust them...and I had no reason to accept those words as valid, because they were negative buzzwords used to get people riled up, especially coming off the War on Terror rhetoric (that even I supported back in 2003 when it started...but grew tired of it in 2005 when it should have ended by then).

I had nothing to explain myself with every time my boss wanted to talk about politics...so I had to start watching the news to figure out what he was talking about, and form my own opinions on the talking points. And I started hearing things that I agreed with....

I'll stop there, and talk about religion, because the two do meet, conceptually...

I was raised hardcore southern baptist - so much so, to the point of believing that any other protestant doctrine would send someone to hell, if it was not Southern Baptist. That was, until my parents up-and-changed churches. I have no idea why they decided to do it, or any of the many confusing, mind-changing, life-altering shifts they made while we were growing up. But all the sudden - one didn't have to be Southern Baptist to get into heaven anymore...you could be Non-denominational, or Southern Baptist now.

"All right, I can handle that...just so long as you're Southern Baptist or just plain Christian it's ok...but anything else is hell-bound." I thought.

Then they changed to a Methodist church - one of the very churches they spoke so negatively about because it had a woman preacher.

"wtf? seriously?" my thoughts were.

After I was "forcibly relocated" to my Dad's, I went to a church my family had gone to just before moving to the country. It was familiar, and I knew it was acceptable by their standards [whatever they were, if any] so it would be ok for me.

I went there for 2 years, but started realizing I wasn't getting anything out of it, and it was more for socializing than for anything at that point. And when I moved out on my own, I reflected back on everything I'd been through, and realized one important thing:

Jesus was Jewish - not Southern Baptist, not Methodist, not Non-denominational...he was Jewish.

From then on, what church one went to was only an indication of the finer, man-made interpretations of one what one believed...called Doctrine. Doctrine doesn't save you, doctrine isn't supposed to tell you how to live - doctrine is just a common interpretation of the "rules" of the bible that everyone in your church thinks you're supposed to live by...and every church is different - and they will fight each other over the differences in those doctrines, or impose them as "The Way" that non-Christians are supposed to change their lives and live.

I disagree with that concept. I do not subscribe to a doctrine - refuse to.

My beliefs are based on what I've read in the Bible, and how I am able to apply it to my life. Parables, prophecies, and miracles - they all have a purpose, and they all have a real-life component.

Parables are simply stories to explain a greater truth, in a broader, simpler way so everyone can understand what's being said, and apply it to their life - without the speaker having to tell each individual person (whether it's applicable to them or not) how to live their life. It's to get people to think on their own.

Prophecies are warnings that the current track you're on will either bring you blessings or destruction because someone (a third-party to the issue) can see from outside the box, the direction you are heading in. It's to get people to think beyond themselves (i.e. unselfishly).

And Miracles all have physical manifestations of some unusual act. I don't have examples to use, and would rather not explain away miracles. However, their occurrence (regardless of the initiating force) don't just "happen," there is an actual physical activity that is going on to produce it.

And as I started thinking about these things, I started finding things I agreed with...

And now the two meet: The more I found that I agreed with, the less interested I was in accepting things that I knew better about - whether they were naive statements that were poorly researched, or misquotes that were taken out of context and altered for a particular purpose.

I have no problem getting my Christian views to work with logical thought. Everything in the bible has a purpose - and the basis of it all is for the reader/believer to be able to live a better life while they are here, helping others, and not themselves, because true happiness is found in selflessness.
And I have no problem voting someone into office that has the best answers (or at least proven methods) of fixing the issues that we're currently facing. Obama, McCain, Hilary - they all make no difference to me...but Obama planned to use the same concepts that FDR used during his New Deal to bring the country back from recession. If we weren't in a recession, then I'd probably have voted for McCain so we could wrap up this war stuff.

My goal in conversations I have with people about either of these two topics is not to say they are right or wrong, but to say what my opinion is that would yield a better, more productive result. If it's about religion, you don't have to stand on street corners yelling "REPENT OR DIE!!" in Fort Worth...you can explain it to people in a way that shows the benefits their lifestyle would receive if they were to follow the examples of Jesus. If it's about politics, you don't have to straight-up disagree with the other party just because it's the other party. There are good ideas on both sides, and they need to be presented in a manner (and to people) that will be willing to make the compromises necessary to get the issue solved. Every solution is going to have unforeseen consequences, but that doesn't mean the answer is completely wrong.

As a good friend told me recently, the path to happiness is found when neither person is worried about "my turn to be selfish," and is working to help the other person. This holds for every kind of relationship possible.

Those are my thoughts.

Professional or Expert/Guru/Genius?

2009-03-30T18:10:00.004-06:00

"All I know, is that I learned more on my own than I have in college classes - and experience always says more than education - otherwise, the newest college graduates would have better jobs and better pay than the seasoned workers, simply because their degree is newer, and theoretically more current." - [[Neo]]

I had been needing some blog fodder for a while - something that wasn't tired, old rhetoric based on political news.

And then I saw @Xemion post this message:

Retweeting @brandoncorbin: Why not replace Genius, Expert or Guru with Professional? this way you won't sound like an egotistical a** head.
about 6 hours ago from twhirl

to which I replied:

@xemion what if the people that use Genius, Expert, or Guru don't like the culture that "Professional" implies, but know just as much?
about 6 hours ago from web in reply to xemion

Then I read a non-reply reply from him:

I'm not sure what sort of culture "professional" implies, but it's got to be better than the one "guru" implies (IMO)
about 6 hours ago from twhirl

and I explained what I meant:

@xemion it's all opinion. IMO, "Professional" says "commercial corporate monkey"; Guru/Expert/Genius say "ultimate, life-dedicated hobbyist"
about 6 hours ago from web in reply to xemion

Which is pretty much how I view it. Let me explain...

I got my first corporate job doing accounting, but had always had an interest in IT stuff since college - it was the reason I went to college, after all, to extend my hobby into a degree.

I was a "power user" at work, and went through 3 computers during the first couple months because the crappy old Windows NT 4.0 machine couldn't handle the kind of work I wanted to do with it. Neither could the low-grade Optiplex GX-1.

When asking the IT people questions, I was always viewed as some dumb user who didn't know what I was talking about (and granted, I was in a lot of areas - but that's why I was asking the questions).

Everyone that I knew that was in the IT field, whether it was my parents, the company's IT people, or professors - they were all doing it to get paid, and had no interest in doing it because it was what they liked to do. It was a job choice...like my doing accounting work. They were (quote, unquote) "Professionals."

Now, I am the guy in that field, doing the things that they were doing. My predecessor at my current company is someone that I would consider a "professional" but then again, I don't know what his does in his spare time - though I'm sure it's nothing like what I do.

I wouldn't call myself an "Expert," "Guru," or "Genius" in any particular definition of the words. However, I would say that I am an extreme hobbyist that is not doing this just as a job, but because it's what I have essentially devoted my life to learning and doing. I take great pleasure/pride in the fact that I do not operate under any pretenses of coming in to any past or present job wearing the standard white shirt, black suit, and tie. Even when I was required to wear a suit to work, I never wore (never even owned) a white dress shirt.

I guess it's part of my "corporate identity" and my idea of the Corporate Environment 2.0. What one wears to work doesn't have anything to do with what one knows or is able to do. However, it does say something about how they view or conduct themselves. (And how they view themselves is portrayed in how they dress.)

So, would I prefer to tell people that I'm a professional or a guru/expert/genius when it comes to teck? Well, it would depend on the context - but frankly, if I were hiring an employee to help move an IT department forward, I would prefer the latter. If I wanted a warm body to just do tasks without new ideas, I'd probably hire a "professional."

All I know, is that I learned more on my own than I have in college classes - and experience always says more than education - otherwise, the newest college graduates would have better jobs and better pay than the seasoned workers, simply because their degree is newer, and theoretically more current.

This is [[Neo]] Live from The Pizzy...

2009-03-15T23:20:00.005-06:00

I just spent most of yesterday evening, and most of this evening writing two different blog posts on thepizzy.net/blog. I found out that I am #1 on a google search for "openvpn connection to active directory" so I decided it was time to actually write a real article since the one people keep finding is only a Proof of Concept article.

I also gained 3 followers to my blog sometime today because of the stuff I've been writing, so there's a little incentive to produce some worth-while content more frequently.

After writing part 1 of this OpenVPN blog post though, I realized that I could get used to this kind of thing, and wouldn't mind doing a lot more instructional articles like it.

I'm probably going to be writing one for how to set up a couple more game servers, and will also start writing more of them for the various ideas that I come up with as "Proof of Concepts" and then go back and actually do it as a How-To when I figure it out.

Heh, it feels like the person at thepizzy.net is nothing like the person that runs the-spot.net - it's a whole other technical side of me over there. (and of course, there is a more blatant side of me over here at The Black Journal too).

This new tech writing thing may even give me some material to start doing podcasts like I had set up the site for. I think I will give that some more consideration now that I have a content direction for the blog.

That's all for tonight, and that's all for the weekend.

Guns don't kill people, bullets do...

2009-03-10T21:55:00.003-06:00

Well, tonight, I was prompted by @winkydo's tweet about all the store's he's visited that are now out of ammo.

I asked if he knew why, and got a response from @txsarge and from @winkydo talking about how Obama plans to ban guns and ammo, and how Clinton did, respectively.

So, before putting my foot in my mouth, I asked for proof, and then did a Google Search for "obama proposed tax on ammo" and the first link was for a Washington Post article: "NRA Ads are off target about Obama and Guns"

While it is true that Obama favors tighter gun laws, it is a huge stretch to argue that he wants to take away the guns and ammunition most commonly used by hunters. The claim that he favors "a huge new tax on guns and ammo" rests on a confusingly worded nine-year-old newspaper article that has little relevance for Obama's platform as a presidential candidate.

Without enumerating the list of all the things the WP cited as being inaccurate about the NRA's Ad, essentially the article is saying the NRA is claiming Obama wants to do away with all handguns - when their research shows that in 1999...

...Obama, then an Illinois state senator, supported a "500 percent" increase in the federal tax on the sale of "weapons he says are most commonly used in firearm deaths."

Personally, I have no problem with that; why not discourage people from buying the guns that are the cause of unnecessary deaths? That doesn't infringe on hunters and their rifles. I then went and found an article by the New York Times: "Clinton proposes ban on armor-piercing ammunition"

"If a bullet can rip through a bulletproof vest like a knife through hot butter, then it ought to be history," Mr. Clinton said in accepting an award from the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence at a police station house accompanied by Chicago's mayor, Richard M. Daley.

Again, I have no problem with that. Why would we want to allow irresponsible people to have the ability (legally) to shoot through armor? Shouldn't the police have the ability to be protected from incursions, and have superior firepower than who they are going up against? (Granted, there is another side of the conversation - the sale of full-body armor to criminals.)

I passed those two links on, and clicked on another link from FOX News, criticizing the Washington Post article for being incomplete, saying:

The Washington Post analysis only discusses two issues: the Kennedy ammunition ban and the 500 percent ammunition tax. On the Kennedy bill, the Post makes the same mistake as FactCheck.org. Regarding the tax, the Post doesn’t deny that Obama held that position, but points out that the legislation Obama supported was in 1999 and that it is not clear what guns would have their ammunition taxed. CNN’s discussion appears unwilling to admit that Obama has supported large-scale bans on gun ownership.

and enumerates all the points it makes from FactCheck.org. It is at this point that it is, once again clear, depending on who your sources are, the perspective of the article will be skewed to the agenda.

Having settled on that, I decided the only place to get valid, legitimate information is from the actual source, and I went to the WhiteHouse.gov site, did a search for "gun ban", which returned one result: an article to Obama's Agenda on Urban Policy. A CTRL + F find for "gun" takes you to this bullet point:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

Again, I have no problem releasing the information on who registered a gun so they can be held responsible for its misuse; and I have no problem banning assault weapons for the greater good of the rest of the people.

Meanwhile, I got 4 responses from @winkydo:

ABC News: "Obama to seek new assault weapons ban"
The Volokh Conspiracy Weblog: "FactCheck flubs Obama gun fact check"
The Sean Hannity Forums: a post from alias die hard republican "Obama supports a 500% tax increase on firearms and ammo"
The Connecticut Tristates News Channel website: "IL gun insurance proposal"

Now, having gone through the stuff I've just read, and deciding to focus on actual fact listing or as close to 1st-person sources as possible, it's hard to lend any kind of credibility to anyone in the media but the source these days. Every news channel has a political leaning, and every reporter has a personal leaning. My preference is a bullet list of the actions as they happened from ontheissues.org. So I went and got a list of Obama's stance on Gun Control. I did the same thing before the election to see what McCain's real stance was on issues as compared to Obama's.

It's been my view that the major difference between the two parties, Republican and Democratic, is boiled down to two perspectives:

Republican: personal rights, guided by conservative morals imposed on others.
Democratic: civil rights, guided by the populous imposed on everyone.

Over the years, my opinions have shifted, and I can see how I believed things in the past that were not held because they were for the good of other people, but because it was what I thought was best for everyone else - with utter apathy for anyone experiencing adverse affects from such beliefs.

That's not to say I don't still have apathy for a lot of things, but it is to say that I can now see it from the other perspective. Maybe I'll write more on what my perspective is and why it's changed, and hit the main talking points that both political parties touch on.

That's all for now.

Pokin' around the code

2009-02-23T10:31:00.002-06:00

I've been messing with some more codes as of this past week, and weekend.

I've finished up completely rewriting the Product Pages for the new release of HitRunScore.com, and have finished up all but a couple graphics for the FreeformFrog.com store. I even started looking into creating a Twitter Google Talk bot replacement.

I've got the concept written down, which didn't take long to deduce. I just have to get all the pieces working, and then make them work together. There are a few things that I need to find out if they're publicly accessible, or if only Twitter could access them. If they are the only ones that can access a few particular features, then recreating the bot will be a little more difficult, but not by much.

I also finally got around to updating the CSS and adding/removing some Widgets from this blog. Got my Last.fm playlist up finally, and installed Songbird on all my computers where I listen to Music, so I can start scrobling my songs as I listen - since I am listening to them for nearly all of the workday.

That's about all for now - all I do lately is work: at work, at home, and in bed (with a laptop on the nightstand).

Post-Valentine's Day update

2009-02-16T00:16:00.004-06:00

Well, I've been focusing a lot of my spare time on my tech projects that I have going lately...and that seems to be the pattern around times like this weekend: when ever there is relationship fodder going around in my life, during those time that I cannot participate, I turn my attention to technology.

This month is dedicated to getting the Freeformfrog.com store online for the first legitimate time in the previous 5 years of conceptualization. I've been keeping up with how things are going via a blog so that people will get to see what goes on behind the scenes of a store, but also to use it as a platform for extending the reach via twitter, feedburner, and (later) the social sites.

It's been a good full-duplex experience for me, because at the same time, I have a parallel project at my real job, that is essentially redesigning our entire yahoo store. During my own store setup, I've gotten to implement some of the ideas for utilizing social networking that I was not immediately permitted to use in our own store...but also developed new ones, that we *did* utilize (primarily by just doing first, and asking later, if at all). I figure if it helps my job, or helps my personal store, it will help me.

I also discovered today that Google allows for syncing one's Windows Mobile phone, via ActiveSync, to get one's Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts. Unfortunately, you can't sync multiple calendards from Google - just the main one. So that gave me the outlet to cancel my subscription with OggSync, which I had been using before - and which I had no problems with (except the annoyance of the popup when I tried to exit, letting me know that it'll start up as needed because I told it to - granted, this was a setting I chose, but the notification still annoyed me).

So now, I have an interest in setting up [[Apoch]], my Windows 2008 Server, to house an Exchange Mail Server, and redoing [[Oracle]] from XP to Windows 2008, so that I can set that up as my phone's remote Exchange Server. Then I'll be able to get my home emails to my phone over the mobile internets. That will help with fulfilling orders on my new store, since I'll have to be on top of it, if they order a 1-day delivery.

Otherwise, on the social front, there have been a couple contacts made with people from my distant past. I find it interesting how memories that has since moved to the furthest part of the back of one's mind, can be brought immediately to the forefront - as well as the physical/mental affects this resurfacing can induce.

Anyway, this weekend went by quick...the week went by quicker than it felt like it would last Monday too. I didn't do anything on Saturday, but tonight I saw Bolt with MoriEndi, NarcolepticTime, and Beef. It was good for what it was - but wasn't something I was terribly interested in seeing when I saw the previews. It was a typical Disney mushy-adventure-sad-happy story. But it was also only $1.50 - so no complaints there. I did notice that they also have Yes Man and Day the Earth Stood Still showing at the same theater. So I will probably go see those on my own for such a cheap price.

But for now, I'm off to bed. I have to finish my project tomorrow at work, because I'm now a week behind due to several unforeseen complications with regular work, mixed with trying to get things right on the first try with the project.

Out on a limb...

2009-02-02T16:13:00.003-06:00

So...I don't have a solution for the previous religion post. I just know I fail alot when it comes to matters of philosophy, and in matters of psychology - I find that I am an exception because of the skewed perspective I have of things. So, I'm just going to go about my business, with whatever direction the whims of my mind take me...and lately there has been new direction.

It's been a month into this year already, and my local friends (which were formerly my Plano Friends) and I have been going on photoshoots with some of the younger-crowd from flickr...namely Rachel and Eric to this point...and it's been fun. It's been good to get out of the house, and find something creative to do - to try and get some different perspective on the world, but not perspective that I have to adhere to.

Like I've mentioned in previous posts I've been doing a lot more coding lately - even more at work, and that too has given me a different perspective on things. It's kind of empowering really to realize that it's withing one's realm of accomplishment to think of what hasn't been done, but would serve one's purposes better - and then to go do it. I envy the ability of carpenters and electrical engineers to build things like buildings and electronic devices on a whim. But at the same time, I'm glad that I can either write or hack computer code to make it do what I want on a whim.

I started working on the FreeformFrog.com store this past weekend, and I nearly finished the modifications to the code, and the new design graphics, and most of the configuration in just one day. You'd think it would be simple since I've restarted this store at least 5 times in the last 5 years. But this time, I gave myself a fixed date for completion, and it should be live and accepting orders March 1, 2009.

