Sawblade's speeches

2010-06-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

Being prayed for by men of great faith.... it feels like a candle gets lit up in your heart for a moment.

2009-12-27T18:35:00.000-08:00

last night i attempted to drive home about 10 miles in some of the thickest fog i have ever seen, and really took for granted the ability to see where you are driving. Going down a dark road in pea soup fog.... after a long rainstorm.... going really slow... all of a sudden a giant splash from running into a deep puddle. Then turning, and feeling like you are driving in a dark swamp because you can't see the road at all in front of you, having to use a GPS to figure out where your turn is because you can't see the turn until it's too late.

After making it to my parents' (half-way there to my house) I had two jolts-awake from crashing into puddles I couldn't see until i was in 'em, and at that point just said screw it, i'll spend the night at my parents and go home when i can see again.

2009-12-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

Crazy december snowstorm. Could barely see my car after it was all said and done. Snow about up to my knees. Several hours worth of shoveling snow away from our driveway and my car. Adventure driving around the block right now.

Also heck of a time for my AC adapter on my cell phone to go dead - recharging it with a DC charger hooking it up to a jump starter.

2009-12-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

So a couple weeks ago, I was running up the steps to try to catch the SEPTA train at the train station, and saw the train pulling away as I ran up the steps. Today I had about as close a call as I could possibly have. I got to the train station about 4 minutes before the scheduled departure time for my train, and ran up the steps to try to catch it, but the train hadn't arrived yet. So I ran back downstairs to buy an all-day pass so I wouldn't have to pay the more expensive price buying the ticket on the train... then ran back upstairs. Again, the train had not yet arrived. One guy told me he thought the train was gonna be 10-15 min late so I ran down to the bathroom really quick. Couldn't go, and after about 30 seconds, decided to forget it and ran back up to the train platform - and as I was running out the door onto the platform, the conductor was getting onto the train.

If I had spent another 15-30 seconds in the bathroom, probably would have missed the train. Well except that the train ride was unnerving 'cause I felt like I had to pee while on the train. :p

2009-12-10T18:00:00.000-08:00

Ray Allen just had a layup slam dunk in the Celtics Wizards game. Sad, washington defense.... sad.

2009-12-09T17:52:00.001-08:00

Saw an ad for cheesesteaktees today: "Jesus hates the Cowboys." Amen. :)

2009-12-08T16:03:00.000-08:00

Route 141 is evil. In the past week, I have had a construction flagger jump out with a stop sign, forcing me and other drivers to slam on our brakes almost causing a big accident, then later on, my car slid on the road when it wasn't cold enough to be icy.... then today there was a 3 mile backup on the freeway section heading towards I-95. The 8-mile or so detour to get to work, back-tracking to Kirkwood Highway, around route 7, and back up Churchmans road - well traffic there too.

In fact - traffic in general is evil.

2009-12-07T17:30:00.001-08:00

Welcome back to Philly, Allen Iverson. Maybe the Sixers can go .500 this year now.

2009-12-06T16:23:00.001-08:00

Highway construction where there is no shoulder available is evil. Even more evil - having 'exit only' signs in red instead of yellow.

2009-12-04T20:46:00.001-08:00

I am really hoping for a change in my driving karma. Yesterday I was driving to work in a construction zone, and a flagger jumped out of nowhere with a stop sign when I was a few hundred feet away from me (with sun glare in my face too) forcing me to slam on my brakes, and then the guy behind me slamming on his and swerving into the middle of the road to not hit me. Essentially causing a big jam for a minute and a near mega collision. Thanks flagger. Then I got dizzy driving to lunch that day. Then on the way home - my car slid on something at the Kirkwood Highway exit (not sure why, it wasn't cold enough to be icy). Then this morning I was driving to work and a dog ran into the road right in front of me - again, slamming on the brakes.

Ironically it's supposed to snow tomorrow. Crap.

2009-12-02T19:44:00.000-08:00

I wish I had telekinetic powers.

2009-11-30T17:25:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago, I tried to take Septa up to Philadelphia and saw the train leave the station as I was running up the steps. Today was another one of those trips and fortunately did not end up as one of those 'missed it by that much' moments. Today I came into the train station and saw that it was 'all aboard' so I ran up the steps to get to the train (without a ticket) and saw the train hadn't yet arrived so I ran down to the ticket counter to buy an all day pass... and when I ran back up the train still hadn't arrived (it was a few minutes late). I guess the train was making up for last time - leaving early :p

2009-11-28T19:12:00.000-08:00

I had one of those "Murphys Law" days with Philadelphia public transportation. Took the SEPTA from wilmington to center city, planning on getting off at Market East Station - except the train shut down at the stop before Market east. No worries... I just got off and started to walk towards Market East... I got out my GPS to figure out which way to go towards the station - then the GPS died on me. Heck of a time too... well at least I had a backup of the intersection to go to in my cellphone so I could figure out the numeric street to head towards.

Then on the way home I took a greyhound bus - and the driver pulled over on I-95 so he could use the restroom on the bus. Eight miles or so short of Wilmington. LOL

2009-01-12T20:27:00.000-08:00

So, as my 6-year old laptop which I've had since the start of college is on its last legs, I recently purchased a Sony VAIO CS110E/R from Best Buy as my next laptop. Already I can see that Vista appears to be one huge scam by the money guzzler that is Microsoft. The computer did not come with a Vista operating CD, so if the hard drive ever crashed or got infected with a really malicious virus - or at least one I can't get rid of, like I have on my current pc, then there would be no way to reinitialize and reinstall everything other than going out and buying Vista separately. Arr......

There is 'supposed' to be a feature on Vista called 'Complete PC Backup' - but it's not available in Vista Home edition, which is what this computer has. In order to get this feature on the pc you have to have Vista Business or Vista Ultimate.

Gotta love Microsoft.

2008-11-08T10:34:00.001-08:00

So, last week was pretty amazing. After a 25 year championship drought, a major Philadelphia team finally won a championship title (yeah Phillies!) in very bizarre fashion - with the first ever rain-suspended game in World Series history. Congratulations to Cole Hamels and the Phillies on a phenomenal season. Chase Utley will now be able to afford enough soap to wash out his mouth. :P

Now let's see if the Birds can follow suit!

2008-02-18T06:32:00.001-08:00

So at a coffee shop in Philly, a guy got a large hot chocolate. It seemed to be the same size as a small, just put in a tall thin cup rather than a wide short mug. I guess the small vs large just refers to the price! :P

I made the joke about the hot chocolate, "That's not chest-bump worthy!" Although it seemed to just go over everyone's head. :( (If you don't get it either, reference Jon Runyan when he got a large!)

2008-02-03T21:24:00.000-08:00

If it were any other team in the AFC other than the Patriots... I would have rooted against the Giants. If the Patriots had lost a few games during the season, and were playing tonight, I may have been rooting against the Giants. But tonight, I was a Giants fan, as ridiculous as that sounds. And they came through. They pulled out one of the biggest upsets in the history of the NFL.
And Eli Manning cemented his place in history tonight as the man who put together the drive to beat the "perfect" team. (Well, formerly perfect) It's a little tough to swallow seeing the Giants win the Super Bowl but it was a lot easier to see them win it than to see Belichick and Brady make history to have the greatest record ever. (Can't say I'm going to shed any tears over them not being 19-0!)

1972 Dolphins, you may rejoice now. You are still the only perfect team for a season.

2007-12-31T20:24:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, wishes for a happy new year. I will be leaving the 434 area code (meaning that my cellphone # is changing). If you didn't get the email with the new number, and want it, then send me an email (or if you don't have my email, leave a comment!)

