I found it!

I found the elusive water-bottle cap! You all can rest easy tonight. As depicted here, it landed against the inside of my armrest support and slid down into the bowels of the chair. It was trapped in this tiny, bottle-cap-sized alcove.

Vortex of Evil

This morning, whilst I peacefully drank from a bottle of water, a strange thing occurred. I was trying to replace the cap to said water bottle with one hand, and it slipped, falling to the ground. I have no idea what happened to it. It fell straight down, made a sound like it landed flat somewhere, and now I can't find it. It has been driving me insane for the past hour and some odd minutes. I can't hardly think straight. My office is not that big, and there is not much stuff in it. I have crawled around on the (disgusting, bug-infested) floor of my office looking for it. I can't do anything for more than a few minutes at a time without looking down at the floor for it. Has anything like this ever happened to anyone else? I cannot see any conceivable way that this is possible. It is a mystery. Mabye it was swallowed by a vortex of evil.

Another dorky cartoon

Anyone get this one? This was created (with a little help from the cover art of Griffiths' quantum mechanics book) and submitted by my own graduate advisor, Dr. Richard Gale.

In other news, I ran a mile in 5:54 (that is fast for me--don't laugh, real runners) last night. That is 45 seconds faster than my fastest time in high school. I think I could have done a little better, but I got a little weak mentally about halfway through lap 3. Weird what losing some weight, working out, and a summer of boredom will do for your fitness.

Anyway, I think this weekend's trip to Lubbock is going to be the death knell on my desire to be in Sweetwater. At least my car is working.

Car

Ok, I know that 3 posts in one day is excessive, but my car works now. It wasn't the starter after all, it was the clutch safety switch, which only cost $28 of labor for the guy to bypass. Hooray.

T-shirts

I found these online today. If I'm going to be a physics graduate student, I guess I'll have to start dressing like one, too. Now you all know what to get me for my birthday (my favorite is the Maxwell's equations shirt...). If anyone can tell me what those little blobs are in the middle one, I'll be very impressed.

The Round Mound of Rebound

God help us.

Although, the last paragraph was a bit encouraging. I'm not a racist, but I do have some serious issues with the way African-American culture doesn't seem to value good education and intelligence sometimes (not all of it or anything....no one send me hate mail, please). I guess he is probably at least as qualified as the Governator or Jesse Ventura was.

Also, this is hilarious (I specifically refer to the entry from July 19th). I almost cried. There is also some interesting stuff about how the AP grossly misreported it. Also interesting, but not laugh-out-loud funny.

Books

Well, I finished "Atlas Shrugged" and "Ender's Game" (the latter took about 1/8 of the time to read as the former, no exaggeration). Both were great books. Ayn Rand is smart, and I think Objectivism (her philosophy) is genius and probably the best thing out there if there is no God (her whole formulation sort of rests on atheism, which I obviously do not agree with). It is basically a combination of egoism, existentialism, hedonism, and anti-Communism, stating that a man living, accomplishing, using his mind, and enjoying his life are his highest moral purposes. "Ender's Game" was really good, too, and it only took 3 or 4 hours to read. Next up, the Major and Minor Prophets and some commentaries...

I'm glad I called THAT guy...

Which movie is the title of this post from?

Andrew Peterson's phone number has turned out to be quite a useful acquisition. When I was in California with Kim and Laurie, I got Kim's brothers' numbers in case we got stranded on the lake somewhere. Andrew, the younger of the two that were with us, is a mechanic, and I've called him twice in the past 4 days to ask him why cars aren't working. The first time was for my sister (read previous post). Yesterday, I'm driving back to Sweetwater from Lubbock, and I was getting a bit drowsy, so I decided to stop in Post for an ice cream cone at McDonald's. I went ahead and went in, because I needed to use the restroom as well. When I came back out, my car wouldn't even start turning over; it just clicked when I turned the key. I asked an older couple walking out if they would mind trying to jump my car off. We tried -- still nothing. So I called Andrew, and he told me it was the starter, which I had guessed. However, he (as well as the older guy who was helping me) described to me how to push-start a car that had a standard transmission. The older couple said "Oh yeah, we used to have to do this with our son's car." So they start pushing me backwards out of the parking spot that I'm in, but the incredibly over-staffed McDonald's work force decided that they needed to help, too. About five McDonald's employees came running out and started helping. So there I am, sitting in my car, trying to steer, with about 7 people running around my car and pushing it. Finally, we got it started, and I got back to Sweetwater safely. Unfortunately, now my car is stuck in the driveway and I have no way to get it out except to push-start it again. I guess I'll have to find some volunteers at work today. It is a good thing that my house is less than a mile from work, so it took me fewer than 10 minutes to walk to work this morning.

On a different note, I saw "Lady in the Water" yesterday. It was probably the worst movie ever (except maybe "Wendigo"). Seriously, I loved all of M. Night's other movies, but this one was just awful. I was just mocking it by the end, along with several other members of the audience.