I decided that since my boss won't let me design our new store in the manner that it needs to be designed and developed, then it would behoove me to create another source of income for myself, incase things do not go as well as planned.

I'm finding it more difficult than any previous website that I've designed, because I'm apprently not the one designing it - even though I have to come up with preliminary designs in order to convey the page structure and technology to a handful of people who were, apparently, born with no imagination whatsoever.

Whatever. It's just a testament to the fact that if I were allowed to handle this as the web developer, since I'm sitting in that position at the moment, I'd already have a working website up by now - we started in November.

On that note, and having said everything this far, I've made a subconscious decision to move forward in this direction...to start expanding my skills on the things that I have been putting off for years because I didn't believe I could do it. Something changed this past winter though, and all the sudden, I was able to formulate the internal workings of information systems in my head.

It's just reinforcement, I guess, that it's what I'm made to do...and it has become a cure for the bordem that was starting to set in being couped up in the apartment all weekend. So that, combined with adding a couple friends to the group on a more regular basis, has got me feeling like I'm going out on a new limb to see what's at the end of it.

A bitter aftertaste...

2009-01-26T21:20:00.005-06:00

I don't like to write about religion much (at least, I don't think I do - I'm sure there are past posts to contradict this statement...but whatever). I actually don't like talking about it much. I'm not sure why...at least not entirely sure...but I may be starting to figure it out.

As a kid (...yeah, I know, here we go...bear with me, I'll make this part short), we did the church thing, and that was social. Go to church on Sundays, see Brother Bernie and our friends in Sunday School, and go hang out afterward with everyone. Small church, small congregation, sounds fine.

We moved on to a bigger church - big congregation, bigger youth group, so more activities, right? No. No social life, and thus not much joy in going except to go to "Big Church" and hear the sermon. I was saved at this particular church, but I'm going to move past that, because that's not my point here.

My mom married the guy who is now my Stepdad from this church, and something changed along the way at the church, and we switched again - to another small church, small congregation, but no social lives - with the exception of the people I knew from school there (i.e. Natalie & Sarah).

Things didn't start picking up in the Church aspect of my life until we found a church out in the country (after we moved there, and bounced around several other churches in town, and the neighboring towns and) after I was almost done with High School - and then it started to mean something. There was now a purpose for church - a spiritual purpose, spiritual hunger I suppose, that changed how I viewed life, and everything that I thought I knew in the Bible, believed about God, and gave an empowering nature to this Christian title we carried around - through the facet of prayer. Then the pastor accepted a job in Kansas City - and that was that.

We tried other churches, but they were just feeble attempts compared to what I was receiving at that other church.

Fast forward a couple months - I go off to college. I am then free to choose any church I want to, as long as I have a ride, or choose to walk to it. So I do, and find myself at times walking 55 minutes to get to a church on the other side of town. Dedication for hearing the sermons that I needed to hear.

Fast forward 1.5 years (3 semesters) and my parents pull me out of college, force me to attend a church I have no interest in attendin g (whose doctrine I share no common thread, but Jesus' existence), and hearing a message that is leaving his mouth and falling to the floor. I am essentially starved for any kind of spiritual food. These are the parents that forced me to read Revelation Ch 13 to prove that Power Rangers were Satanic (Beast out of the Sea, Beast out of the Earth...Green Ranger & Red Ranger, respectively)...the same parents that punished me by making me watch Creflo Dollar on TV (televangelist) because I was listening to Rock music...the same parents who watched John Hagee every Sunday afternoon at 3:00.

These same parents then scolded me for reading the book of Daniel from my bible during a sermon that I was receiving nothing out of...threatened to "squeal on me" (whatever that meant) if I even struck conversation with the youth minister...and refused to let anyone of us work (or go places to cause others to work) on Sunday - yet used the television and electricity as if no one had to work those.

Jump ahead 1 month from those episodes occurring, and I was being kicked out of the house - given the two options of: Army (which would likely destroy me physically) or my Dad's (which was touted to destroy me spiritually). I chose my Dad's...because I had already been destroyed spiritually.

Until recently, I had forgotten about the method of punishment my parents chose to use on us, which ingrained a negative perspective towards those things. It wasn't until I decided to continue transcribing The Blue Journal to the internet that it all started to make sense.

I had been brought to different churches and just so happened to find one I liked, but that had extraneous circumstances that changed it. Then I was allowed to find one that I liked while I was at college, but then forced to come home, and subsequently punished for/by/with religion.

I remember that during those sermons, after the Daniel incident, I would stare at the preacher and contemplate perpetual energy, the 1800s, hover technology for cars, or working on the-spot.net. I let knowledge take place of God - because God was being used as a form of punishment.

Punishment? I don't want any part of that...but thoughts - no one can punish me for thinking about hydrogen fusion and cold-air currents...not if I manage it all in my head.

I was kicked out, moved to my Dad's, and keep the habit of going to church on Sundays (to the one with Natalie and Sarah, who happened to still be there) because that was the only facet for making friends at the time. Over time that slowly dropped off, as a lot of things I knew from the college period of my life, that were so dependent on the church aspect, started to pass away...leaving less and less reason to continue on with those ties.

Ultimately, I moved out on my own again - but this time, I had little interest in finding a church closer to where I was that suited what I wanted. It was just as easy (and at times even more desirable) to stay home, and watch the Science channel all day...to be home in time for the Cowboys to play...to relax and enjoy the one day that I usually didn't do anything on (not in keeping with the ideal of a no-work-Sunday...but because I disconnected from the world that day to restore my social energy). Almost all things "Christian" had left a bitter aftertaste for me.

This explains why I have no dichotomy explaining how what I can believe in the Bible does not interfere with what I have learned in school. It explains how I have learned to pray (or not to pray) in accordance with the human decision making process that directs our life's journey. And it explains why I have such a red-colored, internal anguish for people that use cop-out religious phrases or twist the fact to support the cause.

It was all the crappy sermons I heard that preached feel-good sermons, about name-it-and-claim-it prayers, or that God made such-&-such and He shows us that He did because this or that is a certain way.

The sermons and teachings that I went after when I was left to my own devices taught me how to apply Jesus' teachings to the things going on in my life. I didn't need to hear about peace, love and joy - I already had those at the time. I didn't need to hear the Christmas Story or the Easter Story for the 20th time in as many years. I wanted to hear about how something Paul wrote in a letter to a church can be used in how I conduct myself at work...how I relate to people...how I am to function in a relationship.

Having found that at one point, and then get bludgeoned with it by those who showed it to me...

...what would you have done? (to be continued...with a solution)

History in the making...

2009-01-19T23:28:00.003-06:00

Throughout my fairly few years on this planet, I have learned about, and taken special note of the Historical events that preceded me, but have always managed to miss out on the history I as living through.

I didn't fullyrealize this until I was updating The Blue Journal and came across my post for February 1, 2003...

Man…today is a day to be put down in history. The space shuttle Columbia exploded on reentry this morning at 8:00. It was said that all over Texas it was heard when it happened. I didn’t hear it though. I was at DQ counting the store. (I got there early, at 7:30 to do it.)...

I was alive when Regan was shot...but didn't know about it. I couldn't comprehend the breakup of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War. I didn't realize that Hong Kong was handed over to China from England. I didn't know that Clinton signed NAFTA into existence.

On the other hand, I did recognize Windows 95 being released, changing the way we use computers. I saw the dawn of the internet for consumer use. I noticed Rap music come into existence, and watched the OJ Simpson trial. I recognized Magic Johnson announced he had HIV, and was involved in the preparation for Y2K.

But all of those things that I was aware of pale in comparison to that of which I was unaware. I completely missed the initial coverage of the World Trade Center crashes, and heard about the space shuttle on the news later that day.

I guess it wasn't until I moved out of my parents' protection and house back in 2005 that I started to actually pay attention to the world around me - because I had to become a functioning part of it.

And it wasn't until July when I started noticing and actually paying attention to the presidential campaigns. I knew that President Bush had low approval ratings, and that the next election would go to the democrats - but my naivety prevented me from realizing what was happening earlier in the year.

I don't think it was until I came back from Chicago (though the trip had nothing to do with it), that I realized because this was a Democratic year, the two front runners were going to break the barrier that existed largely like an elephant in the room of America. It didn't matter who won, in the eyes of History, because it would be a first.

I should have voted, but I did not. I knew I didn't need to. I knew who would win.

He gave his acceptance speech on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech. He will be inaugurated on the 80th celebration of his birth. He's signifying a shift in the way the world sees America...and the way America sees itself.

I've only been alive for 25 years...but I am grateful to have been around during so many changes in the world. An explosion of Technology and Information, world-wide political changes, and now the hope to move past the racial division that some people walk on egg shells about - while others are quick to use it on the offensive.

Now that this is here, I can't even fathom what the next 25 years will bring - but believe me, I'm in no hurry to get there.

The Week in Review

2009-01-18T23:32:00.004-06:00

Well, I spent most of this week at home, working on code, only to find out Friday when I was almost done, that Yahoo's RTML doesn't allow you to keep track of an incremental variable, unless you use their FOR loop. And that would be fine, unless you're doing what I am, and trying to run a FOR-EACH-OBJECT loop and need that incremental variable in the html output so I can run a javascript over it. So that's what I get to work on Monday when I go back to the office. I don't know if I'm going to be able to continue to work at home though - I may need to get that re-approved.

Overall, looking back, it has been a calm week - at least the memory of it is. There were some bumps though, like my neighbor during the last issue I had with him, and also a small...scare (?)...more like an "uh oh" when I realized that I gave one of my former co-workers the link to this blog, and forgot that I wrote about my frustrations at that job here also...and she was mentioned. Oops. :-/ Well, because I'm me, it probably would have been better not to point her this direction, but because I did, I'll take whatever consequences arrise from it.

I also spent the week without talking to the girl from college I mentioned a couple posts back. I finally emailed her back late Saturday night explaining my thoughts, in as few words as possible, but trying not to sound mean about it. And she emailed me back, but I couldn't find the words to do another reply. I'm still trying to put the abstract into formulated sentences - it's just that the whole time we've been talking...for the first time, the logic side of me was ready to go, but the romantic side of me wasn't feeling it. She's pretty, smart, and financially stable - which has been a problem with a lot of my previous girlfriends...but without the romantic interest there (not being able to move myself past friends), it just doesn't feel right. I guess that would be a good enough explanation, but is there really such a thing?

Moving on, I went to Downtown Dallas with some Plano friends, and friends my age from Flickr, and we shot photos around the West End area. And, while I wasn't feeling the muse or inspiration, it was still a fun time. I enjoyed seeing Rachel again, and hanging out with Eric as well. It's good to mix energy with other people participating in the same hobby. It shares new or different perspectives and inspirations that wouldn't otherwise come.

When I got home, I uploaded the photos, and was ready to go back out and try it all again the next day. But, that didn't happen. I actually slept in till around 10 or 11, because I was up till past midnight hanging out with Chelsea, Chris, and Beth at Denny's. We talked about all kinds of things, and it was very reminiscent of the times we'd all get together about a year ago at Chris and his roommate's apartment and just hang out talking. Religion, relationships, addictions, idolatry, frustrations, and work were just some of the topics. I really enjoy that kind of get-together, and was ready to go late into the night with it. It brought back memories of being at ETBU in the lobbies or at Waffle House just hanging out. So maybe there will be more of those.

So after I recovered from staying up so late last night, I went to the store, and got lunch/dinner. Tonight, I was hoping to see the speech that Obama was giving in front of the Lincoln Memorial - but by the time I realized that the show I scheduled to DVR was a documentary, and too late for "this afternoon" (which was when it was touted the speech would be given) it was too late. But not only that, the documentary they said would start at 7 EST actually started at 5 EST...so I got there half-way into it, because they jumped the gun. Oh well. I had Brautwursts for dinner, and bought some Chicken, and salad dressing. This is the frist time I've had Asian Salad Dressing, and it tastes a lot like the Peanut Sauce the Thai Restaurant gives us for our salad.

Without sports, Sundays are pretty boring. So I'll probably start finding other things to spend my day doing. But whatever I find, it'll be something slightly different to go along with some kind of new liveliness I found during my outtings this weekend.

I've got more to write...some realizations, some plans, and other miscellanea...but if I put them all here, I won't have anything to say for a couple more days. So I'm off to bed now.

The answer is in the code...

2009-01-14T22:26:00.005-06:00

I don't know if it's because it's new to me, or because it's just what I know best - but this past week, I've been enjoying getting lost in a coding project I've taken on.

We're doing a site redesign for the store that I work for, and while I was out browsing other websites and their features, I came across one that apparently spent a lot of money to have someone code a lot of features into their yahoo store for them. Just one half of the script I was working on costs $450 for someone to do. The other half costs $224. But neither one of them does what mine does, nor as good (if I do say so myself, and I do, because I tested the others on example sites).

Anyway, all it took was putting on some of my hacking music, and rounding up a whiteboard, notepad++, and firefox - and I was off in my own world, swimming in and out of logical loops...following streams of thought...coming up for air only when I ran out of Ice Water.

The only troubles I had were the interruptions that were many and frequent - and usually at the most inopportune time...right when I had a new objective, discovered a bug, or needed to address something I forgot. (This led to me being given permission to work from home, without interruption.)

This would be the first time, in a long time, I've written a program from scratch...and I liked it. So that's my plan for this year...

In the years past, there have been various degrees of involvement in the technology that I've elected to administer. The-spot.net's code has all but taken care of itself these days (with the latest programming techniques and phpbb 3.0's update feature, the site runs itself, and updating is no big deal)....my tech blog will surely get used more as the year goes on with some of the projects I'll be working on....and hopefully I'll get a podcast up and running at ThePizzy.net.

Thanks to winkydo's help, I've got a new server up and running so I can better administrate the one at work. I'll be doing more to learn MS SQL Server, and how to administrate a Windows Server and everything that goes along with Active Directory (and hopefully an Exchange Server if I can get one set up).

With all this focus on learning more, I recently decided to give up on a relationship that could not distinguish itself beyond a friendship with a girl I've known since college. I'm hoping that something else will turn up here in Plano this year, but I'm not looking for it any time soon.

So that's the plan:
1.) Work on me -working out, learning more stuff, getting involved in the things I enjoy doing.
2.) Work on finding a "her" - get out, meet some people once I've worked on me, and see what happens
3.) Start an "us" by the end of the year.

Some place to vent...

2009-01-13T23:09:00.002-06:00

I need some place to vent. I figured a blog might be a good location, but after realizing that I have publicized this blog a little more than originally intended, I notice that my posts show up in places I didn't think they would.

So, maybe I'll vent on My Space. I rarely go there, and none of my close friends really go there, and really anything goes on that site. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I'll have to tone it down a notch here with just what kind of venting I do.

One song away from an ass whoopin'

2009-01-13T22:10:00.002-06:00

It's 9:30 pm...I've watched the News, the Simpsons, Two & a Half Men, 2-hr American Idol, and another 30 minutes of News tonight. After that, I decided I wanted to play some Rock Band, and spend the next 15 minutes looking for my headphone adapter to the surround sound, because Faggot McFaggotass (that's the name I'm giving him) downstairs seems to have a problem with the soundtrack to Rock Band when it's above the quiet volume level of 45 on my system (max is 70, below 35, no matter how quiet the room is, you can't hear it...normal operating level at my old apartment is 55-60).

It's 9:45...I get the drums connected, headphones plugged in, all my windows are shut. I got on to Sarge one night for beating hard on my drumpads because it doesn't take much for the game to register a hit - so obviously I don't beat them hard myself.

I play one song...and I feel pounding on my floor beneath my feet - the cat jumps. I pause the game, realize that there is no sound eminating from my apartment, and continue. I move on to the next song, and I feel the pounding on my floor again. Now I'm pissed.

I pause the game, yell out "Cut it out, bitch!" and continue. Because I'm a nice guy at heart, I tap the drumpads ever so lightly causing my accuracy to barely make it out of the song without failing.

The guy below me is one song away from a Neo-lashing....seriously. I don't play the game past 10pm. Obviously it's not the sound - so I can't be ticketed for amplification of sound to disturb his residence. Obviously he's sensitive to the tap of the drumpads. But if that's the case, then he had no reason to beat my floor the very first time I played the game with just my guitar...in the middle of the day.

Next time, I'm completely ignoring his beatings, and going to make him come up to my apartment...this is ridiculous. I don't beat on all the walls around me to get the sound of a hair dryer to stop in the morning, because I don't know who's making it, and don't want to hear it. I don't beat on my ceiling when the person above me runs through the apartment, and knocks things off their table.

Maybe I'll just jump up and down, and throw myself on the ground when he beats on the floor, so he'll see what a REAL banging on the ceiling is like, and quit being a bitch about Rock Band. I believe that I am within legal limitations on this issue, and he can eat my nuts.

What is it??

2008-12-31T15:41:00.001-06:00

I don't know what it is that has made me more and more uninterested in people in general, but it's not nice, and doesn't make me happy, and hurts the PR I have with nearly everyone except those who know me the most.

Isolationism? Anti-Socialism? Those sound like political foreign policy stances, but I'm talking about the personality concepts.

When I go home, there are nights where I don't want to talk to anyone at all - anyone....at all. There are days when I come to work, and don't want to talk to anyone at all...or spend time fixing computers, or going to someone's desk to click OK for them on an error box that they're capable of clicking themselves. There are days when I just want to sit alone, in silence, for an extended period of time, until I have had enough time to recuperate the energy required to be social.

I'm willing to guess this has a good deal to do with finances. Moving to Plano zero-byted my checking and savings accounts. For the first time I literally had $0 in the bank or in paypal. All I had available to live on was the available balances I paid down on my credit cards since taking this new job. Now, that is no longer an option.

I'm just now getting past the 1st-month's fees that the bastard companies tack on to their services when you move, and catching up on some late bills.

What I really need to do is get the credit card bills off the expense report. That would save me an extra $800 a month...srsly. But those won't get paid off until 2011, at the earliest. (At this point, I don't mind if Nostradamus is right about the 2012 asteroid impact, I won't have to pay my credit cards back).