2007-12-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

I saw this on a forum: (http://community.comcast.net/comcastportal/board/message?board.id=TheCoffeeShop&message.id=201158)

Men are just happier people, what do you expect from such simple creatures,

1. Your last name stay's put

2. The garage is always yours

3. Chocolate is just a snack

4. You can be President

5. You will never be pregnant

6. You can wear a white t-shirt to a water park

7. You can wear NO t-shirt to a water park

8. Wrinkles add character

9. The occasional well-rendered belch is practically expected

10. New shoes don't cut, blister or mangle your feet

11. One mood all the time

12. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds

13. A five day vacation requires only one suitcase

14. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness

15. If someone forgets to invite you he/she can still be your friend

17. Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack

18. Three pair of shoes are more than enough

19. You are unable to see wrinkles in your cloths

20. Everthing on your face stays its original color

21. The same hair style last years maybe decades

22. You can play with toys all your life

23. One wallet and one pair of shoes--one color for all seasons

24. You can do your nails with a pocket knife

25. You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on Dec 24 in 25 Min.

Hahaha, if only it were true. (Well, some of what's listed is true... like #1, 5, 10, 18)

2007-12-01T19:37:00.000-08:00

Remind me never to post about that other team again.

2007-11-30T16:46:00.001-08:00

I will be rooting for a different 'Eagles' this weekend.... go BC!!

2007-11-21T21:34:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Hope that UVA can make it a happy thanksgiving as well by carving up some Gobblers this weekend. If you get my drift.

2007-10-31T15:31:00.000-07:00

Today we had a Halloween party at work. I dressed up as Kid Rock. (So no one can blackmail me for this picture later on, you can get all your laughing out now! :P)

2007-10-28T10:04:00.001-07:00

It was a nice day to be in Philadelphia for a 5K walk (it was a diabetes fundraiser event) .... very few clouds in the sky and a great turnout at the art museum! And the walk started with the Rocky music! :)

Note to self: next time going to Philadelphia, figure out in advance how to get out of the city!

2007-10-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

It's nice that the east coast has been getting some rain over the past few days, but this is scary:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,305578,00.html

2007-10-26T19:30:00.001-07:00

So I noticed under the relationships part of Facebook just now that they have an option called "Looking for.... networking." Uh.... if you're gonna put that in there you might as well have a free text box so you can type in what you're looking for.

Some freeform text options:
Looking for - you!
Looking for - someone to laugh with about how ridiculous Facebook has become!
Looking for - more sleep! (No, you're not invited to join!)

2007-10-24T15:03:00.001-07:00

The Bible verse of the day on Facebook today is from Proverbs 18:6: "A fool's lips bring him strife, and his mouth invites a beating."

I think certain NFL football players out there should really take this verse to heart before the games. :P

2007-10-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

Sawatdee!

So it looks like the Red Sox have done it again! Overcoming a major deficit in the LCS and coming back to make it to the World Series. I guess this time around, Dice-K proved that he belongs in a Boston uniform for clutch games!

Maybe with all that layoff, it'll cool off the Rockies. (I hear they had snow out there.)

2007-10-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

Usually when I'm talking to another other person, the other person is the chatterbox. When I have to take on the chatterbox role, weird things happen.

Also, hot green tea latte's taste really interesting. (Although I still think the bottled green tea w/honey tastes better.)

2007-10-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

I used to complain that I never had anything to do at work. Now I feel like I do the work of 3 men. I guess you get what you ask for, sort of! Maybe one of these days it'll moderate out and I'll actually do the work of 1 to 1 1/2 men?

2007-10-06T11:56:00.001-07:00

Mmm... "taquitos" are rapidly becoming one of my food favorites.

2007-09-30T18:59:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Tom Glavine for giving up 7 runs in the first inning. Thank you, Jamie Moyer for having a clutch pitching performance for 5 1/3 innings. Thank you, Jimmy Rollins for stealing 2nd/3rd base in the 1st inning and scoring on a sacrifice fly. Thank you, Ryan Howard for another brilliant home run.

What does all this mean? The Phillies are going to the playoffs!!! :-)

2007-09-23T17:37:00.000-07:00

Wearing the retro "Swedish" light blue and yellow football uniforms, the Eagles found their offensive stride today against the Lions. Personally I think the color combination is difficult to look at, but if you can put up 56 points, I'd say keep wearing them!

2007-09-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

The Eagles' offense was so anemic tonight, you would think they drafted a bunch of players out of Notre Dame! It was so pathetic, the Phillies outscored them tonight!

2007-09-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

The Eagles' offense and special teams units were absolutely pathetic today. I give them both a D- for the game. (The reason special teams is not an F is because Akers hit two field goals and Rocca did ok). That game against Green Bay was absolutely pathetic. Greg Lewis muffs a punt and is recovered by Green Bay for a touchdown in the end zone, two receivers run into each other on another attempted catch at a punt, and when Green Bay punted with a minute left in the game, once again the ball was dropped, with Green Bay recovering, almost not having to move for Green Bay to score the game winning field goal.

Green Bay scored zero offensive touchdowns. Green Bay's special teams essentially scored 10 points, and the Eagles offense gave them another 3 points on the McNabb interception at the beginning of the game, putting Green Bay in field goal range (which the Eagles defense actually made them lose a yard and Green Bay still scored a field goal!) And the Eagles offense was anemic as well. How do you get the ball at the Green Bay 40 yard line, and lose 12 yards??

Get rid of the Eagles' special teams, especially Greg Lewis. Bring back Jeremy Bloom! There is no excuse for losing a game where the defense essentially gives up 3 points!

2007-09-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

The University of Michigan got slaughtered in Ann Arbor today by the University of Oregon. Adding to a historic losing streak. With such high expectations pre-season. I have to say that so far this team is a disgrace to the school colors of blue and yellow. (Referring to UD)

2007-09-03T20:50:00.001-07:00

When reading through the book of Romans, I came across several chapters (chapters 8-10) that talk about the doctrine of predestination (essentially the idea that God chose the "elect" to be saved in advance). I wasn't even aware that this was a biblical doctrine, but my first thoughts when reading this, is that this is probably the most depressing doctrine I've ever heard of. Now the core of Christianity is that we are all sinners by nature, have fallen short of God's perfect standards and therefore need Christ as our savior. And I was taught that if you believe in Christ as your savior, He will save you.

But this idea of predestination seems like it undermines all of that, that it's God's pre-decided choice whether you will be "elect" or not. I began researching what people thought about this, figuring (and hoping) I misunderstood what Paul was saying. This ultimately led me to study the doctrine of Calvinism.

I suppose a major point of Calvinism is Christ provided and completed salvation for the "elect" that God chose and only those people (the idea of a "limited atonement"), whereas in Arminianism, they believe that Christ died for all humanity's sins, but we choose to accept Christ's sacrifice.

A puzzle suggested by John Owen regarding the "limited atonement" of Christ:
from http://www.reformed.org/documents/Owen_limited.html

'The Father imposed His wrath due unto, and the Son underwent punishment for, either:
1. All the sins of all men.
2. All the sins of some men, or
3. Some of the sins of all men.
In which case it may be said:
1. That if the last be true, all men have some sins to answer for, and so, none are saved.
2. That if the second be true, then Christ, in their stead suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the whole world, and this is the truth.
3. But if the first be the case, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins?
You answer, "Because of unbelief."
I ask, Is this unbelief a sin, or is it not? If it be, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or He did not. If He did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which He died? If He did not, He did not die for all their sins!"'

Certainly seems like a logical puzzle to suggest that Christ's death is only for the "elect" that God chose. But is the puzzle itself logical? I think there is a fallacy in his conclusion.

Christ came teaching a message of repentance. He said if we don't repent then we will perish (Luke 13:5). If unbelief is a sin, then it is unrepentant sin, and therefore unbelievers in Christ's eyes are doomed to perish. So I don't find that Owen's puzzle proves the idea of "Limited Atonement" in terms of some immutable pre-destined "elect" list.

The flip side of the coin to the argument is that Jesus died for all men, but the atonement can only apply to those who will believe. After all, Jesus said in John 3:16 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (I suppose this sounds more Arminian... we choose to be saved by Christ)
A refutation to this "Arminian" conclusion is that it makes it sound like Jesus "failed" at his mission to save, if He died for everyone but only some are saved This makes no sense to the Calvinist because it denies the absolute power and sovereignty of God.

