Thursday, September 27, 2007

Ladder-Climbing



This was pretty awesome. Happened just yesterday, too!

Warning: Includes one "that's what she said" remark, if you care about young ears hearing that.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Ready for The Office?

Starts this Thursday.

I'm actually not watching it then; the plan is to watch with Tyler sometime this weekend.

I'm psyched.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

So...

I didn't get the Differential Equations done for today. BUT as tomorrow goes, I only have left to read The Ball and the Cross for tomorrow's Literary Catholicism, I'm set up to study Modern Algebra (for Friday, no less!) tomorrow afternoon. So academically I'm looking forward to this being a more-than-mediocre week for math and a better-than-average week for the other subjects. So the ideal is that by the time classes start tomorrow I'll have read most or all of TBATC and will have done a little more work on Modern Algebra (that's right, I already started!)

This makes me happy, and by this I mean not feeling completely and utterly behind on everything academically. Next week's DiffEq starts on Friday. Thursday night if I'm feeling especially adventurous.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Two Monks

Dr. Gallegos told me a story once while we were in Morelia. I don't remember the exact context but I think he was trying to help me with some mental stupidity of my own doing that I was trying to get past. It's actually a Buddhist story, but I though (and I think still) that the principle illustrated is useful for Christian practice as well. Don't try and figure out why I'm posting about this; I've sort of wanted to for a long time.
Two Buddhist monks are walking alongside each other on a path through the country. One is younger, and one is quite old. As they walk they pass a beautiful woman.

A couple of hours later, the younger monk turns to the older. "Say, when we were back there, did you have any...thoughts about the woman that we saw?"

The older monk looks back at him, and replies, "Yes. But I left my thoughts back there, and you have obviously carried yours with you."
At the risk that I should misinterpret the story, I'll let it say what it says, independent of what it says to me.

I'll post something about the clubbing experience later tonight or tomorrow sometime.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Sketch

Going to FX tonight with Matthew and Stephanie. Plus a friend of each, and some friends of one of those friends. Apparently. A couple of friends of mine have each heard that it is "sketch." Another friend, Christopher Bonebrake, has actually been. He did not like it.

X is an under-21 club in Portland. It's sort of funny; I may have to wait until I am 21 till I can go someplace that satisfies my more conservative sensibilities as far as atmosphere and type of dancing involved (or even type of music involved.) Of course, none of this has been confirmed. I will have to see for myself just how "sketch" everything is.

Anticipating electronica/hip-hop mixture of some kind and a lot of dirty dancing. No, I will not take part in the dirty dancing. But if the groove is solid enough I may dance, period. For now, enjoy this video. It might look like it's going in a "sketch" direction. It isn't. It's just funny--and horrifying. It's the video for a song by a band called Pendulum called "Slam."



Any drum'n'bass band willing to pull this as their video has to have balls. Though a friend of mine pointed out to me that it may be a parody of another band's more serious video. Either way.

Also, 100% on my first Computer Science Exam. Hooray!

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Airships Involved

Nana got that song right, via e-mail. It's Jars of Clay's "Portrait of an Apology."

I finished my first book for a class, which was Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. I thoroughly enjoyed the book; its characterization was masterful and the story was told in a fun style, though I would very much hesitate to call it at all a "fun" story. I've got some less-fun reading to do this weekend, such as this guy named John Shea writing about spirituality and storytelling (what I've read of it isn't actually a bad book; I did a little reading before coming to school.) I also am starting to read Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross today. An airship is involved. Also, I have to do some math this weekend, or die, basically.

I really hope I get a guard-rail soon. I might just start sleeping on the loft anyway, as I'm sick of having this mattress on the floor and I sort of doubt I'm going to fall off of it. Plus, then I'd have room for this chair that apparently my parents have that I can have...or something like that.

I got to play some Smash Brothers last night, with my cousins and then with some college people. That was pretty fun. I plan on visiting with some people tonight and maybe playing Capture the Flag. If I do CTF, it's going to be one of those massive campus-wide events. I'm really not sure how badly I want to play CTF, especially in that massive format, and I think the answer might be "not as badly as I thought I might want to earlier."

Also, I'm going clubbing next weekend with some people. Hopefully there will be straight people and good music there, but the likelihood of getting both may be low, especially given that we're in the under-21 crowd. :/ Oh well. It'll be fun anyway.

Lastly, here's a
song I worked on before the start of the school year called "Something Ventured." Let me know what you guys think--constructive criticism is definitely welcome.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

I try to explain the way that the frame doesn't quite fit the edge

I had a conversation with a guy named Andy (who's the first-floor RA in Christie) earlier this weekend, and I'm still echoing the sentiment of that conversation between myself and him:

Me: "Do you ever think that God brings good things out of our idiocy?"
Andy: "More often than I'd like."

I'm going to try doing RCIA this year. While I do that I'll be reading A Biblical Defense of Catholicism. So yeah, you can feel free to spread the word that I may be going Catholic. If you hear I am, please think and pray long and hard before automatically coming and telling me not to. (Those who have cautioned me I trust done so in love and in only the best of intentions--and I'm thinking of cautioning as different from simply telling me not to.)

I'm at an interesting place in my life. It's...a weird place, to say the least. I'm thankful for good friends and for good company, and for those people who fall under both categories. Jars of Clay is really good music for times like these. My theology classes could not have been better-timed.

Don't expect to see too much more of the "blargrequeafd" label. I may have to pull it out at random just for fun.

If you can actually tell me what song I got the title of this post from, I can totally give you a point.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Guys, Guys

10 years ago it was 1997.

Holy crap, what's happening?

I don't even know how to file this. That's how bad it is.