I got one paid off last summer, and was just about to pay off the second one before I moved, and in the matter of a month, I ran it back up to the limit. Why? Visiting my friends and family in Arlington/Hurst and making unnecessary trips (one of which was for a metal rod not even worth the gas it cost to go get it). And so, when I told my stepmom that I could literally not afford to make it to my brother's birthday party this coming weekend, she sounded shocked. Well, it's a 100 mile round-trip...it's the same thing as going to our grandparents house for something as trivial as a few hours.

For some reason, I am happier when I have the means to afford spending time with people. Just being able to go over and spend time is not enough for me (apparently), I have to be able to afford to do it.

I don't feel isolationist all the time, nor do I mind being around a certain handful of people when I feel that way. But lately it's been more often than not that it has been the case.

Porch Monkey

2008-12-27T08:23:00.003-06:00

I decided this morning, after having the windows open continually for the past two days, that I'd spend the morning on the porch, with my laptop, and some coffee. I'm enjoying the 73 degree weather, with the morning freshness.

But I'm also waiting on the rain.

I've got some mint chocolate candies in my coffee, and a pile of pine wood next to me for the new Chiminea my parents bought me (after asking for two years), and some rocking chairs I got from my brother.

It's interesting how much more willing I am to sit on the patio now that I don't live in the ghetto - I don't have to stare at wannabe gang posses wandering the streets and breaking out the windows in the laundry room...or listen to the loud thump of car bass systems as they slow down for the speed bump in front of my apartment...or feel cutoff from what's going on inside since I didn't have a screen door for the patio.

But all that has changed - I have a view of a side walk, where one of my neighbors brings her dogs out, and random people walk by - unaffiliated with a gang...I only hear the sound of the wind, or my tv inside...and I have a screen door so Winston can enjoy the breeze too.

It's supposed to get down to 35 degrees tonight, and I'll probably spend some time out here with the Chiminea...unless it's too cold, and then I'll probably just work on some other things I need to finish, like shampooing the bedroom carpet, or setting up a server.

We'll see...right now, I'm watching the cold front move over the Airport. Should be here within the next hour or two.

A little update

2008-12-08T16:14:00.002-06:00

I decided I'd finally get around to changing the layout of the blog to look a little more like my twitter design, and I think it looks pretty epic to me.

I also want to give a shoutout to my Mom, who decided to read up on all my blog entries, except for the ones written in 1s and 0s. "Hi Mom...you can stop stalking me now, or I'll be compelled to write more about you."

It's not that I care that my information is on the internet - I'm the one that put it there. It's not even that I care that people read it - that's why I put it there. The only thing that bothers me about it, is when someone decides to go read it, and then comes back to me and tries to get on my case about the fact that I put it there - like it was some unintentional slip-up, and my life ended up in a blog on the internet.

I've been writing a journal since the days of etbustudents.cc, when we did it by hand, and re-uploaded an html page...until we got a forum for them at the-spot.net...and now people have various web services dedicated to doing journals. This is not something new to me, I've been doing it since before it was something to be doing on the internet, and it has always contained my thoughts.

I don't have any problem telling people to their face what my thoughts are - my problem is whether or not they're going to be able to handle it when I do tell them my thoughts. I used to be a little sissy-bitch and always tried to keep the boat from rocking - and to a certain degree I still like to maintain peace and order. However, these days (as of the last year or so) I am no longer afraid to be myself - I can thank Sunny for that. She's the one that couldn't handle me as I was...and when I changed, noticed that I wasn't being me. So I resolved to always be me, regardless of whether or not people could handle it - and if they couldn't...too bad.

So here's to my journal - me being me. If you don't like it, can't handle it, or want to change it - don't read it.

Week 1 - 10 days in...

2008-12-03T17:53:00.003-06:00

It's been around 10 days now since I moved to Plano...and I still have boxes to unpack. I'm not worried about them though - they're either decorations for the various rooms, or stuff that I don't need to hook-up/use.

But I don't really want to talk about moving. I like my apartment, and definitely like that my "work day" has been reduced by 1/3, or 4 hours, since I don't have to ride the train anymore.

Lately work is starting to stress me out. I don't get stressed easily, and generally can handle everything that's given to me in a timely manner. But lately, we've decided that we are going to recode/rewrite the entire Yahoo Store that we're using. That's great! We can finally clean up some things that needed to be cleaned up since it was first sloppily put together by the person that they paid to write the code.

The problem with that - is that I'm still expected to continue being the System Admin, and Help Desk, and Network Admin...as well as the Project Manager for this project, and two parallel ones - generating a Non-Yahoo Store, and doing research on getting a better internet connection to the building.

Normally, I wouldn't have a problem doing all these things - however, I'm dealing with a generational gap that is causing some communication issues and a lot of frustration on my end. I'm dealing with a boss who is used to doing things one way - the same way he's done them for the past 8 years, who has been involved on the day-to-day operation of the site/store, and only within the last 2 years has moved further from the day-to-day, and is more week-to-week.

That's fine. The problem I have with that, is that things aren't the same way they were in 2000. The internet changes every 6 months or less. I kinda thought that by hiring a bunch of 20-somethings, that we were going to be tapped for our expertise on the internet, how it works, what it can do, and how people use it. Apparently that was not the case. We are being tapped for all that information, but not to use it with how the internet is currently being used - no...to use it for how we've always done business.

I understand it's a tough thing to let someone else take over the production, design, and marketing of one's livelihood - one's baby that they've built from the ground up...the one thing they know inside and out. But just like Microsoft had to give up Bill Gates in order to move forward with the new way people are using computers, so should other sites that have been around as long. I guarantee that if I still had the-spot.net looking like it did during tsn I, II, or III - it'd still be dead like it was after tsnI and II. But I'm not here to talk about the health of tsn - that's a factor of the free-time I have to work on it vs responsibilities.

Basically what frustrates me, is that I would like a hands-off kind of management. I get a lot more done when I don't have a boss around that is interested in having a meeting about something, and then giving out directives to go and do something that we've already decided amongst ourselves is a bad idea. I make a list, work the list, and when I'm done, that is when there should be a meeting...not strategically positioned to interrupt a good workflow.

Trust appears to be my concern. We're not trusted to do the job we were hired to do - some of us after 1.5 years, some of us after .5 years, and some of us after 1 month. Us 20-somethings are the internet generation. We're more plugged in than the characters on The Matrix. We know what we expect the internet to do, and when it doesn't meet expectations, it gives us the impression that this site hasn't been updated in years, so we better not shop there - we might not get anything for our money.

Trust us to do what we need to do to get our job done, without defaming the company's name and reputation on the internet...then we'll have enough time to do all the other things that we've talked about doing for the company, as well as the jobs we were hired for in the first place.

This is my work rant. Too many "go ahead and add this to your list" requests, combined with too many "no, I don't like it, let's do it this way...no, I don't like that either". F@#$ dude! Figure out what you like - I'll be at my desk working on everything else that's wrong with everything else.

A victory, a truth, and a change...

2008-11-05T07:52:00.003-06:00

Last night, Barack Obama was elected to the office of President...and afterward all kinds of things happened.

Most notably, one of the major barriers to progress as a nation was knocked down - the issue of Race. No matter how you look at it, history was going to be made during the Democratic National Convention this year - whether the issue of gender was subsided or of race. As it turned out, Obama became the first African-American to be nominated as the primary candidate for a major political party, and the nation moved one step closer toward unity. A small victory for the civil rights activists of the 60s, an equality movement in which some gave their lives to realize. Last night, that effort paid off in what could be deemed the highest esteemed privilege bestowed on an individual. The world rejoiced as the American Citizens voted in the first African-American President...by nearly 7.2 million popular votes, and by more than a 2:1 electoral college vote. The only people not rejoicing - are the Evangelicals, Conservatives, and Republicans...

What I don't understand is why? It has been falsely accused that if an individual doesn't vote a particular way, then they MUST be <fill in the blank>...."if you don't vote Republican, you're not a Christian"..."if you don't vote for Hillary, you're a sexist"..."if you don't vote Obama, you're a racist"..."if you don't vote conservative, you're a socialist". All nonsense!

I'm white, a Right-Centerist, and a Christian. But I also didn't vote. Had I voted, I would have done so in favor of Obama for President, and Republican for all the rest of the ticket. Why? Former Republican Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough put it best on his MSNBC show, Morning Joe, this morning talking about the previous two elections. He mentioned that while he was in Congress, the turning point for him was the moment he realized his party didn't have exclusive rights to the definition of the Truth. Once he came to that realization, it opened the doors for him to consider all points of view from both sides of the isle, and learn how to keep an open mind when finding solutions for the nation. That being the case, he also noted how during the last two elections, the Evangelicals were all kinds of excited that George W. Bush won. However, during this one, the McCain voters are all crying "Terrorist", "Socialst", "Communist", etc...

Really? Seriously? Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have the absolute definition of what is Right and True in the universe, or for this nation. I was glad when Bill Clinton won, and I was glad when George W. Bush won. Now I'm glad Obama won. My loyalties don't lie on voting purely for religious reasons - I don't vote my fear...fear that one will ruin the country over the other, that one will be more immoral than my own morals, or that consciously choosing to have a non-Republican in office is going to end the world. I vote my hopes...that one will bring the necessary change to the country, that one will see that what has been going on hasn't been working and will do something different, and doing so with full knowledge that it's going to come at an expense to the citizens.

During the past 8 years, we've been attacked by terrorists, engaged in a war that has lasted much longer than needed, and should have ended 2 years ago, while losing sight of the actual terrorists responsible for the attacks, taken the country into the largest national debt ever, while finishing it all off with the biggest single-day drops in the global stock market since the Great Depression. You may have thought this was how it was supposed to happen - but I didn't. Now it's time for a change.

I'm not anti-war by any means...but I am anti-tea-party-in-the-desert. If we're going to be in a war, let's be in a war. Let's handle our shit, kick some ass, and come home. War is war...5 years is uncalled for, civilian deaths are part of the inhumanity of war, and costs can be minimized by taking care of business swiftly, justly, and accurately. We're fighting a group of people that are using bazookas/IDEs. We have bombs and planes. There is no reason this cannot be wrapped up in time for the weekend.

I'm not anti-stock market either...but I am anti-free-money-for-businesses when those same businesses are overcharging the people on a no-value-added service/product. Credit Markets: If you can't handle your credit, you lose your shit. Oil Industry: When you start producing clean-burning oil, we'll pay ~$4.00 a gallon; until then, back the f@#$ off. CEOs: it's great that you lead a large corporation to monumental success, but when you get millions while your employees lose their pensions because your people screwed up, that's bullshit; the national sports teams have a salary cap, and get fined - why not CEOs who under-perform or cause the company to go bankrupt?

The country has gotten itself into a hole - and it's the country that is going to have to pay for it. According to McCain, big business would get the break, and the people would have to foot the bill. Well, look at the CEOs, you saw how well that works. Obama proposes making the CEOs and businesses...every entity that makes over $250,000 a year, foot the bill for fixing the nation, so that the individuals will be able to afford and manage all the other ways they're getting screwed. Sure it might mean higher taxes - I know it will. But like it or not, we're a nation, a collective, a complex organism that is interconnected internally and externally with the rest of the world. Don't like it? Move to an island and figure it out for yourself.

McCain's mantra was "Country First"...I don't see any deviation from that mantra with Obama either. It's all a matter of who/what you consider to be the country - the people, or business? People make businesses, not the other way around.

More importantly than all of this, is the ideological change that can be made now. A new era has begun, or can begin. One in which the nation can move forward without regard to race. One in which one race does not have to fear another. There are going to be segments of the population that cannot bring themselves to accept what has happened - and those people, I would consider to be harboring some racial prejudices - not necessarily a racist, but a pre-judgment of a person's character simply due to the color of their skin. I have my own prejudices too - my main one is education. Unfortunately for a long time, there was a substantial amount of people that I came into contact with, both white and minorities, that expressed a certain disinterest in trying to improve their own position through education and effort. Because those people had a lack of self-respect, it was hard to respect them beyond that which is due a fellow human. It wasn't until I started actively surrounding myself with people that did have that self-respect, when I saw that it was not a global, across-the-board condition. Rather, it was a condition, or at best, a choice, brought on by the belief they simply couldn't. They couldn't be better, they couldn't change their situation, they couldn't succeed in life.

That disbelief in themselves was the reason many voters went towards Obama, who's campaign slogan was "Yes we can." He saw the bigger picture, and inspired those people to believe in themselves. With this new inspiration, the nation as individuals now knowingly has the opportunity to make the necessary changes they wish to see in the country.

Personally, I'm excited for progress - a change from a direction which has not been making much progress...a change that involves all the people of the country to push it in the direction that they want to go, and not the lobbyists' direction...a change that will hopefully fix a lot of the problems the nation has been dealing with for a long time now.

And if it doesn't - you can always change it every 2 years - remember, it's the Congress and House of Representatives that make the laws...not the President.

Political Workplace

2008-10-21T08:34:00.002-06:00

For a while now...ever since I was asked who I'd vote for back in August by my boss, politics has played a considerable part in random conversational opportunities to speak on the latest negative news about one candidate or the other. Unfortunately, this is the nature of politics these days.

Another unfortunate reality these days is that people love to wrap up religion in politics. The majority of people I am around are Christians...Conservative Christians. Sadly, these "Conservative Christians" are giving themselves a bad name (which I have been seeing for a long time now) simply by the statements and beliefs they hold, and try to share with others.

As I grew up, in a Southern Baptist Church, I too held the belief that anyone who doesn't believe like I did was wrong...and thus, all of their decisions and beliefs were inherently wrong. I viewed the world this way until I turned about 23-25.

It wasn't until that time that I moved out of the household of any parental figures and on my own, that I started making my own decisions and thinking for myself...a time when my actions had direct and heavily impacting consequences to my own survival. As I started to encounter new things I was previously sheltered from, and new kinds of people I was protected from interacting with, my views changed away from those that were instilled in me growing up.

For example, when I was a kid, I was taught Islam, Muslim, Wiccans, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormon people were evil and shouldn't even be talked to, unless trying to convert them to Christianity as I knew it. That all Democrats were obviously non-Christians. That Gay people are demon possessed, and should be condemned until converted to Christianity and straightness.

Depending on your background, Reader, you may identify with this; consider it valid, but extreme; or be abhorred by the statements.

But that is not how I see things now...

It was said to me that "people fear that which they do not understand." I see that in a lot of the really Conservative people's beliefs...regardless of religion. People fear technology because they don't understand it...people fear the future because they can't fathom it...they fear progress because they don't understand the implications of it. So........ go understand it!

Religions - people believe various things based on what they were taught when they were growing up. They either inherited their parents' beliefs, or formed their own due to their environment. People that are Islamic, Muslim, whatever, believe what they do for the same reason that those around me believe in Jesus. They believe their religion is the answer for how to properly live and end their life. And that's what they have chosen to do...that's fine. But that doesn't mean that I have chosen to do the same...and doesn't mean that they can force me to either. So for the people holding up signs and yelling "Repent because you're going to BURN IN HELL" on the street corner in Sundance Square, downtown Fort Worth, at people who are out enjoying their Friday evening with their loved ones...why don't you go live your life in a manner that would bring awe and wonderment to those around you? Why don't you cause people to ask you why you believe what you do, because of how much better it is than what they currently believe?

I am extremely against shoving my religious point of view down someone's throat because I think it is right or better. The reasons for my beliefs are no more valid than the reasons for their beliefs. And if you think your beliefs are, then why? Because Jesus said so? Because you have a Bible that says so? Because Brother Bob at Westside Baptist Church said so? Because you just get a certain feeling that comes over you when you read the scriptures from the Bible and while praying?.......So do they. Live it out, and let them come ask. Jesus didn't hold up signs and shout at people on the streets...they CAME to Him and ASKED Him how they could follow Him.

Politics - I grew up Republican. My favorite color as a kid was Red...It was bright, exciting, and (unknown until a couple years ago) was the color I saw as a Synestete that related to my views on religion and politics. As I got older though, red started to relate to stress and control as well...and I became a fan of blue. It's cooler, calmer, and less BAM! in your face. Much like my *views* on religion politics.

Over the years, I have noticed that Republicans tend to equate to Conservative Christians. They tend to try and tie up their "believe like I believe, because what you believe is wrong" ideology into their message. "Terrorists, Evil, War, Mass Destruction, Taxes, Socialism, Gay Marriages, Flag Burning, Abortion" are all part of the rhetoric that gets spewed out from Republican conventions. And to be quite honest with you - Gay people shouldn't get a "Marriage" title, Abortions shouldn't happen, and I am cool with war...let's go get the evil people out of the way, and blow them up. Let's relocate all the Israelites for a minute, and turn the middle east into the biggest piece of glass in the world...and move them back.

ON THE OTHER HAND, Democrats tend to equate to humanists..."Environmentalists, Animal Rights, Gay Rights, Pro-Choice, Taxes, Middle Class" are all part of the rhetoric that gets spewed out from Democratic conventions. And to be quite honest with you - Gay people should have rights as humans, Animals should have rights (though not equal to humans) to protect them reasonably, the environment should be taken into consideration....but not to the extent of impeding progress. We have oil in Alaska and around every shoreline and coast in America. We need to be able to get it instead of having to borrow more money from China to pay OPEC because someone wants to save the spotted owl, or keep the coastline pretty.

Hopefully you can see that I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I'm a thinker.

What bothers me the most is that people who are Republican and Christian use those same Street Corner Soapbox tactics and try to vote a person into office that is as close to Jesus as possible, and then tell you that the other party is pure evil. It's those same people that love their Guns, hate abortion (yet love war...ironic?), and want a Theocracy instead of a Democracy. Little do they realize that if Jesus was President, a lot of the things they enjoy (like good Action Movies, their Alcoholic privileges, all the personal freedoms they enjoy) publicly or privately will be gone. Jesus is a pretty cut-throat guy when it comes to following the rules.

HOWEVER...Jesus does not share the social interactions that a lot of Conservative Christians share. I don't recall Jesus shunning people, or standing on the street corners yelling that someone was going to hell because they were gay, a prostitute, or otherwise a sinner. Jesus was a socialist, to say that his operation was on a civilized, social level. He was tolerant that different kinds of people existed, and ministered to them in their own way...the way they needed to hear it. Paul did the same thing - "...To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law...I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." [1 Cor. 9:19-23] He didn't try to make people into clones of himself; he taught people how to live for God while being themselves.