So what did Jesus do? Did He die just for the "elect" and complete their salvation? Did He die for everyone to have a "chance" at salvation and leave the choice to us?

Right now I see it as the latter. For those that would object in saying that Jesus somehow "failed", I would refer these people to Mark 6:1-6, where Jesus went to his hometown and was unable to do mighty works there due to man's lack of faith. Maybe I'm just making this argument because I can't wrap my head around this "predestination" idea that Paul talks about, but I feel like the whole "limited atonement" idea just doesn't make sense to me. If Jesus just came to save a pre-chosen elect, then everything He taught on the commandments of God, repentance, faith, love, obedience, morality... seems like His teachings would be all in vain anyway!

2007-08-25T17:10:00.001-07:00

My brother and I went to see Rush Hour 3 today. My digestive system was giving me fits for a good chunk of the movie, but once it finally calmed down I started laughing with the rest of the people in the theater. It was quite hilarious. If you've seen it, then it's certainly inspiring to French cab drivers everywhere who desire to become American spies! :P

2007-08-24T18:05:00.001-07:00

ABC news is reporting today on the personal letters of Mother Teresa, where she expresses doubts about God and faith. Obviously, the reactions to her letters have proven controversial.

From http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3521905&page=1

"But while the faithful see her struggle as inspirational, some atheists are taking it as confirmation of their own rational doubts and proof that the faithless can display enormous benevolence.
'Of course nonbelievers all over the world display compassion,' said Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "She was forced to go through the motions and admitted her own hypocrisy.""

Mother Teresa was still a human who has doubts like the rest of us. Even Jesus said on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" -Matthew 27:46. If Jesus himself could feel forsaken by God amidst terrible circumstances, how is it that we can believe that His followers wouldn't feel doubt during times of great suffering? It would be nice if amidst suffering, God would come and say to us as he said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you" so that we would have confidence He cares for us and hasn't abandoned us.

If having doubts about God = hypocrisy, then let me be the first to admit to being a hypocrite.

2007-08-21T15:46:00.001-07:00

In a very bizarre move the Eagles released Jeremiah Trotter today. I don't agree with the move at all, but I'm not managing the team so it's really not my call. I hope the Eagles know what they're doing ... you never want to see anyone go who has as much passion for playing as Trotter.

We'll miss ya, axe man.

(Photo taken by George Widman, AP)

2007-08-19T10:03:00.001-07:00

At church this morning, Anne, the associate pastor at Westminster, gave a sermon on "How to run a marathon". Ok, well not a literal marathon. She began by asking the congregation how many had actually run a marathon before. I don't think a single hand went up. Then, how about a half marathon? Still nothing. A 10K? A few hands went up, including myself. A 5K? A few more hands. She then commented that once she tried to train for a race but ended up getting shin splints.... so much for her "running career". Ironically she said that our lead pastor, Greg, would be better for this sermon, as he actually has run them before!
When listening to this, all I could think of was Brian Lee, when he mentioned to us a week ago that he was training for a marathon. Wow. Especially given the criteria that one must pass in a regular marathon to be eligible for the Boston Marathon!
Obviously, the church's goal isn't to train us on physical fitness (or at least not the primary goal). The "marathon" or "race" concept was a metaphor described in Hebrews 11 and 12, stressing the necessity for Christians to run the race of faith with perseverance, with knowledge that those of times past who have successfully run the race are on the sidelines cheering us on every step of the way. And of course, stressing the importance on keeping focus through this race that Jesus is the pioneer and perfecter of faith, as well as the prize for completing the race successfully.
I hope that we can find a way to keep ourselves more focused on Jesus as we go through this journey called life. It's so easy to be focused on the trials and trifles of everyday life (I am certainly guilty of this on a regular basis!) rather than the things that God asks of us.

2007-08-15T18:51:00.000-07:00

My brother and I have decided on an apartment that's within walking distance of where he works. Hopefully within the next few days we'll get to sign a lease for it.

Well, here goes nothing!

2007-08-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

I didn't know testing software had a sense of humor... I was running a script today and the testing software gave me a popup that said "Catastrophic failure"!

2007-08-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

I-95 sucks. It took almost 2 hours to get from the blue route (I-476) to the Naamans Road exit thanks to their lovely construction project. (We're talking a stretch of like 6-7 miles!)

2007-08-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

The best thing about Friday is that you know you don't have to get up early the next morning.

2007-07-26T15:56:00.001-07:00

I have to say, it is difficult to be trained for a new job when there is no one else at the site who knows what to do. There's only so much you can learn from trying to communicate with offshore teammates, and reading technical documentation ... some of which is outdated. I guess we really take for granted being able to shadow someone and ask people questions. Although I guess I realize why the company wants someone on-site to do the job!

(This is why it's important to go to class when you're in college because it's usually easier to learn, or at least remember more important facts, from the professor, than it is to learn from the textbook!)

2007-07-25T20:15:00.001-07:00

Now we've got these crazy one-liners from our presidential candidate Joe Biden to Dennis Kuchinich: "I don't like a damn thing about him... Dennis, the thing I like the most about you is your wife!"

To be fair... let it be known that the great state of Delaware welcomes the male out-of-staters as well!

(Remember the great incentive to come visit... tax free shopping! Just avoid I-95 or you'll get caught in construction!)

2007-07-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

I saw a joke last night saying that the number "666" may be bad, but 25.806975801127880315188420605149 is the root of all evil! (This number is the square root of 666)

I was mentioning this to my coworkers today, and one of the other guys there wrote up (or remembered) a joke proving that women are evil....

'We know that women take a lot of time and money.... therefore
Women = time * money
And we know that time is money, so Women = money^2
And money is the root of all evil, so sqrt(evil) = money
Therefore evil = money^2
Therefore Women = evil!'

I corrected him, because the error in the proof is that the "love of money" is the root of all evil!

Therefore sqrt(evil) = love of money
Therefore evil = (love of)^2 * money^2
Therefore (love of)^2 Women = evil.

Therefore the love of 2 women is evil. The correct interpretation is that polygamy is evil!

2007-07-22T16:44:00.000-07:00

So.... after attempts at training to run a 5K again and not being able to run past mile 2, I decided to be a "walker" yesterday in the "Summer Blood Challenge 2007" 5K at Frawley Stadium with my dad. I found out yesterday that even if my body is really screwed up, my competitive spirit still loves to come out. I ended up powerwalking the last two miles, and caught up with some of the runners by the end! LOL. (I believe my walking time was around 42:15 for the route)

But hey, it's for a good cause. By the way, I'm pretty sore today. :-)

2007-07-22T14:53:00.000-07:00

The Yankees have scored 45 runs in the past two days. Hopefully they got that out of their system. :P

2007-07-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

The shortest distance between two points

Your high school geometry teacher: a straight line.

A geologist: a curved line.

An astronomer: it depends on the overall shape of the universe.

A mathematician of Real Analysis: Between any two distinct points in R, there is a non-empty open set. There is no non-empty smallest open set in R, therefore there is no shortest distance between two points.

An American football player: Two yards, that's the length you have to go to get a two-point conversion!

A snail: a really really really ridiculously long time.

Zoolander: a really really really ridiculously short distance! And a ridiculously good looking distance too!

Men who refuse to ask for directions: the distance increases indefinitely until they finally ask for directions or run out of gas.

The bowler: 60 feet. (And that's if you have bad aim.)

The paper boy delivering papers through the rain: would like to know the answer very much.

Someone trying to drive on I-95 around Philadelphia: see the snail's answer!

2007-07-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

Well I guess my post earlier today jinxed the Phillies. How fitting that for the 10000th loss, their opponent scores 10 runs. Not to mention 15 hits, for the loss occurring on the 15th.

Had Michael Bourn not started a small rally in the 9th the Phillies would have had 7 hits (for July 2007). Oh well, guess numerology can't win 'em all. Also ironic that the game ended by Ryan Howard, the reigning NL MVP, striking out ("K") for the team to reach the 10K loss mark!

