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| To clarify, "Shekina" is an atypical song of Blindside. But a very good one. In any case, Swedish is a sweet language as well.
Retreat this weekend was good. I'm hoping to go through and relisten to the sermons from the comfort of my room rather than the sardinized seats of the chapel... Both more and less conducive to studying. There wasn't a whole lot that really struck me as new and amazing, but it was very solid and did bring up some new minor points for me to consider and some thoughts on controversial non-essential topics. Despite any negativity I may or may not be expressing, it was still good. The ride down was ridiculous and the ride back up sucked.
I have another job now. I'm officially a Modern Language Lab Consultant. I won't start any scheduled shifts until next semester, but I'm "approved" to fill in for people when they can't make it. Becky said she and Scott will be sending all kinds of German students to the lab next semester for required activities and that because of this the German consultants will be kept busy. Kind of nervous about it, but excited as well. Keeping the kitchen job as well.
Classes are classes. It seems I have some equilibrium of classes being bad and good etc. My Optics class is going much better now, but other classes have kind of slid off to compensate. I have a number of things I should complete this week, so we'll see how it goes. Only one exam (Electric Energy Systems) on Thursday and then two more next week. Should get my Spanish exam back tomorrow, which I'm worried about getting back, because of the extreme dissatisfaction with myself upon "completing" it. Not to mention this stupid project we have to do now. Oi. Be done with it this semester and can go back to simply enjoying Spanish again.
I sort of had the idea to write something meaningful regarding some topic or event or something, but nothing comes to mind at this point. Really, I should go to bed soon, so that's probably a good thing. In any case, I hope all is well with everyone. Au revoir,
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| So talking to Nauta last night I kind of decided to update this again here and there. The summer just got kind of hard to keep updating for whatever reason. Anyway.
Right now I'm listening to "Shekina" by Blindside, which is a sweet song. I wish that I could find a bunch of songs like this, but oh well. It also helps that half the song is in Swedish, which is an instant huge bonus to me. The best description I can think of for the song is if you mixed Enya and a slow song of a hard rock band. Which I spose is exactly what it is... but oh well. Something about Swedish though... still gets me every time.
Anywho. School is school. I'm busy. It's kind of a pain and I'm kind of looking forward to the end of the semester. Favourite class so far is probably Materials because it's difficult, but really interesting. Least favourite is probably Optical Sensing and Imaging because he's not been very clear about some things (ha... ha...) Been working like normal.
Going to do some inquiries for jobs coming up soon. I'd like to get my summer plans hammered out before Thanksgiving. I've got a few appealing paths to follow and explore...
Other than that... there's not a whole lot going on. More later I spose...
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| I'm not sure if my inability to keep this continually updated is a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, I said I would and have not been following through very well. On the other hand, the reason I haven't been doing it is that I haven't been on my computer in a fair time (by my standards at least). So I've proven that I'm not utterly addicted to "internetting." Or perhaps just that I was able to overcome the addiction. In any case, IRL is a real thing. Imagine that. /nerd
So work is going well, of course. I'm very happy with my choice. The offer I had for Philadelphia for a co-op was very tempting, but I'm really enjoying this and wouldn't trade it. In my life offline, I've managed to do a few things. My parents were gone camping in Indiana with my mom's family for an end of the week/weekend thing, so I had the house to myself. Ah, the peace and quiet. I finished up the electrical for my dad's "office" over the weekend and then went to the beach Sunday and out to Chinese afterwards. The next weekend I don't really remember for some reason... This past weekend my dad and I put in insulation and hung drywall in the office. I might throw some pictures up here when it's done, we'll see. I have them taken, but not on my computer yet.