Jesus is a cool dude...So is Paul. But I would not vote for either of them for President. Religion should not be a factor in voting for President. If you want religion to be a factor in government, use it when voting for the Senators and House of Reps. They're the ones that make the laws you have to live by, not the President.

I have taken on the perspective that one should vote for the President based on what we as a country, and/or I feel that I, need right now to make it through the next 4 years. Religion plays a very small role in that...my perspective is the same as a statement mentioned in the Democratic National Convention by Obama: "We may not agree on the topic of abortion, but we can agree on the reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies." You and I may not agree on how the consequence gets handled...but let's not worry about that - let's worry about the cause.

I may not agree with how the government handles the fallout from this growing economic crisis...but we do agree that something needs to be done to stop it, and prevent it in the future.
I may not agree with how the government handles the war on terror...but we do agree that we need to fight it, win it, and finish it.
I may not agree with how the economy gets handled...but we do agree that it needs to be fixed and something is inherently broken.

I may not agree with you on which candidate can handle the situation we have found ourselves in as a nation...but we do agree that we need to fix it, and regain the status, and relationships that America used to hold with our neighbors on the his planet. And to do that, everyone needs to vote - for someone, anyone...whoever fits your perspective on the issues best.

On the way to work...

2008-10-06T09:22:00.001-06:00

Well, the TRE was late to Union Station this morning - as is the norm these days, so much so, that if it was on time, it'd be early. It was raining, this distracted me, as I was more interested in trying to stay as dry as possible than anything else. So I got on the next train that pulled in. Everything was fine, as I passed through all the downtown stations, and then LBJ/Central station, though something looked a little different, but we hit all the stops I'm used to - this was just the first time I had ridden the train in the rain though. Well, about 2-3 more stops, I noticed that the train was pretty much empty, and thought it was just because not many people took it because of the rain.

I looked up, and noticed the blue sign's reflection in the window - the train label, and noticed it said Downtown Garland thought .oO( that's weird...they spelled "Downtown" as "DWNTN"...huh...).

A few minutes later I looked out the window and saw a "One Stop Shop" corner store that I hadn't seen before, and thought that was a little strange too - but attributed it to my normal routine of sleeping/being preoccupied by my podcasts I listen to on the way to work.

I also noticed that the train wasn't blowing its horn as frequently as it normally does and thought we might have had a new driver that didn't care...but that when it did, it was loud and sounded a little different. So at the next stop I looked out the window to see what Station it was...The station sign said "Downtown Garland". It all clicked...

"Oh shit."

I got off and looked up at the clock: 7:30am.

"Oh shit. Shit! Shit! Shit!"

I contemplated getting on the southbound train to go back to Dallas to meet the red-line (as I ended up on the blue-line) and then riding the red-line back up to Plano. Or to call my coworker that lives a little bit away, and see if she could come get me.

She was able, and that saved me an extra hour of commute time, and I only got to work about 10 minutes later than I normally would have due to the late train.

BAIL OUT!!!

2008-09-30T08:53:00.001-06:00

I should have figured the House was Jewish. As per the stereotype, they’re all focused on their money.

What the F#$% are our "Representatives" doing taking a day off from work for Rosh Hashanah? WTF?! Yesterday, the phags in the Legislative Branch voted down a "bailout bill" to help sustain the American Economy.

I was actually surprised at who voted what - I thought, for sure, the Republicans would vote for this, since it is their party's President that is calling for it. But oh, nay nay - Republicans voted against it 65-133, and Democrats voted 140-95 for it. 67% Reps against, 60% Dems for it.

However, I am split on it - on the one hand, I agree with the writers of a Time magazine article "Let Risk-Taking Financial Institutions Fail", which says:

Let the poorly managed, overly risk-taking financial institutions fail! Always remember that Wall Street and the real economy are not the same thing.

I agree - companies that are stupid enough to make poor lending decisions should be allowed to weed themselves out of the marketplace. It's the cleansing of the gene-pool...survival of the fittest. That's how the free market works - you have equal opportunity to be successful or to fail epically. Let it happen.

On the other hand, I agree with Jim Marshall (D-GA), in his "Commentary: America can't go cold turkey on credit". I too have thought about how an economy with government intervention should work. He says that he has:

...studied ways to make sure they don't get into trouble in the first place -- and drag all of us down with them.

In my opinion, I am pro-capitalism...and also pro-socialism - but within balance. I believe that companies should not extend credit to individuals in cases that their total credit equals or surpasses 50% of their yearly earnings. (In my individual case, my credit-line EQUALS or EXCEEDS what I make in a year. I know that I am currently negative about 75% of my annual salary and have put a stop to it, and have been doing everything I can to reverse it.) Of course, companies are greedy and will extend credit with no regard to the individual's over-all ability to pay. It seems that credit checks only take into account their ability to pay as if this were the only loan they had taken out.

Therefore, the Government should step in, and set a lower limit to the amount of credit that companies overall should be able to extend to a particular individual. This would have to be in the form of a regulated government division dedicated to the extension of credit. Companies would have to borrow their money from the government initially and be liable to the government if they default.

This bottom limit for how far an individual (and even company, or parent company as a rollup of all subsidiaries) can go into debt will prevent this kind of economic failure that ripples throughout the American economy, and into the Global economy.

That is a very Socialist concept, but the pro-capitalist part is next. While it would be acceptable for the Government to help prevent failure, it should not inhibit success. The Government should not attempt to set an upper barrier to limit the amount of success that an individual or business can attain - to a point. Let me explain...

A person goes into business - after 30 years becomes one of the most wealthy businesses in the nation, and then retires or is laid off - either good or bad, for better or worse, and receives a Golden Parachute. That Parachute should be the result of an equation - an equation that takes into account the Value of the Company, the Profit the Company generates on average during the years the individual has been in that position, and the unpaid Debt the Company has acquired during the individual's time in that position.

If you have a company that is thriving, doing well...and turns a profit, but has a nearly equal unpaid debt - the package the CEO or individual leaves with will be less than if they had no unpaid debt. If the company is on its way out, like Enron was, the CEO would either leave with nothing, or OWE money, depending on the equation.

There needs to be a reformation of how the economy works, because right now it does not work...at least not to the Main Street economist - the person that sits in a cubicle all day, living pay-check to pay-check, wondering if it's going to be a $10 grocery week, or a $50 grocery week. Sure the concepts may sound Socialist, but if applied correctly, is it really all that bad?

It might be if you're a greedy CEO, counting on that extra $200m package deal when you retire.

Cubicles

2008-09-29T12:33:00.001-06:00

You know what I hate about working in a cubicle environment? It’s not so much the beige walls, or the fluorescent lighting, or really even the isolationist atmosphere it creates (although that is not preferred). Instead it’s the perceived perception of solitude.

When people are in a cube, they become unaware of everyone else around them, and thus find themselves feeling at liberty to carry on with their daily routines as if they were the only one in the office.

Case in point: there is a coworker of mine that does not have the friendliest personality a person could have, mixed with a “not-my-problem-so-fix-it” attitude, and a general negative disposition in general for anyone from which she has to request a service who does not respond immediately and to her liking.

This only gets to be a problem around lunch time, when it becomes “off-the-clock” time for her. She retrieves her lunch food items from a local restaurant, and returns with them to her desk, and then proceeds to handle her personal business via the company’s customer-service phone lines.

I’m sure this wouldn’t be a problem if she would handle it quietly – but that is not what happens. Every day it’s an argument/conflict with another company’s customer service rep on the phone, while the rest of us are trying to work. Normally it has something to do with her kids, and personal business...but it’s always uncomfortable to hear.

Because of this, we all know more than we want to know about her family life, and it’s fairly stressful (at least to me) to have to hear someone argue with someone else on the other end of the phone – when everything could be resolved if she would not be such a bitch to them!

I’ve asked about it, and apparently it’s not that big a problem yet – but I disagree. If I can hear her in my cubicle, I’m sure other people in her department – Customer Service – who have people on the phone can hear her also…as well as the customers, possibly.

My take on it is: if you have personal business – either handle it quietly, or go find a payphone/cell phone to use outside the building. I know she has a cell phone of her own, because she has called the warehouse in the mornings to come unlock the door. Go out to the warehouse, or out back behind the building, and handle your bitchyass business there. No one else in the office wants to hear about how your kids can’t get a doctor’s appointment, or how you can’t afford to pay them when you DO get an appointment.

Shit, woman. You’re not the only person in the office.

And change, it did...

2008-09-14T21:29:00.003-06:00

I left my job at Texas Wesleyan at the end of June. June turned out to be historically the longest period of time that I have been employed and paid, while working as few days as possible. I used up all my sick days, since I wouldn't get paid for them, and I used the 3 paid summer vacation days they gave us. That was about 2.5 weeks worth of time off, which means I only worked about 11 days that month, but got paid for the whole thing.

I started my new job in Plano June 30, and have been doing it ever since. It's going on 2.5 months now, and things are looking pretty good. I've gotten to explore the parts of a server that the folks at the last job wouldn't let me, due to permissions...I've been instrumental in helping release the latest version of the website, and developing new technologies for the next version. And in general, I've gotten to be creative and not replace printer toners doing it.

I'm not a very big fan of riding the train - or at least I wasn't. But I've found ways to get around that. I now get TV on my cell phone, so I can watch MSNBC on the ride in, coffee in-hand, and get my news. I've also picked up listening to podcasts again, since my commute is about 1.5 hours one-way. I can cover a lot of information during that time.

But while I'm not a fan of having to ride the train, and rely on their scheduling (which has gotten better, since they added two buses to my routes), I *am* a fan of only having to fill up my gas tank every two weeks now. I save a shitton of gas by riding the train.

I also have been saving a shitton of money since I started packing my lunch. For a while there, I went out to lunch with some coworkers to get in with people on the inside, but for the past month, I've stopped using my credit cards, since they were all maxed out, and have been bringing my lunch. Not only does this save on expenses, but also gives rise to weight loss. I'm shooting for 220 or less by Christmas when I have to go visit my mother for the first time in 5 years...I don't want to be a fatty when I go, and am hoping I get to take my girlfriend, who ever she may be at the time.

I have to go to bed at 10:00 or as close to that as possible however, since I have to get up at 5:00am in order to get ready and pack a lunch, to get to the train on time. Otherwise, I have to drive, and that kills 1/3 of the gas tank, plus the wasted allocated fare for the train ticket.

Things are starting to look up finally...and I've taken control of all the spiraling my life was doing this summer. Now it's time to sleep.

Peace

To be a team player, we have to be a team...

2008-05-21T23:13:00.001-06:00

I've been kinda pissed off at work lately, for a couple reasons...I consider them legit reasons though.

First, the restructure of our department. In the past year and a half that I have been at my job, I've see the IT Director moved down to Network Director, and then moved over to a made-up-position of "CTO" where he does R&D tasks. While that was happening, the CIO was moved over to Technical adviser to the CFO, and then to VP for Project Management, another made-up-position. This keeps these two on the payroll, doesn't cut them loose, and moves them out of the department. Meanwhile, the former IT Director's secretary moved to IT Director, and then added to Director of Educational Technology also, and now is CIO. The Dell guy I was hired on at the exact same time with moved from Helpdesk to Educational Technology, and is now my boss, the Helpdesk Manager. A linux network admin is now the IT Director interim, and everyone else has stayed the same.

Apparently the people in Facilities were right when they said "those who can't do, get promoted; those who can, work." I spent the last year and a quarter doing only what tickets I was assigned, and not taking on any extra tasks to give myself opportunity to be fired for screwing something up, or failing epically...but mainly because I was hired at my low rate to do the simple job of supporting users - not running servers and managing domains or working on LDAP and Linux Systems. As far as I'm concerned, they were willing to pay me my rate to replace toners and help users, and that's what I agreed to - the rest will cost them extra.

Well, here's the second thing...I spent this year so far asserting myself into a leadership role for the Active Directory migration project, since the original leadership and decision makers were not the ones actually having to do the work - thus missing a lot of the picture, and making blind decisions. By mid-February, I was leading it forward, and had us on target to finish early and effectively without interrupting daily workflows. Then in April, I was sent to the Law School to help them as I had become the resident "expert" for migrating computers. The Law School would have finished early too had the main campus side had their stuff together. But while I was there, I showed my supervisor just how much I knew about what was actually going on beyond my own desk, and took on a project that had taken 6 months of meetings yet no progress was being made.

So, my supervisor and I bounced some ideas, came up with a plan, and a fail-safe all within about 6 minutes, and went home to sleep on it. The next day we did it, no problems ensued, and everyone was happy and surprised. Then I had "opportunity" once they migrated the server (as I had made the plan according to the client-side responsibilities), and we encountered a problem. Having not touched the server or the software before, it took me about 45 minutes to learn the software, ask all the questions I had about how it communicated, and found the issue, and then fixed it. Meanwhile, they put in a support-ticket with the software vendor to see how fast they could come up with the answer, and it was going to take them talking to their team of engineers until the following Tuesday to come up with an answer, but they had a couple guesses. And then we had the same issue with another associated software tied to the server, but I didn't have the appropriate permissions on the network to fix it, but I knew what the problem/solution was.

Which brings up the third issue...I spend most of my day at my computer, chatting online. I get a ticket, and knock it out in under 15 minutes...often time right there over the phone, or via remote desktop. The rest of my day is spent listening to music, and programming for the-spot.net. I literally don't have anything to do most of the day..I'm grossly under-used...and my Law School supervisor expressed that to my boss. He was unaware, apparently, and there was talk of a promotion to a networking position as a jr. system admin, until I could show them just how much I knew (there was the phrase "promote to the point of incompetence" used). But when the restructure came around last week - no promotion for [[Neo]]. Nope....[[Neo]] gets to replace printer toners still.

Fourthly, it has to do with the "talk" that doesn't follow through. There was that talk of a promotion, just like there had been a year's-worth of talk about raises. And now our new boss is moving us to a different room in the building, to put the IT Helpdesk together in the same location. The incentive was new furniture, and the like. However, his boss told him, once presented with the choice of desk "That's a good desk, for you...now what about the technicians?" So because of the politics involved, and people not being forthcoming with information, there is dissension in the ranks of the Help Desk.

Mostly the dissension has to do with people complaining about their job - in particular the Help Desk phone answerer - the literal "level 1" support person. She answers the calls the come into the helpdesk - that's her job. She tries to help them if she can over the phone, but if not (because she's not as technically inclined as the Technicians, or she'd be one) she creates a ticket and passes it on to us. That's great - that's how it's supposed to work. But when she decided today that she was getting just too many calls, and stopped answering the phone altogether, it kept ringing back to our office. Normally we'll answer the phone because in the infrequent occassion that she's here and it does ring back, it's because she's busy. However today it was more than normal. So one of the technicians went to her office to see if she was there, and she was - she was just sitting there though, not answering the phone, just letting it ring back. So we stopped answering it.

Apparently she went up to our boss and talked to him for about 30 minutes, almost to tears, about how things aren't going right, and she doesn't think anyone understands how hard her job is, and that if it keeps up she's walking. Well, there are a couple things wrong with that - first, she's only here 2-3 days out of the week CONSTANTLY. We're placing bets as to how many days she'll be here each week - both of the helpdesk phone girls. (the newer one has picked up on this ability to just call-in because you stayed up too late the night before and didn't get enough sleep bullshit.) Second, she doesn't do her job efficiently - she does it, it's effective, but it's not efficient. Third, and the main point, if she doesn't do her job, WE have to do HER job plus OUR job too.

If we're going to have to answer the phones because "it's too many phone calls" then why is she even working here? We always answer the phone, and solve the problem over the phone, before we hang up. We don't even have to create a ticket for it and pass it to anyone, we solve it right then and there. And if another call comes in, it either rings over and someone else gets it (because there are three of us, and two of them), or it goes to voicemail. We are not near as concerned about actually answering the phone as she thinks we are. But she don't hear us complaining about how many tickets we have, and just stop doing them altogether. They're tickets - and they're phone calls. There is a queue for tickets, and there is a voicemail for phone calls. Everything will be handled in due time, and there is no reason to get stressed about any of it.

So my boss is going to take the phone calls all by himself for a day, and see just what the problem really is - if it's her, or if it's the volume of calls that she has to deal with. But he is probably going to have less difficulty than her, but a little more difficulty than the technicians might, due to skill sets.

Everyone has their job to do - when you can't do your job, everyone else has to pick up your slack. When you start doing jobs that aren't yours to begin with, and screw it up, you create addition work or rework. If you take on someone else's job for them, you have to do it right and effectively to keep things moving forward. I don't mind providing solutions and suggestions to the System Admin when he has to write scripts to call scripts to call scripts in order to do something that can be done in a Group Policy if there was just a little more thought given to it - that's what I do, think through all the different logical paths of a solution to find the most efficient and effective one. I think through the problem and identify just what the fears are and then find a failsafe for the solution that I have come up with to identify and solve the issue, and then do it. If it fails then there has been no set-back...if it works, we've moved forward.

I have found that I can only do something at the status-quo for so long, and then I get bored out of my mind, and either have to progress with my skillset or move on to something completely different. I've gotten to the point where I have learned a lot more about the code that makes the-spot.net work, but there is only so much I can do with that site before I'm actually done (for once) with the website. Then I have to move on.

BinaryAngel has been talking to me about a position at her job doing their IT work, because their currently employee is an international student and will be leaving soon. The problem with the job is that it's in Plano...just across the highway from Wizard's work. I can hope 2 trains and a bus and skateboard half a block into work to get there, but eventually I'll want to move up there. I'm about 80% ready to do that if I don't start seeing some kind of progress in pay+projects at my current location. I'm a Gemini - and I'm at that point in my life again where I get aggressively knowledgeable and start learning up everything around me, ready to break free from the stagnation that has gone on far too long by this point.

So something's about to change...

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The Business of Business

2008-05-13T15:37:00.001-06:00

I have some thoughts about organizational structure...something that goes along with the Corporate Environment rehash that I think should take place.