2007-07-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

Going to the Phillies game on Friday night, the crowd was sold out in anticipation of the Phillies becoming the first pro sports franchise to reach 10,000 losses. Pretty exciting, huh? Rooting for a loss to see part of history? Kind of like a few years ago when Randy Johnson was still with the Diamondbacks, and he pitched a perfect game against the Braves in Atlanta? Well, maybe slightly more historic than that.

Well, history was not to be made on that Friday the 13th. (Yes, sports commentators were talking about how ironic it would be if this milestone happened on Friday the 13th). Granted, history will likely be made for this franchise within the next few days. The game was pretty amazing though... the Phillies came out with their biggest offensive explosion of the season (23 hits!) This occurred amidst various signs/banners from fans, for/against the 10,000th loss. One banner read "7 Stadiums, 52 managers, 2150 players, 10000 loses" [sic] Not sure if that was a reflection of the fan's poor spelling ability or a reflection of the terrible management of this team over the last 24 years or so.

Although, the box score on this night indeed had some interesting characteristics to occur on 7/13/07. Note that every number in the date is a prime number... as was the number of runs and hits for both teams. (3 runs, 7 hits for STL, 13 runs and 23 hits for the Phillies). Not only that, but the number of runs scored in each inning by each team (if runs were scored) was also either prime or 1, as was the sum of the runs scored for both teams per inning:

St. Louis	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	1		3	7	4
Philadelphia	5	1	1	2	0	0	2	2	X		13	23	1

Shame that St. Louis made 4 errors instead of 3.

There was one major amount of bad luck on this Friday 13th.... Construction. How in the world do you justify reducing a major highway (I-95) down to one lane of traffic when tens of thousands are leaving a ballpark!!! I had 1/3 tank of gas when heading to the game, and just barely didn't run out of gas trying to get home because of being in traffic for 4 1/2 hours!!! (combined both ways) I got out of the ballpark before most of the crowd.... I hate to think how long they must have been caught in traffic!

The Phillies also had a convincing 10-4 victory yesterday over STL (on the 14th, ironically!). I imagine no one on the team wants the privilege of taking that 10,000th loss in team history.... who knows, maybe they'll go on an 80 game winning streak and win the world series! Hey, one can dream, right? (I think the city would forgive the 10000th loss if we could win a world series this year.)

It is amazing though at the amount of press swirls around the anticipation of the 10000th loss though. Sure, no other team has ever done it, but the numbers are inflated because it's baseball! They play a 162 game season... typically the best team in the league has roughly 100 wins/60 losses in a season, but in basketball with an 82 game season, if you lose 60 games you're probably the worst (or at least in the bottom 3) teams in the league. Hockey, pretty much the same deal. (The Flyers were an embarrassment this year and they only had 48 losses) Football, you only play 16 games. I rest my case.

How ironic that the next team likely to accomplish such a feat of 10,000 losses is the Atlanta Braves, the thorn in the side of this division throughout the '90s and the first half of this decade.

Let's see how Adam Eaton does tonight against STL.

2007-07-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

Having a Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday is like having 2 mini-weeks in one with a one-day vacation. If we were to have a four day work week I think that would be the ideal.

So why am I so sleepy? :P

2007-06-11T18:26:00.001-07:00

Congrats to Rafael Nadal on his 3rd French Open. While I'm not crazy about him being 21-0 at the French, he is currently the only man who can challenge Federer. So hopefully Federer loses at one of the other major tennis tourneys, then maybe I can root for someone else at the French.

2007-06-10T16:46:00.002-07:00

I bought one of these things over the weekend:

While they certainly may not get you out of life's jams like they do on the commercials, they are fun to play with. "That was easy!"

2007-06-03T09:35:00.001-07:00

Over the past week I have spent a lot of time working on my video game. For those of you who don't know, I have been trying to develop a computer game using OpenGL in the style of a game called "Super Ships" that I had for the Mac as a kid.
"Super Ships" was a game where you had a collection of 2-D starships that you could choose from, and place up to eight of them (I think) into deep space, and have them battle against each other. You could pit teams of ships against other ships (useful if you were battling more powerful ships). The part of the game which I enjoyed the most was the section of galactic takeover... where you would start off in control of one or more planets, as did the CPU. For each planet that you controlled, you would build up defense drones and star fleets, and then travel to neighboring planets in hopes of conquering all of the planets in the star system before the CPU did.
After my Mac got worn down, I never could find a PC equivalent version to this game, so recently I figured I might as well try to develop an equivalent game myself.

In the process of attempting to develop this game, I've learned several lessons along the way:

1) I've realized the necessity of having a clearly defined structure to the game coding prior to just coding away. It seems that with each enhancement to the game that I make, it affects many different areas of the program, despite my best efforts to modularize and encapsulate the different components to the program. (In relation to my job, it really makes you appreciate the importance of a "Functional Requirements Document" when developers are designing large scale business software!)

2) The necessity of deciding on setting limits on certain game parameters. Currently, I've gotten to the point where you can design ships in a ship editor, choose a subset of them to be placed in a battle scene, and a rudimentary algorithm to make enemy ships battle against one another.
Several areas where the parameters currently need to be limited are:
a) Ship velocity. Ships are undergoing continuous deceleration/re-acceleration in the battle scene as they attempt to aim towards enemy ships, and in the process the velocity gets so fast that they bounce off the wall so much you can barely tell where they are going!
b) Number of weapons. I developed a ship which looks kind of like a poor excuse for one of those Borg Cubes from Star Trek... and could set it to it could fire like 30 weapons at once! (Pretty much a single shot from that ship and you're toast.)

3) Awareness of what key strokes are supported by an interface. I anticipated on using the arrow keys to control ships and spacebar to fire a weapon, but my library doesn't seem to support these keys for some reason! (Well if I can find a library that will support these key strokes it will be very easy to fix... hooray modularity!)

4) The need for a degree of randomness in a game like this. I was showing the progress that I had made to one of my co-workers, and he made the point, "Well, are these exact events going to occur every time? The outcome will be exactly the same every time then!" Good point... need to implement some random actions.

Live and learn.

2007-05-27T14:23:00.001-07:00

I traveled down to Charlottesville last Saturday for the Wesley baccalaureate and graduation for the class of 2007. I arrived in Charlottesville around 3 PM, several hours prior to the Wesley dinner for all the graduates... headed to the Foundation and saw Joel, Jimbo, David L. and Meg preparing the meal. I ended up suckering myself into helping out with preparing and serving the meal for the graduates :P But it was nice to see everyone again, being able to see many of my old "Wahoo" friends one last time before they took the infamous walk down the lawn. Oh, so many memories of C'ville all came back... the Thursday night dinners at Wesley, listening to Jimbo's infamous sarcasm, memories of the Wesley Community, the Little John's "second dinners" in the middle of the night, and of course Crossroads. Perhaps life does tend to become fairly routine after graduation, and one forgets the incredible diversity of activities that go on when you're at college.

This class is the largest graduating class from Wesley in quite some time (evidenced by the short-handedness of the servers at the graduation dinner). It was said at the baccalaureate service that the Foundation will go on even after this class leaves... although personally I think it will take some time to "recuperate", because this graduating class has meant so much to the Foundation. Especially Geoff, Aaron, and Alex, my roommates and/or good friends during my 3rd & 4th years, were incredible leaders to the Foundation, organizing so many activities that brought us all together (movie nights, football games, Super Bowl parties, IM sports, worship activities, and more)... they will surely be missed around C'Ville. [Well, technically Alex may not be leaving C'Ville :-) ] Certainly I doubt that C'Ville or the Foundation will ever be the same for me, as the majority of my close friends at college were from this graduating class.

Plans for the future for some are still up in the air, while others seem to be pretty well planned out. Alex is planning on working for an engineering/construction company in C'Ville, Leigha is planning on doing some traveling for a while, and Ashlee has jumped back on the pre-med bandwagon. (Wow.)