The other thing this weekend that is actually somewhat embarrassing is that I had Nantar come out to help me take a look at my car. A while back my car stalled out one morning when I was leaving for work. I gave it a second chance before giving up. I drove one of our other cars (4 cars, 3 drivers is sort of ridiculous, but also nice, and besides, my bro is getting his license in the fall, so it's justified a bit) and had the day to test imagers at work which means that I get to do a lot of surfing. I emailed Morgan to see if he had any ideas, etc. I found a lot of similar things online. All in all, I took a good look into the problem. The only thing wrong was that I didn't take a good look into the car. Had I done this, I'd have seen what Nantar saw in about five seconds after I popped my hood for him to take a look at it. I successfully gave him directions he couldn't follow (they were too easy) so there was a fiasco to begin with. Then he says, "this hose should probably be attached." (The diagnosed problem was a 'vacuum leak'). Well, I had accurately defined the problem. We reattached it and she fired right up and stayed running. DOH! So, I felt pretty stupid. Still do, actually. We took a look at my window motor too and determined that it is ridiculous (which I had already figured out). So after 10 minutes of car repair, we were done. We went inside and talked and looked at pictures from his UP Adventure (it's always an adventure with Nantar) and Biloxi x2. He stayed for dinner and then headed home to work on his Jeep. I learned my lesson though. No worries there.
I did a lot of soldering today and have the prospects of doing a lot more tomorrow. Minus the fumes, I don't mind it too much. I'm getting a lot better at it. ::shrugs::
So my serious topic (cause my life really isn't very serious...despite any attempts I make to make it sound that way) is this:
Being at school is good for me. The real Good, not just a giggly, fuzzy good.
To further look at this, let's simply look at some key parts of the week here and there.
At school (last semester, for simplicity):
Sunday - church (which I almost always find helpful, encouraging,
enlightening or any such other positive word you like) and in the
evening, Vespers.
Monday - bible study with Scott and others
Tuesday - the Hizzy
Wednesday - bible study with Scott and others
Thursday - Hizzy dinner (despite my somewhat infrequent attendance) and racquetball with Hizzy peeps (heh)
Friday - Hockey (with Hizzy peeps) or probably something else with Hizzy peeps
Saturday - More hockey with Hizzy peeps or (once again) something else with Hizzy peeps
Sunday - rinse and repeat
At home:
Sunday - church (usually good, but some weeks leave something to be desired)
The rest of the week: crickets.
I guess I've already known this difference. But this weekend something made me realize it. It's ridiculous. And to avoid pointing around, I'm ridiculous. Or at least in doing this, I'm being ridiculous. So I'm going to make an attempt at fixing this ridiculosity of mine. I've finally noticed an open door I haven't been paying attention to, which I intend to enter. Now I've convinced myself to do something about it. Now I actually have to do it.
In addition to the things listed above, the less public half of that life reflects the same changes. Overall, I could use some prayers and encouragement. It's so easy when everything is new and you have nothing but a bible, a bag of clothes and an unfinished house. There's no reason many of those things don't carry over. I mean, I have an unfinished room, after all.  | | |
| So main update: My cleaning plan had a kink thrown in it. Or rather, something very large. A dumpster you might say. My parents had talked about it, but talk is cheap and I wasn't predicting anything until the end of the month at least. Nope. Two days later. So now we have a dumpster in our driveway that needs filling. Alas. That is what I've been doing. Lot's of crap out of the back. And most of it really is crap. The one good thing of this (other than the crap is gone) is that it frees up some room at the front of the room for my dad to have some space. And why not make this more complicated? So next week, I am beginning office construction in the last unfinished room in our house. Or at least part of it. That means I have lots of electrical stuff to run and drywall to put up. I'm actually looking forward to that part of it. But I have to clean first. So my stuff is down to all stuff that will be evaluated later, but is at a higher level than just "crap" or stuff I actually want to keep. I'm getting this all together and... putting it my room. Where I hope to proceed with the previously described plans as soon as the construction is done. Oh yeah, and our shed is being fixed up by a high school kid who is a friend of a friend.
There's a lot of random stuff going on here. In the meantime, I need to do some work with my car and I have another project that I'm hoping to spec and price out this weekend to start next Wednesday night and finish Saturday night (hopefully?)