Over the limited years that I've actually been in a corporate environment, I have seen some things that I believe to be the fundamental source of all progressive inhibitions. Namely: hierarchical structure.

Now, I know there are CxOs and then Presidents, and then VPs, and then Managers, then Supervisors, and then workers...with each level having an inverse relationship of decision-making to people-responsible-for.

In my experiments with organizational structure, there is the initial structure that should be in place to train people in the way they should go. Once that mannerism has been instilled and displayed though, there is no longer a need to micromanage the individuals. They should be left to the collective conscience to make the right decisions, and innovate where necessary.

I think the younger generation of people entering the workforce has a reasonable grasp on what needs to take place in order for an organization to succeed - and while they may not conform to the manners and desires of the older generations - it's because they handle business differently.

When the older generation's superiors get together to start a project, there are meetings upon meetings to decide how the project should be carried out, and to try and cover all the bases, and get all the costs lined up, and the ducks in a row. That's a commendable effort - but it takes too long. It requires people's schedules to be synchronized, and progress is slow because of time limitations, and then when something unexpected arises, another meeting must be had.

When the younger generation gets together to start a project, there are still meetings, but they are not limited to being in person. In fact, it's usually preferred that there not be in-person meetings because not everyone needs to know everything about the project, an to waste time at meetings discussing that. Instead, they use simple, quick brainstorming exercises. They come to the table with ideas for how it could be done, and pitfalls that they could encounter. They throw them out there, let people rip apart or add to, and then take it home to chew on it for a while. And after another meeting or two, it's ready for action.

Perhaps it's because younger people tend to be a little more risky with their actions, or quicker to respond to mental challenges. But in any case, I think a department as innovative as IT should be, does not need to be stifled when it comes to freedom of operation. The real reason I see departments and companies fail to move quickly is not entirely because of size - but rather because of a generational gap between the people who are on the frontlines doing the work and up with the latest trends as compared to the generals of the forces that are commanding different units on their efforts.

There's a lot of trust involved in this particular style of management, but I don't see why it shouldn't be given a shot. There's a saying about the collective conscience on the internet that holds quite a bit of truth and application to it: "We is smarter than Me." I think a lot of businesses would benefit applying it to their processes.

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Time for something new...

2008-05-12T16:01:00.003-06:00

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Corporate Environment 2.0

2008-05-07T10:41:00.003-06:00

I have been working IT now for about 1.5 years, "professionally"...meaning I've been getting paid for it. Before that, I worked in a corporate environment - suit and tie, cubicles, etc - for 2.5 years.

I realized in both jobs that I was the youngest person on the staff, and continue to be 4 years later...but with that in mind, there were some ideals in the corporate environment that I didn't jive well with...and working at the law school for the past 5 weeks has shown me how I work best - again.

My first IT job, I was allowed to come to work with jeans on (I eventually dressed better because it was what I wanted to do to stand out, and having just come from the corporate world, was what I was comfortable in, and all that I had). But during the last 5 weeks, my work environment has been completely different...

Normally I have a desk - it's in a bull-pen environment in the basement of the library, in an overly White-tinted room. I have a computer on the desk that is a stationary PC running the company's software, with the company's permissions in effect, and a chair to sit in. I stay in my area, and leave when I have menial tasks to do that I can't do from my desk. That is my life at the main campus.

Here at the law school, I don't have an office - I'm mobile. I don't have a desktop computer, I have my personal laptop running Linux, plugged into their network. I'm not bound by their software, nor their permissions. I can hit any server, including my desktop computer at the main campus just from my laptop. I don't have a chair - I have a couch; I sit in a comfortable couch, by a window. I don't get menial tasks - as my role over here is somewhat a consultant position to help with their projects. So once my project is done, I'm done for the day. When I can, I help fill in the gaps with their day-to-day processes and solve the tough problems with just minutes of thinking when the main campus has to come up with meetings about for weeks on end.

When I come to work, I don't dress in slacks and dress-shoes and a fancy shirt/tie...I wear Chucks, cargo pants, and a good-looking shirt. I look like a student, but often times have more permissions and know-how of the main campus and the network to do things that the folks over here haven't been able to do for lack of either know-how or permissions.

Here, I'm mobile, comfortable, useful, and free to solve the problems the way I know how. I'm not bound by the politics and petty rules put in place by people that want it "their way" and only their way. They say "well, we need to have a meeting" about something that we've been having meetings on for weeks, and I say "F your meetings, nothing gets done in them...this is what we're going to do. We'll call you when we're done and it works." And then we go do it, and get things done.

My biggest problem with companies is the lack of dedication to doing what gets the job done, and the emphasis that is put on playing the political bullshit with everyone. If it doesn't make sense when I'm asked to do something, I question it...if they can't provide a logical answer - there is a 50-50 chance of me either saying "all right, whatever, I'll do it, and we'll see if it works" or "f-that, I'm doing this because common sense says it should work."

As my coworker-supervisor here at the law school put it, he and I both have a low tolerance for stupidity, and subscribe to the Common Sense way of thinking.

No Love and a LoveSac

2008-04-26T19:14:00.001-06:00

It's been a boring day today.

I missed out on a girlfriend this month - I didn't move quick enough because I wasn't 100% sure if I could hang with the bad habits she had (since you gotta be down with both the good an the bad). I had come around to giving it a shot, but she apparently found a bf in the meantime, and didn't bother telling me, even though we went out thursday night.

But, it's whatever by this point - I kinda actually wish someone could break my heart because the depression that follows is a pretty good diet plan - especially when you can't afford groceries anyway.

However, I am down lower on the scale than I have been for a while - and resisted the temptation to go celebrate by hitting up McDonald's...haha, I had Panda Express instead. I got the Bejing Chicken (which I thought was spicy when the girl gave me a sample last time) but if you eat it in an actual serving, it's not so spicy. But I couldn't handle the flavor any more than the one serving. My favorite there is the Mandarin Chicken, with a cup of the Mandarin sauce.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to go take a crack at doing a modeling shoot for the roommate of the girl above. She saw my flickr, and liked my pictures, and wanted me to shoot her for a portfolio. I told her that I shoot mostly objects, and not people but that I'd give it a shot and see how it turns out for this one-outfit-session for free...and then if it works and they look good, we'll talk money for more outfits.

It's supposed to rain tonight, and be cool tomorrow, so that's fantastic - I hate being outside when it's above 75...probably when it's above 70.

I've been kinda bored at home - I have some cleaning I could do, but I'm not motivated. I did make plans for my Economic Stimulus package check I'm getting - I am gonna finally ditch my couch and get a LoveSac! I'm going to visit the store in one of the two malls that have them here in DFW when I get the check, and see if it's worth it...or if it'll even fit in my apartment. According to the measurements it would, but I have to move the two single chairs back over by the sliding glass door, and the Sac would take up that entire railing corner of the room...

That is what you see as soon as you walk into the door (but flipped horizontally, this is a pic of the show room for my layout) but that floor immediately in front of you as you walk in, from the wall to the pole, and then from the rail almost all the way towards you would be a LoveSac - massive ass. But it has to be, if it's replacing my couch.

People finally won't be like "oh, man, I didn't realize your couch was so low" ..."yeah, my stepbrother broke it..." They'll say "dude, sweet! a bean bag!" And I'll punch them in the face, and say "It's not a damn beanbag" like the slogan is on their site. http://www.lovesac.com

That's all I've got right now. Gotta find something to do - maybe I'll start cleaning, but it's not likely.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Game Servers

2008-04-17T07:45:00.002-06:00

So, the only post that has gotten any legit outside attention on my tech blog has been one about setting up a UT3 server at www.thepizzy.net/blog. So maybe I should start writing more how-to posts for setting up servers.

I've done it for Age of Empires, Empire Earth II, Blockland, Dungeon Seige II, and a couple more I think. So I'll start blogging them when I have to set them up again.

This is pretty much just a post from one of my blogs to link to the other, so that it'll get more traffic, and help people find the server setup post on Google. There aren't any ads on either blog - so I'm not trying to make money.

2008-04-08T12:15:00.001-06:00

the new version of agile messenger sucks ass

2008-04-08T10:49:00.001-06:00

it has come to downloading Frets on Fire for the work PC, and being a Keyboard Hero...I'm that out of things to do

2008-04-08T08:53:00.001-06:00

listening to Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory Album makes me want to go play old-skool Unreal Tournament

2008-04-08T08:31:00.001-06:00

I've searched the googles, check the myspaces and facebooks, and read the-spot.nets. still bored and tired

2008-04-08T07:15:00.001-06:00

both alarms went off...but I still did not hear them. i'm so tired...

2008-04-07T21:35:00.001-06:00

ping.fm now trumps the twitter update, only because myspace is too ghey to add a twitter update app

[Mobile] We're IT! What are you thinking?!

2008-03-04T10:37:00.006-06:00

You know what gets me about some people here on campus is the false illusion that just because their crap is passworded that we, the people of IT, can't see it. Or just because they close a program before we walk up, that we don't know its there.

Let me let you in on a little secret. We're IT, bi-ia-otch!

You know that computer you're using? We have Administrative rights on it...we can see any program, any file, any thing we want on it...and we don't have to come to your desk to do it - we can see everything from our desk - including the ability to edit files on your machine from ours.

You know that email account you have through the company that you use to sign up for all your personal crap...and then want to complain to us about how much spam you're getting?? *We* don't get spam...*you* get spam...and you're lucky we come install a spam filter instead of firing your ass for not adhering to the Acceptable Net Usage Policy that you agreed to abide by when you started working here.

You know those confidential documents you printed off your computer and left on your desk...the ones you're so worried about us seeing if we walk in your office when you're not there? Who do you think runs the database where that information is stored? Who runs the file servers where those documents are saved? That would be us...yeah.

The company obviously trusts us enough to handle the critical data for it..there should not be any issue with letting us do our job, and not causing a fuss when we show up and fix/correct something that is wrong with your computer or the policy in place that you aren't adhering to. We are really not interested in how you "used to do it" or what you "used to have acess/privileges to do". That was back then...this is now, and you just hadn't been caught yet.

In all honesty, we couldn't possibly care less about the paperwork on your desk...we're more interested in the trinkets...and if not that, then we're more interested in getting your computer up-to-date so we don't have to keep coming back to your desk.

The problem is not that we don't like doing computer work...its that we don't like doing it over and over for the same person that doesn't EVER get it...or having to keep come back to the desk because they forgot "oh, one more thing" after we have already left. So when its the 10th time we are at your desk, and you aren't there, we just want to fix it and go back to our desk. We don't need any slack about confidential stuff - we're not interested in that crap...we already have it at our disposal - we're just too lazy to care. We're more interested in getting our job done, and getting back to our desk so we can continue to surf the web for the latest teck news.

So chill out. You're the only one that cares about your job. Otherwise we'd have a job in the same field.

It's been a bit...

2008-03-03T22:27:00.001-06:00

Well, it's been a little bit since I posted last, and not even looking back at the journal, I don't know what my last post was about. Probably something emo or frustrating or something...I don't care - it's not important.

I don't have a motive to write this tonight; just thought I'd give blogging a chance once again to not be about anything pseudo-philosophical or ranting about something.

This past few days have been a whirlwind of plans, parties, and excitements. Wizard and Mandy finally got married on Friday night, and everything went according to plan with the wedding...and us guys saw to it that nothing would even be out of order as far as she knew.

One instance in particular, shortly after she arrived at the church, it was time for her to go get changed, and her concern fell on whether or not the music was ready...I knew wizard had worked on it before we left, and that he got whatever he was working on finished - so I said "yes, every thing's taken care of...go get dressed." Then I went back to report to wizard that I told her it was taken care of, so I hope it was. He said "crap...it's not" and sarge started to laugh and say something...but I mentioned to him that "today - if Mandy asks, everything is taken care of...everything is a yes to her - and then we'll go fix it if it's not." He realized what I was saying and agreed, and that's how the rest of the evening went - but there weren't many instances of that happening.

Saturday, I didn't do anything - I sat around in my pajamas at the computer, or watching Numb3rs Season 1 Disc 4 - I finished up the season, as I moved and burned half of Season 2 to DVDs. I have all of Season 2, 3 and some of 4 now. So I should be good for a while. I did finally get dressed at around 11:30p to go get the cat some food, and then headed to bed.

Sunday, I had to go get my oil changed, because I slacked off Saturday. Then I headed off to Dallas Fair Park to attend the North Texas Irish Festival. When I got there, only a few people showed up that I was expecting to see - and the event wasn't all that spectacular, especially for $15. I have a feeling that any paid event out in the open is going to be like that though - and only good for people-pics mainly.

I wore my Chucks out there, because I wanted to get some use out of them, but it turned out to be a mistake, since when I jumped from 2 feet up, I landed hard on my feet and found out quickly there is no padding in the bottom of Chuck Taylor shoes. Ashley and I bailed on the small group when the other two went off to go do something and didn't return for 20 or so minutes, and walked around the regular Fair Park. There was a lot more to take photos of out in the open than there was inside the event area - and I found that stroll to be more enjoyable.

It was noted that day that normally we show up in large groups, and declare a time to meet back up, so we can all go our separate ways and get our own photographs. But when there is only a small group, we wandered around together, and no one really got any of the shots that they would have gotten if they were alone and not trying to be social.

I also noted that I have a lot to figure out about shooting people's photos in public...like how to do it, and still be non-intrusive. I did get some websites and some ebooks from folks on the flickr site though to help with all that, and with how to use my new camera.

I took both out there that day, and tried to shoot double what I saw. I used the Nikon for the closer shots that I knew I could get with the 18-55mm/5.6-36 lens...and used the Sony for inside shots that required more lighting (since it's a 2.7-8 with a 30x zoom. Unfortunately, I shot most of the day on Automatic Mode for both cameras - as it was too much trouble to keep up with the manual settings on the Sony when switching back and forth so much. But I did make an effort to take some manual shots with both (knowing what I was doing with Sony, and trying to figure out what happens with Nikon).

I had a long talk with Mandy tonight about photography and explained my purpose for doing it as a hobby I could turn into a job if I had to one day - just as I have done with computers and programming which was my former hobby. I had wizard and hambone back when I started learning about computers more to help me with that, and now I have Mandy, Chelsea, Chad, and the flickr people to help me with photography.

My Main goal for this year is to learn how to use my new Real camera, and also to get my www.eGami-images.com website up. I already have the domain name, and a page kinda dedicated to it, but there is a whole database and php code that I need to write to integrate it with my flickr account. I also need to learn about post-processing, and find my particular style for my photos. I downloaded Adobe Lightroom tonight, and found out it is a more advanced version of a software similar to Google's Picasa.

So there are some things I want to do, but I just have to find the time and motivation to do them.

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User Support....pssh...f-that

2008-02-25T12:48:00.001-06:00

So I have realized something...something fairly important to the life of anyone in the Service Industry that is trying to find something else to do...

If you're tired of helping people with their problems, and want to do something different - there is not a job in the world that you can do where you don't have to help people inherently.

I work in IT. I don't have a problem educating users with how to use their computer and technology, and how to incorporate it into their every day lives. The problem I have is that they aren't LEARNING, they're just calling me up when they try to do something and fail the first time. There's no "well, I better try a couple things before I bother them to make sure it's not something I'm doing." None of that. No consideration for the fact that there are 450 other people on campus that are doing the same thing they are, yet they still want us to drop what we're doing to help them out instantly.

The other problem I have with them, is that they want it worked around their schedule...but again with the "I'm the only person that matters" syndrome. We can't work around 450 other people's schedules on campus, and expect to get anything done in a timely manner. We have our jobs to do just as they have their jobs to do, but our job also includes on-the-fly fugg-ups that they constantly create.

I have no problem showing someone how to do something once...even twice, because maybe they didn't catch it all the first time. But around the third or fourth time, they had better write the damn thing down, and read it again before calling in. If we give them a paper to read with the answers to any of the issues they'll encounter after we do something to their computer, they had better fuppin' read the paper before calling into the helpdesk.

I've given this some thought, obviously, and have decided that while I'm IT, I can't give it up to go be, say , a professor - because then I have to answer questions for the students...I can't be a student, because then I have to answer questions for the professors and other students. I can't be a retail salesperson because I'd have to answer questions for the customer. I can't produce a product because then I'd have to support the procedure or the product itself.

About the only thing I could be that doesn't really involve having to help anyone figure something out would be an Artist.

I'm simply tired of not being able to use my abilities and expand them...while at the same time not making enough money to justify the crap we have to put up every day. I'm ready to work on my own stuff now. I'm tired of having to help everyone else figure out how to do their inferior crap simply because they don't want to click around or type a quick search into Google to figure out that they could actually fix their issue themselves.

I understand why Linux people are always like "rtfm, n00b, &gtfo" It's because people don't read the manuals, do a search, or reflect on previous experiences before asking someone else. I have issues with my cable company at times, but I do everything I can before I call their ass - but that's mainly because I already know how to troubleshoot my connection to them from previous experiences, and because chances are they're going to be too incompetent to fix the issue that I have anyway - like giving me a new IP address.

Anyway, I needed to vent, but venting is not going to solve the problem.

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Numb3rs & Lov3 (Pt. 3)

2008-01-22T14:38:00.000-06:00

Winkydo brings up a good point in his comment on Part 2:

there is no way to accurately judge real human behavior. after studying body language habits, i know that there is a way to accurately tell what a person is thinking about an individual subject and what a person is going to do about an individual stimuli, but there is no way to accurately know how a person will react to multiple things waiting for a response from them. you can make good estimates about what is to happen next, what direction the person is on a path too, but you cannot accurately determine the personality traits that will decide things like love, hate, or innate reasoning skills.

What I didn't clarify in my previous post is enough to write another post.
In the Sprinkler example from the show, Charlie said that there was no way to predict where the next drop was going to fall...he only said there was a way to predict where the source was coming from - a general region for the sources origin.

In the same way that you can't tell where the next water drop is going to fall, you cannot predict what the next decision's result would be. But you have a set of information where the past drops have fallen, and have a good guess about where they are coming from, and this enables you to form an estimate about where the next one will drop. This is called Predictive Analysis which, simply stated:

...encompasses a variety of techniques from statistics and data mining that analyze current and historical data to make predictions about future events. Such predictions rarely take the form of absolute statements, and are more likely to be expressed as values that correspond to the odds of a particular event or behavior taking place in the future.