John Grisham, the speaker at graduation on the lawn, had an several important message for the graduates which I think speak to many of us: you can't plan your future. (Along with telling us that it's up to our generation to save the environment) There were certainly more memorable parts of Grisham's speech, such as his statistics that out of the 6000 or so graduating, 42 of the graduates will be giving speeches at other ceremonies... without any particular demographic breakdown to the 42. But for success, he said, there were three things necessary: talent, perseverance, and luck. I certainly wish all the graduates the best as they move on with the next phase of their lives. Wahoo-wa!

2007-05-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

"It's nice to know that now there are two people in the family with college degrees." - my parents

(I corrected them; they have college degrees as well so actually there are four)

My family and I went down to Houston this weekend for my brother's graduation from University of Houston. The ceremony was very nice, taking place in U of H's basketball stadium. The student speakers at the ceremony gave some very nice speeches, although one of the speakers was trying very hard to be overly eloquent, and as a result I noticed that he used the word "irrevelant" [sic].

About 1000 degrees were handed out by department in "reverse alphabetical order" at the liberal arts ceremony which my brother was part of (sorry, Anthro majors!) My brother was a history major so he was kind of in the middle of the pack. After the ceremony we all met outside the basketball stadium and took pic after pic of the special occasion, with the new graduate of the family. :-)

My stomach was being very difficult in Texas, but overall we had a pretty nice time. We visited an arboretum, where I attempted to give my parents a crash course in some useful French phrases; they are taking a trip with the church choir to France in a couple weeks. (I'm surprised I actually remember any French, granted it's not very much that I remember!) We also visited the apartment my brother has lived in for the past several months (and in the meantime, scoping out what he would need to transport out of the apartment!) It may be the last time our family ever gets down to the great state of Texas, as my brother is planning on coming back up north, actually further north than us! (Taking up a job in either New Hampshire or New York). Granted, with all the highways that you have to go on traveling through the great state of Texas, moving away from it may not necessarily be a bad thing.

2007-04-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

OpenGL may be primitive in graphical standards but you sure can create some neat stuff with it!

2007-04-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

The smoke finally begins to clear after the terrible events of a week ago. You never really know what to say when such a horrible thing occurs. Every day on the news you see a further investigation into the crime scene and the mind of Cho. I pondered making a post a few days ago, thinking of praising how everyone (including UVA students) have come together, putting all differences aside, to show support for the entire Tech family. But I couldn't convince myself to make that post... it's wonderful how people have come together in support, but I felt that by just focusing on the "positive spin" you minimize or trivialize what has occurred.

I just pray that God comforts everyone who has been affected... the survivors, the families of the students killed, and Cho's family. Hopefully those who were lost are now in a better place.

On a Christian radio station, I heard a pastor being interviewed, and someone asked how a loving God could let something like this happen. The response from the pastor was that God allows us to make our own choices, people tend forget that there is also a "Devil" out there. Maybe we all tend to forget from time to time what forces are truly at work in our lives. I pray that we all learn to obey good and resist evil.

2007-04-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

As someone who works a lot with time zone validations for financial software, I find this odd:

"Please note that the town of Greenwich does NOT follow Greenwich Mean Time during summer."
Current time zone offset: UTC/GMT +1 hour

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=769

FYI, having explained this to many people.... Eastern Standard Time is GMT -5; Eastern Daylight Time is GMT -4.

2007-04-14T20:56:00.000-07:00

In the end, the only thing that truly matters is....

2007-04-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

The irony of the NCAA tournament is that every team that makes it to the second round has a .500 record in the tournament, and every team that makes it beyond the second round has a winning record in the tournament. Seems like there should be more wins than losses, huh? And yet the total number of wins & losses is equal!

2007-01-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

I love this quote:
"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes, that way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes." - Jack Handey

2007-01-06T17:28:00.000-08:00

I got out and jogged a mile for the first time for the first time in a while (hooray sedentary jobs!). Took a little over 8 min. Guess I've gotten slow :P

2006-12-31T18:54:00.000-08:00

I'll be glad when my supervisor comes back next week. Need to take some of the responsibility for this latest release off my shoulders!

2006-12-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

I never knew Outlook had a sense of humor. I get an email today and Outlook "emphasizes" that: "This message was sent with Low Importance."

2006-11-18T15:05:00.000-08:00

So they made us come in to work on Saturday. And the software didn't work. :P Isn't life ironic?

2006-11-10T19:34:00.000-08:00

Why is it that every time Technology attempts to release bug fixes for the software that we are supposed to be testing, the software ends up worse than it did before?! Although I guess on the bright side, if everything worked perfectly I'd be out of a job.

2006-11-01T19:39:00.000-08:00

I've been delving into a bit of literature recently regarding divine healing. I just finished reading Jim Lynn's book, "The Miracle of Healing In Your Church Today." The book contains testimonials of people who have had divine healing intervention today's world, which is certainly refreshing to know that God still heals today. The book puts a really interesting perspective on how much of modern culture has lost faith in the ability of God to perform healing miracles in people's lives. Part of the book talks about how in the days of the early church, up to several hundred years of Jesus' time on earth, people believed in and received supernatural healings. Certainly refreshing for some to learn that miracles did in fact happen after the lifetime of the apostles. Over time the church made a distinction/break in their beliefs, that the church's role is only to help people find salvation, and not physical healing. The modern view is: For help with the soul, come to church; for help with the body, go to doctors. Yeah, that seems about right. Certainly part of modern Christianity's lack of belief in modern miracles is a result of Martin Luther and John Calvin, who believed that the age of miracles was over. The author finds that many Christians who suffer with chronic illnesses leave the church every year as a result of disillusionment and lack of faith that God will help them. He certainly criticizes the lack of healing ministries in the church today; he claims a church without a healing ministry is like "a restaurant without a kitchen".

While the book does not delve a discussion into alternative medicine (other than a detailed discussion of essential oils), he criticizes much of modern medicine (pharmaceuticals), for one, the majority does not heal the person (as I certainly know all too well!), and two, because of the negative side effects that result and the negative effects on the body from overuse of the medications. (It is hard for me to believe that the pharmaceutical industry really wants people "cured", because if people were cured of disease, they would be out of business.) Most pharmaceuticals are designed for "disease management", not "healing". It is believed that 80% of chronic illnesses are psychosomatic, or have spiritual roots. Drugs cannot target the spiritual root. The book is certainly a slap in the face for people who believe that all forms of alternative medicine are occult or "the work of the devil", but pharmaceuticals are God's gift to the world.

God is the true healer... I guess the question now becomes how to find enough faith to be healed. Even Jesus had difficulty healing people in Galilee because of lack of people's faith.

2006-10-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

A bit of Christian humor:

In the group IM chat at work today, we were all making a lot of misspellings, and one of my coworkers responded, "Forgive my typos." Another coworker responded, "I don't forgive typos", and then I responded, "If you don't forgive others' typos, God won't forgive your typos."

2006-10-17T18:23:00.000-07:00

Last night, the Arizona Cardinals demonstrated why they are the joke of the NFL. Facing the league's best, "Da Bears", they play incredibly inspired football, at least on defense. Forcing six (!!) turnovers and allowing only 3 points scored by the Bears offense; leading 20-0 at the half, allowing a mere 9 first downs the whole game. The Cardinals offense turns the ball over twice late in the game which the Bears defense runs in for touchdowns, then letting Devin Hester, the big mouth from "the U", score a go ahead touchdown on a punt return. And even then, the Cardinals get close to field goal range at the end of the game! And their kicker blows it! What a joke of an offensive display by the Cardinals, supposed to be the high octane variety with the Edge, Boldin, and Fitzgerald. The offense gave away almost 5 times the number of points to the Bears than the defense!! The Bears can praise the Cardinals' lack of "offensive defense" for the win.

Right now, the only decent "Cardinals" (at least in football) around are the Louisville Cardinals.