Work is still going well. I drove the BMW last night with one of the guys from the Japanese part of the company. Not used to Asian accents, so that was a bit of a problem, but not a huge deal. I edited some of the alignment software today. Despite my lack of any C++ knowledge, I managed to find and fix a "bug" that had been bothering me for some time. I've been writing some stuff to replace the software they normally use, because I can't stand it and don't want to use theirs if I don't have to. Writing for yourself is a lot easier because it doesn't have to look nice. It's a nice little terminal app for grading capture files (?).
I had a topic to discuss... but I forget what it was, so I'll "save" it for next time. So that's all for now.
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| I suppose everyone has recovered from my last marathon post...
Work update: Still working. Turns out a lot of my camera assemblies had bubbles in the glue. I can't tell if that's my fault or if it's not something that can be helped much. They told me they used to have that problem a lot but had switched glues to try and fix it. Meh... they work well enough for what they're going to be used for. Paul and I took the BMW out for a spin to test the SmartBeam stuff. Paul's in Munich this week meeting with them and delivering new software (which includes the manual I wrote  ). They said it looked great and the Germans were really going to like it, since they've been asking for it for a few months. Wee. I wrote another manual, this time for building the mirror-computer communications boxes I built last week. I did some stuff for the GM people too... but it was more or less just importing RCD specs for them to start working on.
IRL update: Just been hanging out. The standard Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then last weekend I went to Nantar's and worked on the Honda and then we went and watched the off-road race which you can read about in his post here. As always, it was good and I spent the next few days washing my hands all the time.
Today I've been cleaning up a little around here. I had a bunch of stuff on the floor from coming home from school so I finally took care of that stuff. I have a little more to do either later today or tomorrow afternoon. This summer's goal is to do some significant decluttering, although I highly doubt I will get it all done. I'm hoping to at least get my room taken care of before moving on to the storage room. And rather than do it all in one shot, I'm just picking a few smaller things to take care of during the week and eventually I'll have everything done. (That's the plan... let me be)
So today's "topic" is going to be censorship. I started thinking about this at work one day and then the next day even more so while I was listening to the radio. So I was listening to the radio on the way home from work and that "crazy" Buckcherry song came on. I don't have strong feelings either way for this song. Then they started taking certain four and five letter words out and replacing them with stuff I found funny. Personally, these words don't bother me too much (for the most part), so I had a good laugh at the new insertions. Then I got to thinking... who decided to censor this song? Who decided these words were bad enough to be taken out? The song's content regardless of language is awful as well. The song is clearly about sex. There's no hiding it. And we're not talking bees and butterflies and the stork making deliveries across grassy knolls. I think that it's kind of ridiculous that someone is so concerned with censorship to take out a few words, but has no problem with the rest of the song. It made me realize that censorship doesn't seem to be about anything serious. It's just something people like to talk up to be "moral," without removing the actual immorality. Ok, so even if you give credit for language being immoral, there's still no point. Morality is supposed to be all about absolutes (or that's what I'm always hearing). So say we have an immoral whole. There are two immoral halves, correct? Say we remove one immoral half and replace it with butterflies. Let's look at the whole picture again. Moral or immoral?
I think this year made me really look at my life differently and now I look at the world differently with this new "standard." The unwillingness to try just seems that it negates any "accidental" accomplishment in areas such as this. Relating to the song: [Uncensored = bad], [Censored = bad], [Completely Removed = good]. I know I'm not perfect; I still have my flaws and whatnot, but I'm realizing it more and more and actually trying to do something about it. Is this directed at anyone in particular? No. It's the world I'm observing and seeing, once again, that there are two distinct camps. There's no running between them enjoying the better parts of both.
So, there's a smattering of thoughts for you to peruse. For or against censorship? I'd say against mandated censorship (because I don't think it can ever be complete), but for personal censorship. Mandated censorship doesn't help me. It gives me the illusion that now things are ok, when they really probably aren't. That Satan's a tricky one.
So, have a good week and praise God in all you do.
PS I just realized after rereading this that I've been home for exactly a month now... that's crazy. Time flies.
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