By taking the information from the past, and the information from the present about a person, you can then use predictive analytics to form a statistically-based estimate about their future behavior.

The predictions won't be accurate, and shouldn't be considered as a method for predicting exact future events, but instead likely future events. Because they aren't exact predictions, there will be a range of possible outcomes that should be derived from the analysis, and then you have another choice to make: which one do you act upon.

If you take a moment to follow through the decision about which choice needs to be made, you'll find yourself imagining several future-worlds that are the result of your decision. Which one is the right one? It's simple...really, it is...

They all are.

How is that possible? That's simple too - if you know a little something about quantum mechanics...

Consider Erwin Schrödinger, a quantum physicist, and his example of a cat, and the principle of superposition of states.

Superposition is the addition of the amplitudes of waves from interference. In quantum mechanics it is the sum of wave function amplitudes, or state vectors. It occurs when an object simultaneously "possesses" two or more values for an observable quantity. This would extend to, say a BAWLS bottle - one could say it's blue...another could say it's shiny...it possesses two (and more) observable values.

Now, imagine a box, on the floor...it's closed and sealed. Inside is a cat, which was alive at the time it was placed in the box. Also inside there is a volume of gaseous particles - 50% of that is the combination of elements that makes up breathable "air" (nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, trace elements)...the other 50% is a toxic gas.

Without opening the box, you have to determine whether the cat is dead or alive. Which one is it?

You can guess about the contents of the box, and think "well, the cat is breathing half-poisonous gas, and half-breathable air...so he must be dead, since it's poisonous." Or you can think "well, the cat is breathing half-breathable air, and half poisonous gas, so the poison is probably diluted, and he's alive." Which one is right though? The answer:

Both of them.

Without observation, you cannot take measurements to determine the value of the system. So until the box is opened, the cat theoretically takes on two observable values, but this time not blue & shiny, but rather both dead and alive. And until you open the box, and measure the system, you won't know which value was the conclusive answer to the question.

Now apply this to the predictive analysis about what decision you should make - you can theorize about what is going to happen if you make a certain decision, adapt a certain way, or change someone's directives in their life with the hopes of yielding a particular result. But until you actually open the box, all you can do is say that this will work, and won't work, at the same time.

The answer, as Larry put it in the show Numb3rs: "... is that it's moot to guess about what will happen, until you open the box, and look inside."

All you can do, is do what you do, and hope that everything works out in the end. You'll never know until you try.

Numb3rs and Lov3 (Pt. 2)

2008-01-21T15:15:00.001-06:00

While it may be true that human behavior cannot be quantified and predicted, there is another side to it that can. An example from the tv show Numb3rs...

Lets take a sprinkler, for example...now when you turn it on, you see it shooting drops of water in an arc across the yard. There's no way to tell where the next drop is going to fall. But based on the drops that have already hit the ground, you can form an inference about the source of the drops. You can trace the seemingly random drops back to their point of origin.

You can also do this with people - and their history.

Take, for example, a person's personality and social decisions. In the past, they've made particular decisions that ended up leading them down a certain road. The easiest thing to think of, that has a lot of data, would be relationships.

People tend to date a certain type of person. Every once in a while, there will be someone they date that doesn't quite fit the mold of all the people they've previously dated....but generally, they all have something in common.

In order to figure out what's likely to happen next, you have to figure out what's happened before. You have to figure out the common factor in most of the instances before that yielded the same result. How were they treated, how did they communicate, were they attracted to each other, did all the people they dated look alike, etc...

Once that is figured out, you can pretty much determine what's going to happen with the relationship later on down the road. And that sounds a lot like fate.

But wait...

In quantum physics, there is what's known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which says that you can either observe an object in action, or you can measure the object in non-action. But you cannot do both. Basically the act of measurement disturbs the observation that you would have gotten otherwise...and the act of trying to simply observe will not yield a measurement.

Now apply this to humans. As long as someone doesn't know they're being watched, they will continue to go about their business unabated...undisturbed. (e.g. a thief robbing a bank will continue on with his plans if he is unaware of any pre-existing law enforcement activity to stop him). You'd then be able to take in the observation of how they'd act. But once they are aware of the fact that they are being watched, this act of measurement or gathering information has changed how they would have behaved otherwise. (e.g. the thief adapts his plans to account for this new information).

The problem with predicting human behavior, is that as long as the people are unaware, chances are, that it will go on as planned. But once that is compromised, everything changes.

If you find you're next in line for a relationship - you can either look for the pattern that showed how all the past ones failed, and then adapt your intentions to compensate for those mistakes...or you can go on and do nothing about it.

But either way, there is going to be some uncertainty about all of it. Either you'll end up in the observation side of things, where everything just goes about as it would, and be added to the list of failures....or you'll end up on the measurement side of things, where once you've changed your behavior, you've changed the entire system, and can't live it out the way it was meant to be observed.

Maybe the second one is a good thing...

(...might be continued.)

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Numb3rs and Lov3

2008-01-20T22:24:00.001-06:00

I've been watching Season 1 of Numb3rs lately. It's a show that I wanted to set a schedule to watch when I first moved out onto my own in this apartment. The only bad part was that it came on at 8:00pm on Friday nights. At the time, Friday was the only night of the week that I didn't have school, so my friends and I hung out - and rarely at my place.

Anyway, one of the episodes, Charlie (the mathematician) was working on an algorithm that would predict why the shooter was picking certain locations. He presented the problem to his colleague - an astrophysicist professor, Larry - who promptly showed him the error of his calcuation:

"You can't quantify human behavior...it's too unpredictable."

Ever since I was a kid, living with my step dad and mom, I had paid close attention to what my brother would do, and how my parents reacted. From this I gleamed a general idea for human behavior.

When I got into Jr. High, and High School, I started applying the same methods to my friends who were in relationships...study what they did, and the reaction they received. I spent a good 10-13 years learning about all that stuff, before I went off to apply my findings to a real-life situation.

The first situation involved preventative conflict resolution - anticipate a possible conflict, and perform the necessary actions to prevent it. This worked to an extent, in so much as it prevented some conflicts, but not all of them - and made the person feel like they were being controlled. All the work was for nothing though, because I ended up making the mistake that brought about the first and last conflict we had.

After that, I tried the psychological approach. If I couldn't do it by being intelligent, then I could do it by working with her mind - which was convenient, and actually the only method we had, because it was an interstate relationship, and all we had was the telephone, and internet. Eventually I found out that people don't always tell you who they really are, until you either call them out on it, or they really want to.

Once all those cards were laid on the table, it unfortunately went straight to physical. I was set up on a blind-double-date with a friend, and her friend. She went right into it within 3 days/dates, and that was that. It lasted for about 2 months or so until I decided that it wasn't right for me, and then found out she had cheated...so it was an easy out for something that was an easy in - if you know what I mean. Of course you do.

I got out of that, and tried emotions - that was ghey. Took a break from everything, and tried to kindle old interests that I never could muster up the courage to start...that was an epic fail. And then I tried local...

With the local scene, I tried to just be myself - be there, and someone they'd possibly want to be with...I tried to adapt to new interests, use a different life perspective to appeal to them...and then tried to find the one. That combined personality and interests, and the physical, and the psychological...

And that didn't work.

At this point, I just started going with the flow. I'd take note of everything that was happening, all the stuff I'd have paid attention to before, but just do whatever. It was because I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on inside my mind that could be causing all this stuff to fail. (Afterall, if you fail so many times with so many different people...surely it's not them that has the issue, it's you...don't ya think? Of course some of you won't - you're too conceited.)

From that point on, I rolled through three different attempts -all of which were valid interests in me, but none of which I could pull off for more than a couple months. That sucks. And only now do I figure out - by watching a show that could have saved me all this trouble, heartache, and wasted time (but would have stripped me from the memories and the journey which I have traveled)...the one simple sent3nce that I needed to hear in a w4y that w0u1d c47ch my att3nt!0n...

"You can't quantify human behavior...it's too unpredictable."

(to be continued...)

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Here fishy fishy

2008-01-03T12:02:00.001-06:00

Well, at thanksgiving I had baby fish - there were at least 3 - 3 that I saw and rescued from the other fish in the tank. And then at Christmas Eve Night I noticed 16 more baby fish in the tank...so I pulled them and put them in a net as well, since I just released the previous 3 that were big enough to not be eaten.

So, yesterday I noticed that it was time to clean the tank, as it was starting to turn greenish - and hadn't before in the 6 months I've had those fish in there...so I gave it a shot. The water ended up really cloudy and I couldn't get all the crap out of there - so I headed off to the Petsmart to buy a bigger tank, since i'd have about 20 fish in there once the babies grew up.

I dropped $400 on a 47 gallon tank and fixin's and when I got it all home, the fish were dead...all but 2 of them. :( I guess they suffocated. So I got the new tank setup quickly and tried to get the other two fish in it before they had issues themselves, but unfortunately they too died shortly after I got the tank setup. In total retrospect, I think the water was too hot for them, even though it felt like room temperature to me.

So I go back to the Petsmart and get some more fish, and put them in their baggies in the water to equalize it...and wait the proper time, and then release them - and after about 30 minutes they die too. wtf? I could see them shooting to the top, with actions that looked like gasping for air...but I'm not sure. Even the frog that doesn't require air from the water died...so I attribute that to the temperature of the water as well. It's been sitting there empty since then, and was at 80 degrees this morning when I woke up. So I guess that by tomorrow evening, I should be able to buy a fish (only one this time, since I wasted $30 last night on them) to see if he makes it through the weekend.

In other news, I've been speaking my peace with a lot of old crap that I've stored away in my closet for the past couple years, like 15 years...things I've had since childhood that I don't have any business holding on to. Wizard mentioned that everything in his storage could go when he moved into his new house, because he obviously didn't use any of it. I started thinking about all the stuff that I have around the apartment that I don't use, but was holding on to in case I needed it...I have a lot of stuff.

If it wasn't so expensive to throw it all away and start all over, and if I didn't have a psychological issue throwing away working objects, I would. I'd like to get rid of my furniture, all the old clothes in my closet, and boxes of stuff that I don't need. I've started setting things outside hoping someone would take them, but no dice yet. I need to participate in a garage sale...I'm hoping Wizard and Mandy have one soon.

Other than that - I'm looking forward to the LAN Party this year. I have a better camera, and have played some better games than the years past.

Sometimes, you can only do so much...

2007-10-03T20:10:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, you can only do so much...the rest is up to them. Who's them? The collective "they"...the nondescript "other" people that cannot be defined by the word "you."

You may think that so&so is not like the "rest of them," but were they not like "them" then they'd consequently be "you."

A little kid falls down, and scrapes his knee - you can't make the knee better...you can't hold your hand over it and heal the wound...you can't do anything to fix their problem. All you can do is help them get back up on their feet, and offer a comforting word. It is up to them to heal their knee - up to their body.

Someone's heart is broken and you find them depressed - you can't make them feel better, or heal their emotions, or take away their baggage...you can't talk sense into them or explain away the world and the bad people that are in it. All you can do is offer a shoulder to cry on, and to be there when they need someone to offer a comforting word. It is up to them to be ready to hear the answer, to trust again, to take hold of their joy and move forward with their life.

Sometimes, you come upon someone that does the same thing that you do - that likes to help others, and they see that in you, and like what they see. And with it being their very nature to help, they start looking for things that are wrong for them to take care of and fix for you. But they can't do that...they can't be allowed to try to search out your flaws and fix them for you...why? They're your flaws - it's up to you to fix them.

But the problem with all that - is that they may not be flaws at all. Maybe that's the method you use to communicate with certain people you come into contact with on a level that other people can't even begin to understand. If you try to change your innate characteristics to match what someone else thinks would be the solution to their perceived flaw - you change the person you are, and become useless to your original cause.

For me, I'm blunt, curt, frank, honest, and very direct. I provide people with a tough-love point of view, and a perspective from both sides of the issue. I leave out the emotions, and include only the information needed for them to make their decision. I see right through the BS that spews out of other peoples' mouthes and cut straight to the intent. I see actions, but more importantly I see non-actions. The slightest unannounced, unreasoned change in behavior gets noticed, and run against a mental database of all the previous outcomes of such a change, to form conjecture about the current state of the matter.

This is how I communicate. Some people come to me asking what they should do. They provide me with the details of the situation to this point, and provide me with the details as it continues. I tell them exactly what I see happening, what the action normally means, and what the consequences of various responses are, and they choose what to do or not do...but my notions are rarely incorrect.

If any of me changes, none of that works. It's helped people stay together...it's helped people decide whether or not they should end it...and it's helped save people's lives. It's what I do for others.

Unfortunately, it's hard not to do it for myself - even if I don't think it's needed, the blessing becomes a curse and I start to analyze everything that has gone on, and up to that point, and form my conjectures. Sometimes, the person I'm with doesn't understand this, and the notions become self-fulfilling. Sometimes they do, and realize all it takes is a daily comment to effectively say "hey, I'm still here, I still care."

After being in enough relationships, and seeing even more relationships around me crumble because of a lack of communication by one or both sides - it's the very reason that a lack of communication from the person I'm with causes me to see a lack of interest. The first thing someone does when they're not interested - they stop talking to you voluntarily. It's lonely when you're the only one talking...and dangerous for your situation. To remedy this feeling with certain people, I have had to learn one important thing...

If having a cat has taught me anything, it's to let go. The closer you hold a cat, the more they meow, claw and fight to get free. But if you leave a cat alone for a while, they always come back, happy to see you, and ready to either play or cuddle with you.

And so as it is with cats, it is with women. I have let go once before, and though it took her about 2 months to figure that out, she came back, and things were better than they were before. But I'll say this: As much as I hate letting go, I hate even more to hold on and lose it.

If you learn anything from this post - learn this:
- Don't try to change, don't suggest change...they will change when they are ready.
- Communicate constantly - it's not time consuming, a burden, or a pain. It's easy.
- If you hold it too tight, you'll always lose it. If you let it go, you'll always get it back.

Time for a change

2007-09-28T14:04:00.000-06:00

This summer, I was a different person - I was the other me that doesn't get to show itself much. Now, it's time for a change. That version of me is fun for a while, and gets to express himself in a way that relates to a particular kind of person, but it also prevents the other me from totally expressing myself.

This summer, I learned to take photos, I explored writing and photography and artsy stuff, effectively leeching off someone else's personality while they leeched off mine. I learned the arts from them while they learned the teck from me. Now it is time for a forced reversal.

There are various things I need to do to get my life back on track, and going in a particular direction that seems to be a couple stones over from where I'm currently standing.

- No more emo Neo...back to Teck Neo...back to [[Neo]] and [[Oracle]] and [[Trinity]]
- Photography is cool, it can stay - it's a different kind of technology that I can use to make money.
- Writing will slow again, and go back to technology oriented writing - stuff I'm good at: facts, data, experiments...stuff that doesn't step on people's toes or hurt their feelings, because it itself is emotionless - like me, generally. People usually like my writing, and it's always about someone. It's when something that sounds like their situation starts appearing in my writing that they get upset - but don't mind when it's about someone else. Oh well, that's human nature I guess. It happens all the time...I view it as constructive criticism when I see myself in someone else's parable.

I have an online store that I was working on before the summer started, but I haven't been able to do anything with it because of my internet connection at the house. I've had a bad IP address I guess, because it ends in 0 and my web server apparently won't let me access it because of my IP. So I'm going off the grid, at least at the house, for a little bit, to try and get that thing fixed. I hope it works...there has to be a way to get a new IP for my modem without being offline for too long.

I haven't paid much attention to my website this summer, because I haven't wanted to touch a computer very much at all. I've been doing social things lately, and apparently me being social is a painful experience for people that aren't used to me. So I'll scale that down a bit, and people will either accept me or not, and if not, that's their problem. I've been fine for the last 4 years keeping myself company, and I can do it for a while longer if necessary. I can adapt to fit people's needs for a time, but I cannot change my inherent behavior - no one can...and if they say they can, they're lying right to your face. I'm interested in turning all my knowledge into some kind of business venture, and finding someone that I can share my life with at the same time. My only requirement from her: to ask how I'm doing sometime during the day - show a little bit of interest (even if it's just a habitual question) will keep me sane and focused. A perceived loss of interest will cause me to lose interest. That's just how I'm wired from birth, there's nothing I can do about it, and that's how I treat others - a daily show of some kind of affection to let them know I'm still interested - whether they need it or not.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my website, it's pretty self-sustaining right now, and folks are posting away...I've got another one out there already but getting one to the other is a bitch because of the changes in the database, and the way the pages are created by the code. If I had kept with the move all this time, I would have been working on it for a year, and probably would have had another version up by now. But I'm not really interested in getting another version up at the moment. I'm interested in progressing in life.

I'm 24 years old, and this was the year that I was supposed to have everything in order for my life. But here we are, with 3 months left in the year, and I'm aimlessly wandering around my own fate with no real purpose or direction that has any real meaning - at least to me and what I'm about.

So here we go...are you ready for the change? Can you hold on when I take everything in my life and flip it upside down and go in a completely opposite direction? It's what I do every so often...I require change and something new and exciting. I approach the new direction (which is usually one I've already traveled before) with the new knowledge that I've gained from the previous episode of my life, and cycle through all this over and over.

That that don't kill me, can only make me stronger
everything I've been through has it's own song ta'
remind me that I gotta hold on ta'
the lessons learned,
times I was burned,
the good times that we had. And now I got ta'
take a step in the other way
hold out my hands, and grab a brand new day.
One like the past
but with lessons that
I picked up along the hard & rocky way.
I used it all to write a brand new plan,
with out-stretched arms...will you take my hand?

And there you have it.

[[Neo]] 112

2007-09-11T13:39:00.000-06:00

We know what is in our heart by the things that we think and the words that come out our mouth. "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer." (Psalms 19:14)

But what if the things that come out of your mouth do not reflect the things that are actually in your heart? What if the things that come out of your mouth are only fragments of incomplete sentences, that get spewed out from your mouth out of order?