2006-10-08T18:59:00.000-07:00

Go figure. I thought MLB playoffs were all about momentum. Especially given that a lot of times, it's the wild card winner that has a lot of momentum going into the playoffs. Look at the 2003 Red Sox and the 2004 Marlins, who won the whole thing. Not to mention the 2002 Giants and 2005 Astros made it to the World Series as well. This year it seems the exact opposite. The Mets and Cardinals slumped into the playoffs, with the Cardinals almost having the biggest collapse at the end of the regular season ever! And they both beat the teams out west (LA and San Diego) who couldn't lose at the end of the regular season, stealing the wild card away from the Phillies (grr...). And Detroit, on the flip side, loses its last 6 games, including getting swept at home by Kansas City, losing the division title on the last day, and beats the Yankees in the first round! What a messed up playoffs.

I think it would be really cool if the Mets won the World Series this year. After the demise of the Yankees last night :D ... to have New York's "other" team win it all and stick it to those Yankee fans again (remember I'm a Red Sox fan so I'll take any way I can get to stick it to the Yankees!)

2006-10-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

So Wake Forest blew a 14 point lead in the fourth quarter to lose to Clemson by 10. My mom says, "Eddie, it's all your fault." My response: "They were winning when I was watching them in the first half, they started losing when you started watching!"

2006-07-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

So, Webshots finally started to cooperate again (yay!). That means you can access recent pictures I've taken, including the baccalaureate service at Wesley, graduation, and our family trip to Italy! Click here!

2006-06-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

[So I’m finally getting to this entry]
What a final week as a Wahoo. (This was 2 weeks ago)

What a week it was, going to the beach in Duck, NC with some awesome Wesley folk, hopefully not for the last time. I drove down to Duck with J-dub in his car. Fortunately we were using his, there's no knowing whether or not my ol' Toyota would have made it down the whole way. Well it probably would have, considering I had a five hour trip from Charlottesville to DE in that old bugger! But better safe than sorry.
It was an awesome last week as a student... all my finals completed, and for the first time as a UVA student since my first semester, my GPA actually went up instead of down! :P
We spent the first two days or so uneventfully in terms of the actual beach. Our house was in a different location in Duck than it had been the previous 2 years, and we actually had to walk down the street to get to the beach! Shocking, huh? And the weather in all its glory made sure that we wouldn't attempt to go down there... we had some pretty impressive lightning storms the first two days. Grant said that he saw lightning strike a tree that was pretty close to our house, and then later on we all so a flash so bright we thought someone had taken a picture 0f us inside the house... at least until we heard the thunderclap.
So our first couple of days were spent indoors. We spent it eating many of the snacks that I bought with the $200 plus dollars (!) that I had "saved" 'til the end of the year! You wouldn't believe how much stuff we raided from the UVA snack store, Crossroads (not to be confused with our residence). Aaron and I went there one night, filled up a 3-foot long box, and it only used up half of the plus dollars that night :P
Our first few days we spent with the pool table and with cards. Playing pool as a video game doesn't help you very much in terms of playing actual pool! For the first time ever, I played Texas Hold'em, it's a neat version of poker. The first time I played it I got creamed, but the next day I did much better, eventually losing to Diane's boyfriend Raul. And of course, there were spades. Playing spades on the computer did pay off, as Chris Gibson and I beat Geoff and Ernie in a thriller, after we were up big but they came close to a comeback with a successful blind nil.
When the weather permitted we got onto the beach. The guys and I went out to the beach to play football, playing some 4-on-4. Playing football on the beach is fun although it's difficult to cover people when you're always slipping in the sand!
Later on in the week the sun decided to come out and we got to enjoy some time on the beach. Trying to take a dip into the ocean.... uh, yeah. Just a bit too cold (Sarcasm) and also there was a big hole you fell into once you got about 15-20 feet in to the ocean. Strong currents too.
The pool and the hot tub were much more to our liking. Well, the hot tub anyway. Diane and Raul tried to push each other into the pool after realizing how chilly it was. :P
The hot tub is always a beach week favorite. See pictures for details!
Jimbo and Beth asked me one night in the hot tub whether or not I was considering graduate school, aka "putting the real world off for 5 more years or so". Sadly I don't think that's in my future at this point... getting through the last year and a half has been so hard with the defective esophagus and all... I think I'm done with school for the moment.
Beach week had some great moments and some sad ones as well.
- Seeing a lot of Wesley friends for possibly the last time
- Watching Jimbo kick everyone's ass at pool when he's had a couple beers
- Trying to cover Alex Chapin in football seeing as he's a head taller than me
- Getting a tan (and burn) on the beach with the whole crew
- Watching a Family Guy marathon with Geoff, Aaron, J-Dub, and whoever else would watch
- Playing DDR and watching everyone else dance (or fall) to the moves in the game
- Watching the other guys play Tiger Woods golf against each other.
- Playing miniature golf well for 15 holes before shooting myself in the foot, screwing up on the last 3
- Listening to Chris (Lewis)'s famous one-liners one last time
- Being one of the major photographers of the group one last time
- Jumping in the pool late at night with Rachel Redfern, maybe the only ex-Bando at the beach who wasn't at "Happy Starfish" (the band house)
- The hot tub with everyone
- The hot tub with everyone (yes I did mean to write it a second time)
- Getting my finger jammed trying to catch one of Geoff's football passes (the man has an arm.)
- Seeing Aaron fall on a baby cactus after Matt bullrushed him playing football on the grass.
- Seeing J-Dub catch a football, the man who "doesn't understand American sports."
- Watching some of the best NBA playoff series in a long time with Geoff and Kristen (sadly the Pistons still won the series, arrgghh)
- Eating a seafood pizza!

And so was my last beach week as an undergrad.
Saturday, my folks came in and we went to valedictory exercises, where the class gift is presented. Our class of 2006 gave an unprecedented amount back to the University :)
The speaker, novelist Tom Wolfe gave a speech that was, well, interesting. I felt that he rambled more than anything and wasn't sure what he was trying to say to us. He talked about figures of the past that had such a huge impact on the history of humanity and the views of mankind... Jesus, John Calvin, and Darwin... such contrasting themes ranging from "quest for salvation" to "get salvation ten minutes from now" to "you're all beasts!" Apparently Wolfe's theme was to "go for it" in the end. I think.
That evening, we had the baccalaureate service at the Wesley Foundation, where we met the families of all the graduates. Those of us graduating... myself, J-dub, Kris, Chris, Keelah, and David Vaughan (again) found what it was like to have our 15 minutes of fame. Picture after picture after picture! We probably lost some vision cells in the process :P
My mom gave a speech at the service on the views of the Foundation from a parent's point of view. The central theme of her speech was "cookies", how I was first introduced to the Foundation when Lisa Hovey came on move-in day my first year to deliver cookies to my roommate, and how I had to "make time" for my folks when they came down for my birthday and I was busy with a massive cookie bake to raise funds from the spring mission trip. My parents are grateful that I found a place like the Foundation, and I'm grateful that I found a place like the Foundation to learn about Christianity and spirituality during my four years here. Kris Worley gave a speech afterwards, talking about how she came to understand something said to her when she first arrived at the Foundation, someone told her they saw God "in her eyes".
At the end of the service, we all laid hands on each other to wish each other farewell, took some more pictures, had a candle vigil around the sanctuary of Wesley Memorial as Andrew and Grant played music on their guitars, and we parted ways one last time.
On my way out, I ran into another friend Lauren Rush, horn player and roommate of Keelah in the Moosetrap. I was glad to see her one last time, seeing as how band was a big part of my life my 3rd year. I asked her if she was doing band next year ... of course she is!
I went back to Crossroads that night, and then Geoff and I took one last trip to Little John's. We noticed a huge gathering of cars in the parking lot next to the lawn... my guess is that everyone was going streaking the night before graduation. I guess that's something that won't be part of my legacy, at least not as a student. The closest thing in my legacy will remain streaking a beach in Nags Head my first year with the SOTLites. Perhaps one day I'll go back and streak the lawn with someone, if I can ever run well again!

And then finally, Sunday, there was graduation. Eh, that's not that eventful. :P Yeah right. What can I say about graduation? The culmination of four years of education at a fine university? (Yes, I’m rambling) It was pretty incredible. After attempting to drive closer to the lawn I realized that all parking lots were reserved (I probably should have guessed that) so drove back to Crossroads and “quickly” went over to the Lawn to gather behind the Rotunda with all the other graduating college students. Turned out it wasn’t that necessary to hurry, as we got started late! But when I arrived there I ran into some people that I hadn’t seen in a really long time! It’s true, graduation may be the one time you see everyone who is actually in your graduating class!!
At the baccalaureate service the night before graduation my mom’s speech mentioned a previous entry from my blog in which I mentioned that I had to do “Hala’s play”. She had no idea what that meant, as she claimed in the speech, “Eddie doesn’t share.” :P Well, Hala’s a girl who I met one day my second year when I was leaving the drama building after my acting class. I was walking back to lambeth and she had asked me if I would act in a scene she was doing for a directing class she was in. Of course I agreed (I can’t say no to a pretty face J)
Well, when I got to the Rotunda, there she was! I gave her a big hug and we said congrats to each other, and I managed to squeeze in a picture. She said, “Put it up on Facebook!” (it currently is!) Then she left to go get tickets for other members of her family.
After that I ran into two old friends, Jacquie and Louise. Jacquie is a girl who I knew from my climatology class last year, who was graduating with a distinguished major in Environmental Science. Louise I knew from chemistry my first year. She is looking to get into medical school one of these days so she claims she is currently “jobless” like me. L Anyway, we exchanged congratulations and took a great deal of pictures (after looking at all these, my folks now say I’m a ladies man… yeah right)
Eventually the procession began and the class of ’06 was told to get into eight lines…. alphabetically (well that last part was a joke… hehe we had trouble getting into eight lines!) We walked up the back steps of the Rotunda, around, and stepped onto the Lawn for our farewell march. Many had pink flamingoes and balloons so their families could identify them. My parents were far enough away from the crowd that they saw the procession on a big screen, although they claim they didn’t see me in the crowd. After an hour of processing, all the graduates were seated at the front of the lawn to hear a speech by Governor Tim Kaine. He mentioned in his speech that he doesn’t remember any speeches he’s given or heard in the past so he doesn’t expect us to remember any of what he said! (That’s good because I don’t remember much of it) But it was a nice farewell and congratulations to all the grads.
After the “large” ceremony all the grads left the lawn to their diploma ceremonies. The math ceremony was located in Pavilion I off the left side of the Rotunda. I met up with friend and fellow math graduate Kristina, and once again, more congratulations and pictures! Geoff, Kristen, and Grant were all there to say congratulations, what great people! Well actually Grant was there because Katie was getting her master’s degree (wink) The ceremony for the math graduates was very interesting as Professors Herbst and Kriete went through some individual awards…. A 16 year old was graduating with a master’s degree!!
Finally, we all went up one by one and received our degrees, and everyone laughed as we turned in various directions so that family members could take photos of us receiving the degree. Then group pictures of the bachelor’s, masters, and PhD candidates were taken, and I went and hugged my financial math project partner, Uliana, who received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree that day.
And that’s about it for the ceremony. I guess now I’m officially an alum! Wahoo-Wa!

2006-05-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

Since the medical establishment is convinced that aerophagia is simply people repetitively swallowing, I appended the following to the aerophagia definition on Wikipedia:

"Aerophagia can occur without any act of swallowing. A Ukranian study[1] showed that in people with cervical spinal blockages, inhaling also caused air to go down into the esophagus and stomach. The study recommends cervical spine therapy as a method of treatment.

References: Krasiuk MM, Kratinov VP, "The characteristics of aerophagy and its treatment", Lik Sprava. 1993 Jul;(7):114-6."

Hopefully some people may be helped by this information if indeed some people can be helped from chiropractic manipulation.

2006-05-02T09:56:00.000-07:00

From http://www.godandscience.org/humor/jonah.html:

Jonah and the Teacher
A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales and how she had heard in Sunday School about how a whale had swallowed Jonah.
The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.
The little girl remained steadfast in her position and reiterated that indeed, a whale had swallowed Jonah.
Irritated, the teacher again stated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.
The little girl said, "I'm not sure how it happened, but when I get to heaven I will ask Jonah."
The teacher replied smugly, "What if Jonah isn't in heaven?"
The little girl replied, "Then you ask him."

2006-04-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

From http://www.math.utah.edu/~cherk/mathjokes.html:

Several scientists were all posed the following question: "What is 2 * 2 ?"
The engineer whips out his slide rule (so it's old) and shuffles it back and forth, and finally announces "3.99".
The physicist consults his technical references, sets up the problem on his computer, and announces "it lies between 3.98 and 4.02".
The mathematician cogitates for a while, then announces: "I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you, an answer exists!".
Philosopher smiles: "But what do you mean by 2 * 2 ?"
Logician replies: "Please define 2 * 2 more precisely."
The sociologist: "I don't know, but is was nice talking about it".
Behavioral Ecologist: "A polygamous mating system".
Medical Student : "4" All others looking astonished : "How did you know ??" Medical Student : :I memorized it."

2006-04-08T22:52:00.000-07:00

Christian programmers will get a kick out of this:

From http://www.codecomments.com/archive272-2004-10-305504.html

">C++ is EVIL, it's the work of the devil, made to collect your
>souls and to turn you into brainless slaves of hell.

Looks like this could be useful then:

OK, you know that 666 is the Number of the Beast, but did you know
that:

660 Approximate number of the Beast

DCLXVI Roman numeral of the Beast

666.0000 Number of the High Precision Beast

0.666 Number of the Millibeast

/666 Beast Common Denominator

1010011010 Binary of the Beast

Beast1-666 Area code of the Beast

00666 Postcode of the Beast

1-900-666-0666 Live Beasts! One-on-one pacts! Call Now! Only
$6.66/minute. Over 18 only please.

$665.95 Retail price of the Beast

$699.25 Price of the Beast plus sales tax

$769.95 Price of the Beast with all accessories and replacement soul

$656.66 Target price of the Beast

Route 666 Way of the Beast

666F Oven temperature for roast Beast

666mg Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast

Netscape 6.66 Beta Browser of the Beast

i66686 CPU of the Beast

666I BMW of the Beast

668 Next-door neighbour of the Beast"

2006-03-13T10:35:00.000-08:00

Apparently "Lewis" went hog-wild with my camera the last day of spring break. More on this later.

2006-03-02T21:21:00.000-08:00

:-)

2006-03-02T12:33:00.000-08:00

Be careful about errantly typing "www.blooger.com".

2006-02-19T14:55:00.000-08:00

Ok, now I get the "Lars" chant.

2006-02-15T18:21:00.000-08:00

I feel like I'm doing it again. Dang. But it doesn't matter this time around. No, it doesn't matter, because it won't.

Some random thoughts:

As I'm writing this, Aaron says "jackasses" (ha ha)

"I bump and spike with the best of 'em. Oh, and I play volleyball pretty good too" - what I'm telling Diane she should put in her profile

Geoff: "I can't work with these people anymore!" - in reference to our Wesley adboard mailing list getting screwed up

My buddy list is flooded with people I never talk to or have seen in the past year. Am I vain in keeping them on? Maybe.

My econ professor wished us a belated happy valentine's today. At this point, belated is four years for me.

We learned in cosmology that time is relative to how fast you're going. You're going near the speed of light and someone observes that you travel through time in slow motion. Ironic, huh? Oh to be able to ride a light beam to go anywhere in the universe....to go back in time, to fix things....

Our volleyball team finally won a game yesterday. And then we split up afterwards and played against each other and won again! :P

There's a lady I know at W&M who's really special to me who's finally found a happiness in her life. I wish her the best.

One of my roommates flipped yesterday when I was describing what happened at my case interview yesterday. He flipped out that I was able to remember the problem I was given; he tells me he can't remember the problem for 5 seconds!

Dave Leitao may potentially be a candidate for ACC coach of the year in b-ball.

I'm 22 now. Considering what's happened when I was 20 and 21, hopefully this is an up year!

Ok, my mind has drawn a blank now. Time to sign out!