What if what is actually on your mind are simple facts and data, that when put into sentence form get spit out as a rather direct sentence, with no sugar-coating or political finesse, in such a way that they are taken wrongly and hurt people's perception of you?

Or of me?

Back when I started college, all I did was sit in my dorm room on a computer, looking at HTML and JavaScript trying to hack it up and learn how everything worked. I saw inputs, variables, and outputs. I saw how one thing changed another, and how one change screwed up everything. I learned how to see the world from a perspective of a programmer - everything was a variable, except those things that were constant. Every person an Object, in a programming language (object-oriented programming) that had it's own functions, own variables, own types of data they can output, and own ways to process the data they receive.

So I took a communication class...how to communicate with the opposite sex. I learned not to be the one that has to have something to say all the time, but rather how to be a listener and process what was being said to me, so that I could maintain a conversation. That was 6 years ago. That was when I was surrounded by the opposite sex, and had to communicate with them constantly.

However, as of the last 4 years, I have not had to do that. In 2003, I was forcibly relocated back home with my mom and step dad. Then I was forcibly relocated to Arlington to live with my dad. Then in 2005 I moved out on my own and have lived by myself for the last 2 years.

During those times, I did not have anyone to communicate with, and had only myself to keep me entertained. And being myself, I know how I inherently think - and that is logically and based on facts/data. When it's just me talking to myself, I don't care about the details of the situation that don't have anything to do with the result . I see things as they are, and extract the necessary information from the situation and use that to make my decision. The rest of the information is discarded.

Unfortunately, during those 4 years, I have forgotten how to use tact, and also have a certain disdain for people who are political. I work in a place now, and in every previous corporate position that the people have to behave with a certain air and respect to the politics of their superiors. I, however, believe one thing - you are no more important than any one else. The president of a company is no more important than the coworker or customer I'm helping out. This view does not jive well with the people that get caught up in the political game, and that's an on-going struggle I have with them.

What also sucks is that now that I have grown tired of living alone and working by myself, I have started to try and create a social life for myself. However, my communication skills that I have formed when speaking with myself in my head are not transfered well with the people that I meet.

For example, someone mentions that they like cookouts. The have friends that like cookouts too. An opportunity has also come up in the past to meet their friends, but I had to decline. And then it's mentioned that there will be some free time coming up in the near future. I keep track of those bits of information in my head, and when they come together, and form a thought, I end up saying "Why don't you get your friends together for a cookout at the lake, and I can meet them."

Now, in my head, that sentence contains all the necessary information about who, what, where, when, and why. However, that's all they see is a request for that one thing to happen. But that is not what I was trying to convey - instead, what I wanted to convey was "Would you please see if your friends are interested/available in having a cookout that weekend at the lake? I am interested in meeting them if would be possible, and that would be a good opportunity to do so." There are a lot of words in there that cushion the request and idea from sounding direct and demanding. It's the same idea in my head, but it conveys a different meaning in the other person's head when they hear them.

That is what I have lost - the ability to cushion the request with added words to help soften the idea and request. Those added words are not inherently part of my thought process. They take additional time, processing, and end up lagging the response time - when normally I have already made my decision 2-3 seconds after hearing the idea presented to me.

But I am going to work on fixing that. I have come across a couple people recently that have mis-taken my statements for frustration, demands, being cross, or some other negative form of communication - when really it's none of that. It's simply fact-based processing that yields fact-based answers. But not everyone works with that kind of communication style. Now that it has been made known to me (as I did not really notice a shift in style, since it was me that gradually changed over time), I can fix it, and help to prevent hurting people in the future.

So in the meantime, if you hear something that sounds direct, blunt, demanding - please know that is not the intended meaning of the phrase. Instead, try to find out what it is I'm requesting, put a positive light to it, and assume that it's a flexible request - because it is. I'm a flexible and accommodating person when it comes to working with other people. Who am I to tell you to do something and require it of you? I am no one, and I do not wish to do that.

[[Neo]] 111

2007-09-10T10:16:00.000-06:00

"If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects. Not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi." - Senator Palpatine

This is pretty much true about everything that has to do with life...even life itself.

Growing up, I was overprotected, even sheltered from experiencing anything that would be detremental to my development as a human being in the real world.

When my parents were married, I was too young to remember much. But I do recall spending a lot of my time at the Boys and Girls Club in Arlington. There I hung out with the wrong group of kids, and was exposed to all kinds of stuff: disobeying authority, theft, pornography, and financial ingenuity. I can't say that I didn't enjoy those time as a kid, because they were fun - rebellious, creative, and they allowed me to use my imagination. But I also can't say they didn't help me become a more developed person.

When my parents split, and my mom was single, I was exposed to having different people in her life, and meeting new figures of psuedo-authority. Eventually she married one of them, and he became my stepdad. At that point, things changed, drastically. There was no more exposure to the things that were not healthy for me, instead it was all mental tricks.

My stepdad had come from a previous marriage to a woman who used to manipulate him, and control everything that he did. I wish I could say that he didn't do the same thing to us, and learned his lesson. But since he was exposed to it for so long, I can't help but think that it had become part of his method for managing his life as well...simply out of habbit, and that being all he knew.

To get along with him, and not long after, with my mom, I had to learn how his mind worked and how he viewed our actions and accomplishments/failures. If it was not done perfectly, then it was not done, and it warranted doing again, at least once more - maybe twice.

There would be no questioning of his authority - and if one did not like what was going on, the door was presented to them, with bags for them to pack - we were in our teenage years, how absurd is that? So I had to learn how to accept what he said as fact/truth/law, and do without questioning him. Eventually my communication and political skills lead me to be able to question in an educational manner while making my point or disagreeing. I would state his method first, and say "but then why does this happen." I'd give him a chance to backpedal without calling him out on his misinformation.

Our social lives were restricted to church, school, work, home. There would be no friends coming over, there would be no social activities, no parties, no dances, no school functions. There would be no sleep-overs for disciple now at church, there would be no girls in our life, no relationships, no opportunity to make our mistakes with the opposite sex. There would only be church to hear about God, school to learn about books, work to make money we couldn't spend, and home to sit and reflect - use our imagination and study and work.

So when I left for college after I graduated high school - that methodology carried over into my first semester of school. I was in a new place, and nothing was consistent with my daily routine I had lived in for years except reading my bible and studying outside of class. So I made a 4.0 my first semester. After that though, I began to get bored of sitting in my dorm. I did my homework for the entire week on the weekend before, and I had 5 days after class to hang out with people. But there was no one available because they had not been raised with that kind of discipline.

The next semester, I had enjoyed so much the thrill of craming for an exam I had forgotten about, that I decided I would use the weekend to hang out with my friends who were available then, and use the week to study for class. That lead to me forming a social life with some of the nicest people on campus. I got to learn how to meet with new people, and work on my communication skills, and even try to get dates with girls (but that only worked a very few times, because I had no clue what I was doing).

I ended up getting a 3.0 for that semester, averaging out to 3.5 for the year. My parents saw this, and threatened not to let me return the next semester...but I insisted. The summer could not pass quick enough for me, because my new-found freedom from my life being surpressed by protective and controlling parents was eating away at my self-control for following their instructions. I started using my communication skills on my parents (the good communications skills that I found I had a knack for, like holding conversation, asking questions instead of giving answers, and sharing my experiences in a way they could relate to). My stepdad did not like the fact that I was making my own decisions about my life that were not congruent with his decisions for my life.

I left for college again in the fall, and continued with my social expansion, and plotting a course for my life. Even forming romantic relationships with a couple girls that semester, and experiencing new things in that area. On my return home at the end of the semester it was too much for my stepdad to handle, and after 3 months of arguing about plans for MY life between HIS ideas about it and MINE, I was kicked out on my own. I had the option of joining the army or moving to my dad's.

Fast forward to now, and having failed at a lot of the things that I thought I was going to do in my life, a lot of the people I thought I was going to be around, and a lot of the places I thought I would be by now. I've learned all kinds of lessons about life, and one of them is the reason for writing this post.

Having had to deal with my stepdad and his methods for managing people, I learned how to be flexible with people's attitudes. I can mock and mimic their methods for handeling people, and flip them back at them. There are people that like to micromanage others, and when they decide to micromanage me, I (as "Neo" would) raise my hand in the air, say "No." and put it back on them. If people try to degrade me with words, I let them speak, and smile. And when they say something that can be turned back against them, I take the opportunity to show them the same curteousy they showed me, and make them appear foolish in front of all their friends that were laughing with them earlier.

I'm more than happy to be flexible and manageable, and work with people that provide me enough information and respect to do what I do for them. There is nothing I enjoy more than to make other people happy, and to get to see that in their face. But when they try to take advantage of it, start to expect it, or start to disrespect me for being so compassionate towards them, the other me comes out, and they get a taste of their own attitude.

I don't do it often, and don't like doing it. And I haven't had to do it for such a long while, that it's kinda rusty for me to pick back up. But to be able to handle all kinds of people, to know the great mystery of life (which would be something like how to interact with everyone and everything to everyone's mutual advantage), I had to learn the "dark side" of life. But I don't use it, I choose not to. If it is required to be used, then it's because I have tried everything else to get the other person to see what's going on here, but they have not taken any action to correct it. I use my abilities for good, not evil - to teach a lesson, not be an ass.

Unfortunately, there is a downside to it...people can try to hurt me all they want, and it will just roll off my mind like butter on teflon. But when I end up doing it to people, it sticks with me for a long time. Even moreso if I did not do it to someone, but they thought I did. It's hard for me to get past my mistakes, because I'm too concerned with seeing them happy - that if I become a source of grief or stress for them, even briefly, I feel terrible.

So, if that's happened to you, I'm sorry. I really am. And I'll feel it for a while until I see that everything is better.

[[Neo]] 110

2007-09-08T19:17:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I wish that I could go back in time and take something back. That I could fix whatever "buck-up" I just made to make things right again, at least right in the eyes of 5-minute-ago-[[Neo]].

But to what avail? What purpose? Why go back in time to erase a mistake and a lesson learned just to have to repeat it at a later date? Why put myself through the torture of another mistake, loss, and heartache in the future, to recover the expense of the past?

It's a good thing we can't go back and redo everything again...unfortunately though we CAN travel back in time to relive them over and over again. How? It's easy...we do it all the time. Some of us even travel FORWARD in time to prelive our mistakes in the future...and we do it without even realizing what we're doing.

Consider this...you say something hurtful and ugly to someone you care about. Once you say it, you can't take it back...words are a double edged sword. They cut to defend, and they cut to offend. But when you make the mistake, and then sit there and relive it by thinking about it over and over, you have effectively traveled back into the past via your MIND and are reliving the same mistake over and over. There's nothing you can do about it, but yet people are drawn to reliving their misery ad nauseum until they have stressed themselves about it so much that they can't take it anymore.

But while they're in the past reliving their mistakes, they're missing out on the present that they're going through, wasting those moments traveling through the past.

The same thing is true for the worriers. People that sit there and think about all the scary things that could happen to them in the future, and the outcomes of those situations, and the consequences of everything that could possibly happen because they decided to wear a blue shirt today instead of the green one. The people that can't make a decision because they are afraid of what could happen.

So they spend their present time traveling to the future to see what could happen to them, and all the horrific things they play over and over in their mind.

We've only got one straight line of time, with a finite amount of time to experience it. Should you really be wasting the time you've been given to live in on situations you've already lived? Or wasting it on situations that you're going to end up living twice by worrying about them? I don't think so.

Of course, I'm an advocate of reflecting on the past to gain experience for the future. And an advocate of preflecting on the future to make the proper decisions in the present. But as I have mentioned before, acknowledge your mistakes of the past, and grasp the lesson. Acknowledge the consequences of the future, and grasp the decision. Then live your life with that information right now.

Dr. Emmett Brown from Back To The Future III said it best, when he said "I wish I'd never invented that infernal time machine. It's caused nothing but disaster." If you go back in time to fix one mistake, you risk making another in your present by not paying attention. If you go forward in time to prevent a mistake, you risk making another in your present as well.

In H.G. Wells' book "Time Machine" the inventor of the time machine tries to go back in time to save his fiance from death. But every time he prevents one manifestation of the disaster, the same result is decided via a different avenue. He may prevent her from being shot by a robber, but she gets run over by a carriage.

So my point: go with the flow of time. You're going to screw up in the past, in the future, and hell, even right now. Mistakes are going to be made no matter when you make them or how. If not by one event, then by another - because there is a lesson you must learn, and you will experience it. So when it happens, take note, and move on. Eventually your time will run out, and what will you have to show for it if you've spent all your time traveling, and never actually lived?

[[Neo]] 109

2007-08-26T22:24:00.000-06:00

People that have known me for a while, and who I have bothered to let in on the details of my personal life, would probably tell you that I don't like to make mistakes...not in work, not in fun, and not in relationships. I choose carefully what my next move will be, and often a couple moves in advance.

Those same people may also tell you that I tend to jump right in and perhaps "fall too fast" when it comes to things I like...or people I like. But that's the superficial perspective of it. There's no "falling" involved at all.

I don't like to back-track and have to re-learn, or re-do anything in life. To me that is a waste of time. I would much rather ask someone that already knows the answer, so I can take note, and move forward, or spend some time figuring out what the possible answers are, and what their consequences would be. I do this in work, and in my hobbies, and in relationships.

I'm more interested in writing about various relationships tonight, though, so I'll focus on that for this post.

People that see me dive right in to something with someone else are missing an important part of the picture - the part where I have already turned down the other options. It's rare that I date anyone - hell, it's even rare that I hang out with new people at all, let alone a girl. But that is because if I don't foresee any beneficial relationship - whether friendship with compatible personalities, or whatever, I don't bother - because there won't be any point to us being around each other.

The same goes for dating. I don't even bother accepting, or asking, or even considering going on a date with a person that I couldn't see spending a lot of my time with in the near (or distant) future. Why waste their time on me, or my time on them, when I would know from the start that it wasn't going to work in my mind?

My most valued currency is my time - if I choose to spend the non-refundable, limited, and cherished time on earth with someone...I consider them to be worth being around...worth respecting. With friendships, and relationships, I am always up for spending whatever free time I have that is not alloted to anything else with those people. I consider it a good investment of myself and my time to include them in my life. (Whether or not they feel the same is a different story - I try to make it worth their while though)

But in a relationship things are a little different. As with not wasting time by dating someone I couldn't see myself with...I also do not waste time by dating more than one person at the same time. That is, in effect, to me, saying "I don't really see you as someone that I could totally be with - there's this other thing that this other person has that I want...but I still want you too." No, sir.

If I pick someone to date, it's because I'm choosing that person, and them alone, to spend my time and thoughts, and feelings on. They have my full attention in that aspect of my life, and I give them nothing less. Conversely, I require their full attention in that aspect of their life as well...otherwise, it's a waste of time, and even disrespect.

I've known people that have decided they wanted something different while they were with someone else...so they cheated. I've known people who were the ones that supposedly didn't have everything their partner wanted. And I've been one of those people as well...one who was cheated on.

The person that cheated on me didn't have the same effect on me as my other friends who got cheated on - and with me, it's because I look at things a little differently. She cheated, told her friend, and lied about it to me. Her friend told me, and she still denied it. Personally, if someone wants to cheat on me - so be it. You're going to do what you're going to do, and there's nothing I can do about it. But don't expect to ever hear from me again. Don't expect to even be treated like a person again.

(This goes back to some earlier posts that I may or may not have made public - but being lied to, or discarded with disregard to the time I spent on someone is instant loss of my respect for them as a person. But that is another post altogether.)

However, that is the case for that individual. I don't let one dumbass girl influence my trust for the others that come along. And it's a hard point to come to in your ability to trust people...but that's where I've been for a while - and what I've always told people: "I trust everyone until they give me a reason not to." But that's my view on it - I'm compartmentalized about things in life.

Other people that I have known who were cheated on felt worthless...like they were not enough of a person to satisfy the one that they thought loved them...so how could they satisfy anyone else that didn't already love them? That's baloney. It does feel that way - but it's not true.

And that's because the person that said they loved you, doesn't know what love is...doesn't have the maturity to stick with what is started, or end what is in progress before trying to start something new. Sure it turns out to be that time spent, gone, and never gotten back - but cut the losses early, instead of wasting someone else's time by overlapping a relationship - that's even worse. There are psychological and emotional effects that can last a whole lot longer than if they had just broken up with them in the first place.

I spent 10 years watching other people screw up their relationships...and 10 years helping people figure out what went wrong with their relationship, and helping them put it back together...helping encourage the people who were broken...helping encourage the people that wanted to start something new in their life but didn't know how. And helping break down the walls of distrust and miscommunication to fix issues from within the relationships instead of trying to find answers on the outside somewhere.

I've seen what it does to people, and I've seen the ignorance that it takes to do something so stupid - and I've never done it, and never intend to - I'd even go so far as to say I never will. If I pick you, you've got my attention...and you've got it until you let go - because I won't until you do. So you've got nothing to fear...

I wouldn't ask you to trust me, if I didn't trust you.

[[Neo]] 108

2007-08-22T14:01:00.000-06:00

I'd have to say that I'm pretty much an introvert. Sure I can be social, hold a conversation, listen intently, and then spit back everything that you've ever said to me...often times holding people accountable for what they said they'd do (in passing). But there's more to it...

I go through my day listening to everyone's everything, and hearing their problems and proposed solutions. When I hear someone having a problem, I recall all the solutions that I have heard about similar issues in the past, and if they are at a loss, I step in. I let my ears wander in and out of nearly everything they can reach. I look into what people are actually telling each other, what they think they are experiencing, and what they feel like they are going through in their life.

It's easy for me to put myself in their shoes and walk around for a bit - it's part of being a Gemini...not that I believe in the Astrology business, but that they tend to be a good guideline for a person's personality. (using it to predict the future is for the birds though.)

But I digress. During the day though, I only have so much social mana that I can spend on being around people. If I'm around only one person, I only have to focus on what they're saying/doing/feeling...and I don't spend it all up, so I'm available to do a whole lot more with them, and more often. But when I'm around several people, like at a small party or a LAN Party, I am usually done by the time night falls. I've had to give my attention to several people at once, and my social mana is spent much quicker. By the end of the night, I'm quiet, and trying to recharge, enough to continue until the event is done. But events like QuakeCon where there are people that I do not have much relation with, who require attention on a massive level to form their perception of my personality in a matter of hours, I am usually spent after a couple hours with them, and ready to go home.

This is why I go home at night, and rarely do anything. I sit at home, alone in the dim light...usually cooling off, because I'm burning up, but just doing something by myself that I enjoy, or with close friends that I don't have to give my attention to constantly. I have to have a point in time where I can remove myself from the issues of the day, and relocate myself to a place I call home, in order to recenter my thoughts, and reset my attitude in preparation for the issues of the next day.

I use my time at the end of the day to reflect on everything that happened during the day - it's not uncommon for me to even recall something that was said at lunch that I did not react appropriately to, and I have to go back and do damage control or whatever is needed to show that I actually heard and cared about what was said, but that it was just buffered and delayed-writing to my brain. At night before I sleep, I think about the past, and think about the possibilities that could stem from the decisions and plans made from the day...once I have come to terms with everything that has happened, that uses up the last bit of brain activity that I have, and then I fall asleep.

There's a peek into the mind of [[Neo]] as he goes throughout the day. There are close friends that he's already in tune with that don't require much focus...and there are individuals that he hangs out with one-on-one that get all of his focus. Those are the people that end up meaning the most to him. When attention is divided among a small group, or a large group, their respective meaning in his life is proportionate. It's nothing personal...that's just the way he's built.

[[Neo]] 107

2007-08-14T19:33:00.000-06:00

So, I was thinking...no actually I wasn't. I wasn't doing anything.

I do that alot. While other people are running around in their lives, I'm sitting here patiently waiting, thinking, watching. For what? I don't know. For what ever happens. And it's usually a lot that happens.

For example, there have been times that I have been sitting, and hear a simple noise - it leads me to think about what could be making that noise, what color does that noise represent to me, what is something of that color that could be making that noise, what is that something's color, what kind of things would give rise to that something making that noise, what if I were there watching it make its noise, what would I then do, what would the consequences of those actions or non-actions be, and what would I do about those consequences?

It's those kind of thought-trains that lead me to think about all kinds of things, and foresee all kinds of events before they ever happen. Once I have analyzed an event and its consequences, it is then stored away forever (usually) to be recalled at a later date when such an event occurs.

That is why I have a quick wit, and an answer for almost everything...regardless of how accurate it is. I have taken the time, ahead of time, to think about the situation I'm in, and formulate a response accordingly. I've been doing this for years, so you can imagine how many responses I have built up over that period of time.

I'd encourage everyone who believes they do not have enough time in the day, to not plan something for a particular evening...an evening when you don't already have anything else planned...one in which you can come home, and be in the quiet - undisturbed by anyone.

Ponder your existence...ponder your choices...ponder your plans and goals...ponder the direction you're currently traveling...ponder the things on which you have no business pondering - the things you know nothing about - formulate your own conjectures about those things, and then try to poke holes in those reasons...then try to fill in the holes left by the answers you negated.

When you have done this with the things of your life, then you will start to see that there is nothing too difficult that can come at you through the course of your day, week, month, life...because you've already taken the time to accept those events, greet them, and offer your solution - a well tested solution, since you've already poked the holes and filled them in.

You don't have to always have all the answers - all you really need is to have already thought about the question. Try it...you'll be amazed what limitlessness your mind can consider. You may even learn something you never knew before, just by thinking. I've done it...you can to.

Let me know how it goes for you.

[[Neo]] 106

2007-08-13T09:01:00.000-06:00

Something I learned growing up, was that if you tell someone you're going to do something, you had better bust your ass with everything in your ability having been tried before you go back on your word. A man's word is his livelihood.

Once I started learning that, I learned that you can't point out the speck of dust in your brother's eye, when you have a plank stuck in your own. Pull out the plank in your eye so you can better see how to remove the speck from your brother's.

Those two ideals combined are what drive me today. If I say I'm going to be somewhere, do something, or live a particular way - I bust my ass to make it happen, even if I don't want to when the time comes. Otherwise, I'm a liar.

Sure there are times when things come up, like you die or get sick or something. But generally, it's because someone more important on your priority list has requested the same block of time, for something they would like you to do...and you, favoring them more, cancel what you had previously said you'd do.

This weekend, I saw the results of 3 different tests I put on my friends. Two of those results were passing...one failed. I waited all week to see if BinaryAngel was actually going to invite me to hang out with her friends...to give me an address for the various locations that we were to be, and the times at which we were to meet. She did, and I was glad. The second test...to see if Sunny would stick with her plans to go out on Saturday night, or if she'd cancel at the last minute. We did go out, and we had a blast.

The third test will remain unnamed because the person failed. She said one thing, and her actions did another. It was something that I outwardly ignored and appeared not to notice - but saw everything. I always see everything...I always hear everything - and this time, I felt it beforehand.

I'm used to my friends canceling their plans on me. It's something I have come to expect when I schedule things. Generally I'm around people (in the past at least) that would like to schedule all these adventures and grand events, some for my website, some for being social. And when it came down to the last couple days before it, they would back out, citing some kind of family, money, or interest issue - throwing away all the time, thought, and money involved in the event.

So now, I don't care so much what people say to me - they're just words. When I am with someone I care about, I am equally as content, if not more, simply being with them, sitting together, quietly. I can tell what feelings are there by the things that they do...a simple hand-hold, sitting close, a smile...even just a particular sigh. All those things convey positive intent. Avoiding eye contact, poor posture, appearance of existence...even just a particular sigh. All those things are negative. So I try to spend time with people as much as I can, to see where they are with things. I only speak to learn information.

When they speak, I see their words in plain text - no colors, no imagery, little meaning. I see intentions, right through the mask of "carefully" arranged words...I see direction in the conversation, right through "carefully" obscured statements...and I feel their perception, through the slight and subtle body language movements. I look directly into your eyes, to read your very purpose.

It is for this reason, I do not consider what people say to me as being their purpose of character. I consider more carefully what it is that they do. Their actions are what define them...their words are what gives them color. I am not interested in the colors, I am more concerned with definitions. A black and white photo can convey just as much, or more, meaning than a color photo. A person who says nothing, but does right by those around them is a better person than one who says all the right things, but does not act in accord with their words.

What kind of person are you?

[[Neo]] 105

2007-08-12T09:31:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, I see something happen in my life, and I think "wtf? Why is this happening? This can't possibly be good in comparison to everything else that is going on." But then I sit back and see what happens, and realize that everything that has happened, happened, and couldn't have happened any other way. Why? Because I'm still alive.

Is it a belief in fate? No, probably not. I don't like to believe in fate, for the same reason that Neo doesn't in the movie The Matrix: "I don't like that idea that I'm not in control of my own life." At the same time, I also believe that God knows what's going to happen in your life, all the time. And while I believe in that, I also believe in Free Will.

I've done discussion posts on these thoughts before, but nothing in a blog that attempts to link Free Will, with God's ability to know your path, and this other thing...the psuedo-fate deal. So I'll start with that.

Throughout my life, I had always tried to control the variables, so that I would get the desired results. Most of the time, I got one of several hundred right. There are simply too many variables to account for, and most of the time, they're variables that you don't have any ability to control anyway - they're other people.

There was a major event in my life that was the ultimate failure of character...and that event lead me down a long journey to learn how I was supposed to act and treat people. And it was a journey in the opposite direction from which I had already been traveling.

I learned that people are going to do what people are going to do, and there is nothing you can do about it. I may offer a sensible word to them, that they may or may not consider on their path, and may or may not choose to heed. But in general you just have to accept that there is little you can do about the path that someone else's life is on, beyond setting an example and encouragement. As much as you might want to, you can't make anyone do anything. They have to be willing to submit to your direction.

This lesson taught me a lot about how to interact with other people. Once I figured out that they're going to do what they want regardless, I stopped worrying about what I did/didn't do to cause such deviation from the intended path. Once I could stop worrying about them, I started to focus on the deviations in my own life. All the things that are thrown at me, that some would consider problems, on a daily basis: money issues, health issues, social issues, and responsibility issues.

But the funny thing about those issues is that is all they are: issues. Like issues of a magazine that you can read at your leisure. Every kind of problem that you have in your life has come for a reason. Usually that reason will be due to poor decision making on someone's part - probably your's somewhere along the line. And they're generally nothing to get worked up about. Here's where it gets linked...

Because I know that the issue is probably my fault, I then look back on what could be the source of said problem, and find out what decision I made that was incorrect...take note of it...and don't make that same mistake in the future. Once I have found out what mistake it was, I realize that I have set my own kind of "fate"...I've chosen my own short-term destiny in this matter. Bad decisions will circle around, just as your sin will find you out. So I generally take time to reflect each evening before I go to bed. I reflect on what I did during the day, what I didn't do, what I should have done better, but also on what was said throughout the day to me and by me. Often times I find something incongruent with my intentions, and I do my best to rectify it then or as soon as possible.

Knowing that I am the cause of most of the issues I have in my life, I am ok with that - I can handle the problems that I cause (it's the problems that other people cause me that I tend to look at with a little more disdain)...and I take the problems at face value, or less. I know there is no good that can come from worrying about those problems to no end...and the sooner I can find a solution, then the sooner my problem will no longer be an issue in my life.

All my decision making, good and bad, is due to the fact that we have free will in our lives. We make the decisions that chart our life's map, and we bear the consequences good and bad along the way. God on the other hand already has a path charted out on your life's map that he would like for you to follow. It's marked in a bold red marker the correct path to take. But along that path there are dots on it that have a decision for you to make. It is then that things start to get crazy...

The ideal person would come to know Christ at an early age, and gain wisdom shortly after, to seek God's counsel in all their life decisions. But since that is not the case, and we are free-spirited and sinful people, we tend to want to do things our own way for a while to see how it goes. So we don't bother asking God for direction on this one decision, we say "I've got this one God *wink*, I'll get'cha on the next one." God then says "wtf? ....n00b." But lets you do it your own way because he has always known what took me so long to figure out - "you're gonna do what you're gonna do." And he has made it a point not to take over someone's life without them asking him into it.

So you make your decisions, and you get off track and lost in the decision tree...far off the main trunk of the path that God had for you. All the paths lead out to the same destination - the end...but it's the journey along the way that God had picked out for you. Some of the branches are shorter...some are longer. Some have grown into another. But the funny thing is...even though you're a "n00b @ life", God still loves you.

That was another lesson I had to learn. To love unconditionally. I wasn't ever sure what that was about until I figured out everything else first. It's a different kind of Love that he has for us. The kind that says "you know what...no matter what you do, I'll always be able to forgive you. Heck, I even sent my son to die for you, hoping you'd love me even just a little bit. Why would I ever say no?" So even if you're way off the right path that God had for you, because of some jacked up decisions you made in life, you can always say "HEY!!! HELP!! I bucked it up big time God...my bad, I'm sorry, please forgive me. Here I am, I'm done trying to do it my way, I'm in over my head, and I screwed up. I'm not gonna do anything, but seek your Word on what comes next."

So, this didn't turn out to be the kind of post I started out writing...but I think it ended up better. Just another one of those things that happens for a reason, I guess. Maybe someone will read this - maybe *you* (yeah, you reading this) needed to hear it. Maybe it'll help you. I know it helped me to write it. I hope it helps.

This is it!

2007-08-07T21:47:00.000-06:00

This is it!

The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
Galations 5:14

This is the entire purpose of my "campaign," if you will, against blind belief.

Everything that God has put in the Bible and spoken through men, has come out for one sole purpose. The best I could tell people was "God didn't just say it...there is a purpose for it."

Love your neighbor as yourself. It is simple to grasp...simple to explain...and that's exactly the kind of connection that needs to be made with those that can't quite grasp the larger things in life.

The Old Testament is filled with the do's and don'ts of the time. An effort by God to get his people to live right, treat others right, and glorify him in doing so. People fail at life without an example.

The New Testament is God's effort to give his people an example of how they should be living, how they should be treating others, and how to glorify him in doing so. People will be blessed in life if they follow His example.

For months now, possibly years, I have been trying to get people to look deeper into the words they were reading in the bible. If they read from the Old Testament, all they could see was what they were conditioned to see. It was either elaborate stories, or boring genealogy, or out-dated rules for how to live. But there is so much more to it than that.

The elaborate stories were accounts of a time that things seemed impossible, and God showed his people with a slap in the face of their simple thoughts, that nothing was impossible through Him. The boring genealogy is much more than that...it's a record of who is related to who, so you can follow the lineage of the family that eventually resulted in the birth of Jesus. If you read it all, and straight through, you realize that the Bible is not just a collection of stories...it's a family history - how one man and one woman gave rise to an entire nation that was their family. And during the development of that nation, they had specific rules and guidelines - not to control them, per se - but rather to help enable them to live a better life. Don't eat this (because it's bad for you)...don't do this (because it's bad for you)...don't live like this (because it's bad for you).

Why not eat the unclean animals? Well, because all the ones they listed have very little nutritional value as compared to the clean animals they listed.
Why not sleep with the mother of your sister? Well, because that will cause genetic defects in your family line - not to mention the moral, social, and spiritual ramifications against it.
Why should we honor our father and mother? Well, because listening to what they have to say, and doing what they tell you will actually keep you out of trouble - yeah, believe it? I didn't either until I got older and found out the purpose of everything I was raised doing turned out to help be a better employee and person in life.

Now that you've gone through the Old Testament to get your internal perspective in order...next comes the New Testament - where you take your perspective and shift it to other people.

As BinaryAngel wrote in her religion blog, Jesus spent his time walking around the streets. He didn't spend his time looking for miracles to do, but rather as he was going about his day, he saw needs and answered them, and then used that moment to bring a message to his followers.

Jesus is the example for how one takes their own life, and gives out of it to make the lives of others better. A kind word, a gentle touch, an uplifted spirit - sometimes that is all it takes to make someone live beyond their condition. If you take some time in your day to do something empowering to someone else, without required payment or expectation of any kind of return...not only will it bring hope to their life, but joy to yours.

Jesus spent all his time bringing new life, new hope, and new joy to everyone he met. He asked God what his next steps should be, and continually prayed for the needs of those around him. He loved his neighbor as himself, being God - he loved his neighbor as God loved them. When his time was done, he had lived a complete life - not complete in years, but in purpose...to show the people God's love.

What's your purpose here?

[[Neo]] 104

2007-08-07T19:39:00.000-06:00

It's an interesting thing really...the rain is.

It has so many connotations to be derived from it. In some sense it brings life, goodness, prosperity, cleansing. But in others it signifies death, the end, evil, darkness, and trouble ahead.

I prefer not to look at it as either situations, but rather at both - and not for my own life, but in the lives of others.

When I'm at home, work, school, in the car, wherever - and it starts to rain, I get excited. There is probably a psychological explanation for this - something along the lines of feeling protected from the elements by the things that are around me. But that's for me.

There is another kind of excitement I feel in the rain...it's when I take that feeling...that sense of protection...and I go for a walk in it. With my umbrella in hand, and cares left inside, I leave it all behind to take a stroll through the very thing that is the source of the paradoxical feeling it creates. Were it not to rain, I would not feel the protection of the umbrella.

I take a stroll through the very thing that, in some, invokes a sense of goodness, while in others a sense of darkness. I look to the rain, simultaneously thanking God for bringing it, and scoffing at the clouds for it's pathetic attempt to bring me down. The rain does not depress me - gray skies do not dissuade me from enjoying my day - claps of thunder and flashes of lightening only grab my attention with anticipation for what is to come.

I enjoy the rain for another reason though - there is a spiritual significance that the rain has. In life, when storms and rain befalls you - it always seems like there is no worse thing that can possibly be happening. But what always happens on the other side of the storm? There is always new life, rebirth, cleansing, and a promise from God that He will see you through what ever troubles lie ahead. In life, I do not worry about the piddly storms that pop up - I greet them with a "Hello. I will be with you shortly..." and continue on my way. I know that in time, all things will be solved in the manner they should be, and that there is always something better waiting on the other side of the storm for me.

The rain falls all around you, and your only protection from it is your umbrella. In the middle of your troubles, your only protection is to step back into God's plan for your life. If you find that you're in the middle of a storm that suddenly crept up on you, then it's probably because you stepped out from God's protection. You wouldn't be getting wet if you had stayed under the umbrella, now would you?

It is this kind of significance that draws me to take a walk with someone that I choose to get close to, through the rain. I want to see how they react to a little water splashing on them - a little trouble in their life. Do they go with the flow, or do they concern themselves with staying protected and dry? Will they freak out when a storm hits them, and break down; or do they calmly remember where the protection is they need, and change direction to help get them through the storm? Do they see the positive in life, or focus solely on the moment...on the negative?

It is for this reason I ask you..."would you like to take a walk?"

The Black Journal

May 21, 2011 & Oct 21, 2011 - a load of crap

Autumn: A Season of Change

A fairy tale beginning...

I Write Like Results

Faith like *whose* child...?

How I see it (part 4)

How I see it (part 3)

How I see it (part 2)

How I see it (part 1)

Say Hey!

Fear Not

Just some [vented] thoughts...

I need something to do...

Thoughts on [My] Religion and Politics

Professional or Expert/Guru/Genius?

This is [[Neo]] Live from The Pizzy...

Guns don't kill people, bullets do...

Pokin' around the code

Post-Valentine's Day update

Out on a limb...

A bitter aftertaste...

History in the making...

The Week in Review

The answer is in the code...

Some place to vent...

One song away from an ass whoopin'

What is it??

Porch Monkey

A little update

Week 1 - 10 days in...

A victory, a truth, and a change...

Political Workplace

On the way to work...

BAIL OUT!!!

Cubicles

And change, it did...

To be a team player, we have to be a team...

The Business of Business

Time for something new...

Corporate Environment 2.0

No Love and a LoveSac

Game Servers

[Mobile] We're IT! What are you thinking?!

It's been a bit...

User Support....pssh...f-that

Numb3rs & Lov3 (Pt. 3)

Numb3rs and Lov3 (Pt. 2)

Numb3rs and Lov3

Here fishy fishy

Sometimes, you can only do so much...

Time for a change

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This is it!

[[Neo]] 104

Faith like whose child...?