2006-02-14T12:15:00.000-08:00

once again, being one of the few people w/o anyone to celebrate this holiday with. >:o oh well, at least I save a few bucks, right? :-)

2006-02-07T19:38:00.000-08:00

Today I played volleyball with the Wesley team for the first time in over a year. Actually I haven't played volleyball, period since early last March, and that was with the band team that beat the Wesley team. Ironic....
I made sure not to eat anything after lunch so my stomach would be empty for the 8:45 PM matchup; good thing too, because I felt things start to come back up as I played :(
We lost, but I consider it a moral victory just to have played tonight, at least it was some degree of normalcy!

2006-02-06T17:10:00.000-08:00

<>I find this just a bit odd.....

"Dashboard Jesus: Enlightenment On A Spring

Warning: Choking hazard."

2006-02-03T14:10:00.000-08:00

to make Geoff happy, go Steelers!

2006-01-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've wrote in this thing. You know what I've found? Blogger deletes your old comments! That's my favorite part of blogging, even though I don't get all that much. :P

Well, as you can tell from my one-sentence previous post, I spent my winter break at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville Fla to see if a team of doctors there could figure out my phantom disease. (Yes, there's a branch down there if you didn't know). My folks and I drove all the way down there from DE; we would've had to have driven at least one direction completely and I'm afraid to fly because I'm worried that the pressure differential on takeoff/landing might cause me to choke on my stomach. Yuck!
On the way down we stopped at my cousins' house in Lumberton NC and watched Texas beat USC in the final minute of the Rose Bowl (Wahoo!), it was good 2 see them since I hadn't been to their house in many many years; usually we only meet at my grandma's in Fairfax for the holidays.
Anyway, the Clinic was a pretty nice place with great doctors; they were willing to listen to all the problems that I was having and weren't like some of the doctors I've had in the past where they have to "get onto the next patient" after 5 min. They re-ran me through all of the tests I've had done before and then some, including doing a neurology test where they found nothing! :O
But seriously, after doing the testing, the lead doc that was assigned to me said that I do indeed have a very bizarre condition (and finally convinced my parents that this wasn't something that was all in my head). One of the tests they made me swallow barium and after each sip, I belched the barium up along with a ton of air that was already in my stomach. In another test, the manometry test (once thought of by me as the tube from hell), they said that my esophagus has peristaltic contractions but they're all weak, and the sphincter was weak as well (more or less the same as last time). They also attached a capsule to my esophagus to measure the amount of acid that was coming up, and the doctor said, "It's the darndest thing, you belched off the receiver!" Nice to know there's a first time for everything.
So they pretty much determined the same thing that just about every other doc has said, that I have very severe reflux and belching (duh!) and have some sort of bizarre "air sucking" that causes air to go down into my stomach but they're not sure why it's happening. :( The doc was suggesting that I reconsider having stomach surgery to tighten the sphincter between my esophagus and stomach, but it's a 50/50 shot of whether it would help or make me worse! The reason being is that tightening the sphincter may stop the air sucking but if it doesn't it'll all get trapped and make me incredibly bloated all the time. I'm inclined to say it's the latter because when I take high doses of prokinetics, that's exactly what happens, i get really bloated!!
What exacerbates the situation even more is that it's not completely reversible if it doesn't work; damage is permanently done to parts of your digestive system. Another issue of health insurance, once I leave school I'm off health insurance and wouldn't be able to afford the surgery if I chose to go that route which means I'm back for another semester while I try to make this decision. Arrggghhh!!!!
In the meantime I'm trying another medical intuitive. I was telling her about my problem and she said that it was strange and not entirely consistent with reflux; part of my esophageal flow apparently points upwards instead of down; it's not so much bad reflux as it is, as she put it, "Your esophagus wants to vomit." Lovely. I figure I'll give energy healing another shot; at this point I don't have much to lose; what's the difference if I spend money since I feel so terrible that I can't even go out and do anything anywhere?
It's been almost a year since this godforsaken disease started and I don't know if there's any end in sight. Just trying to survive one day at a time...

2005-12-19T08:15:00.000-08:00

mayo clinic here i come....

2005-12-04T17:26:00.000-08:00

Desperately trying to make one final push. I found out on friday that I got a 2 out of 20 on my last topology assignment :( so if I flunk out of that class that'll probably be why. Hopefully I can pass the others. I just finished my take home test for analysis, which is good because it's due tomorrow. Linear, I've got one more assignment due.... CS, I have a test on tuesday.

My CS project is coming along pretty nicely. It's a video game based on the concept of an alien invasion. Required is an animated storyline along with at least 3 levels, preferably 5; one of which will be a 3D tank battle. I have completed (or nearly completed) 2 of the three minimum (the 2D levels), which is sort of Scorched Earth meets Galaga. The 3D stage is tough, I've managed to generate some terrain and place tanks in places but determining how to get tanks to fire at you on a 3D scale is difficult. They can't just fire at random like in a 2d level since random firing in 2D virtually guarantees you'll get hit. But in 3D, random firing doesn't work. On the other hand if I "calculate" the perfect strike angle/velocity the user will have no shot at beating the computer. Just gotta hold on.... two more weeks....

2005-11-09T15:41:00.000-08:00

Geez.... T.O. suspended, now Priest Holmes is out for the year. My fantasy football team is going down the tubes.

2005-11-01T17:30:00.000-08:00

My latest scheme to make money? Pay-per-click on stormpay ads. I check the new ads every few hours and click on them... by the end of the day I've made enough money to buy a stamp. :P

2005-10-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

let me elaborate on that a little more. I'm pissed off. I go into the gastroenterologist's office to try to get some kind of advice on what to do since I just seem to be going downhill. I asked him, "Is there any place I can just buy a new digestive system?" jokingly. He said, "You don't need a new esophagus you just need more drugs." I tell him that I had to switch my meds from protonix to prevacid because protonix wasn't working anymore, and that nothing was stopping the regurgitating. The domperidone which he recommended last time wasn't working in its standard dose (10 mg) so I had tried taking 20 to see if that would be any improvement. (Considering I've gone through months of waiting for a month to see a doctor just so he can say "double your meds" I figure I'd just do it in advance to spare myself that piece of advice). Just made me feel really bloated and more nauseous; only slightly helped with the reflux. And of course, the incessant belching. So he says, "So I'm telling him all this, he looks at the chart and asks me, "Have you had an endoscopy done?" I told him it was done over the summer...

So I start telling him that I'd been trying seeing a therapist and relaxation techniques weren't helping, the aerophagia's still a nightmare and the drugs weren't controlling it. Neither did the antidepressant he recommended last time. I tell him again that I'm sucking air into my stomach whenever I breathe and have no idea how to make it stop. I ask him how a "normal esophagus" is supposed to keep air out, and he gives me some shpiel about how you swallow X amount of air when you're chewing, I say that he's not listening to me, what about when you're just breathing? Obviously he didn't get what my problem was. So, trying to figure out the problem myself, I ask him if the manometry said my upper sphincter worked correctly. He takes a look and says it's fine, it's the lower half that's really screwed up. So he asks me if I had looked on the internet for how to treat aerophagia. Only for the last 6 months! Told him that all I could find was "breathe through your nose, stick a pencil between your teeth", neither works. I ask him if he ever encounters people with this problem, he says no; sees a lot of people with reflux but nothing like this. So what do I do about it, I ask. No idea! So I ask him if he knows anyone at Hopkins that might be able to help, he asks, "Why Hopkins? Why not Georgetown or Duke?" Ugh. He gives me the name of a naturopath I could try because he's out of ideas, but that was about all I got out of that visit. When I asked about scheduling another appointment he says "we'll call you." (Translation: "I can't do anything for you, go away.") Shit. Now I'm back to square one and worse then before, and out of doctors too apparently.

And people tell me that talking to medical intuitives/energy healers is a waste of time and money.

2005-10-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

dammit.... this is the third gastroenterologist that says he's completely stumped by my condition :(

2005-10-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

Comment if you're lucky # 5000 on the counter!

2005-10-12T20:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I may do lousy in graphics assignments but I can do this even if by accident!

2005-10-07T13:22:00.000-07:00