I'm not a horrible brother

Alright, if you haven't read my sister's latest blog entry or heard the story, read it (the link is in my dropdown list of friends). I may have laughed a little, but I did call and figure out what was wrong with her car and if she needed to have it towed, I called Prock Automotive to see when they would be able to see her, and I was about to call the tow truck but Billy Weaver beat me to it. I only laughed because the way she was crying it sounded like her car was on fire. When I found out that it just wouldn't start, and she was about 20 minutes from Lubbock...I don't know. So girls, don't send me a barrage of hate mail or anything. Anyway, it was a good story.

Also, Jill, you're right: Ayn Rand is ridiculously and unnecessarily long-winded. I only have 250 pages left, though, and I'm getting through them if it kills me.

"What part a' New Jersey you from?"

So I played that guy (see 3 posts back if you don't know) in tennis last night. He was very serious about tennis. He was in incredible shape for being 57 years old, and he was about a 3.5 player (NTRP ratings, if that means anything to anyone). I think he remembered every tennis event that has happened to him for the past 30 years and told me about most of them. He had several racquets which he had ordered as demos from the internet (he tries them out, then sends them back), and he kept switching back and forth between them (I think he used 3 racquets in one game, once), saying how one didn't have enough control, and that one was the lighter and helped him when he was getting overpowered, etc. He even busted out his roll of lead tape, which Sampras (and others) used to make his racquet heavier. He was, in short, a very silly man.

Anyway, the entire match something had seemed strange to me: he kept looking at his watch before games and before a lot of points. I figured since he had called me that he probably didn't have anything else to do tonight, and he didn't look old or sickly enough to be on a medicine schedule. However, in the third or so game of the second set, I had just hit a winner and was walking toward the net to switch sides, when he told me that the score was 40-30, and that wasn't game. I thought about it, walked back through every point with him and showed him that I had already won 4 points, it must have been 40-15 when I last served, and that was game. He agreed, and he said, "Oh, I must have pushed the button wrong." I really had to work hard to keep from laughing aloud at that point -- he had been keeping score on his watch. I have played competitive tennis for about 10 years now and have never once heard of a watch that keeps score for you. Apparently this thing was extremely complicated, because I later asked him what time it was, and he finally answered me after about 15 seconds of frantic button-pushing.

Anyway, for those of you who play tennis, you can maybe appreciate this post a little more. The moral of the story is that tennis money is better spent on lessons than fancy watches, racquets, and lead tape (this applies to most of the 25-handicap golfers with too much money I've ever heard of, too). He was a very nice guy and I had a good time, despite sort of making fun of him here. But who wants to read about nice he was? Also, God bless Texas 5-A sports.

The mark of an educated mind...

...is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it, or so says Aristotle. I like this idea because I think it is important, not just because educated people make themselves feel smarter by knowing lots of different facts and points of view. I think the process of entertaining lines of thought without accepting them refines and strengthens our beliefs. If you believe something just because you've led a sheltered life and been told by your parents or private school teachers or whomever that you should believe it, even if it is right, it is almost like a person being called "healthy" because they have been quaratined their entire lives: you may not get sick, but you are no good in the world because your immune system has not been exposed and built up.

Anyway, I say all this because I just started reading "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand. She is brilliant, as is the book, but she obviously subscribes to a world view which is vastly different from mine. I love reading the opinions of brilliant people with whom I disagree, because it forces me to try and reason out why I think they are wrong and I am right. I feel like I am being exposed to germs in the air and building up my immune system.

Also, I have a story for everyone which I neglected to post. Last weekend (like 9-11 days ago) I was in Austin, TX, visiting friends and such, like Kyle and Andrew, Nicki, Steve (my old roommate and NI buddy), and people from the Austin Stone. Saturday night, I was out playing Ultimate Frisbee on the State Capitol lawn around midnight with Nicki and her friends. I had on one of my favorite shirts, my Hard Rock Cafe shirt from Hong Kong that Tara got me, and so I took it off to play so it wouldn't get disgustingly sweaty. Then, when I walked to my car, I remembered I had to take something to Kyle, so I called him and set my shirt on top of my car. After talking intently with him for a bit, we figured out what the plan was, so I drove off. Then, about halfway there, I saw some a guy with a sign begging for money. I had no money on me, and I didn't have my shirt on either, and I thought, "Sorry buddy, I don't even have a shirt." Then I thought, "Huh...where is my shirt?" I realized what happened and drove back downtown to look for it, unsuccessfully. Now some bum in Austin has my Hard Rock Cafe shirt, and he's telling the other bums all about his travels to East Asia. So, if any of you are in Austin and see a bum wearing a Hard Rock Cafe shirt from Hong Kong, please buy it off of him and give it back to me (I'll pay you back). Anyway, it was a fun weekend, and Kyle and Andrew (Meryll plug) are now on their national tour (Kyle had really long sideburns and a mustache when I saw him last).

Bored

I'm sitting at work, waiting for a simulation to run. I wonder if I'll ever find a job that just thrills me. Does anyone have a job like this? I wonder what people would spend their time doing if it weren't for need to buy things like housing and food. I would just go to school for a long while, then go teach after that. Not really even in a classroom setting, I think -- I'd just find someone who wanted to learn something, and I'd try to teach it to them. If I didn't know it, I could look into it, and we'd go through it together. Maybe I'd just sit around and play the piano all day instead...

I spilled blackberry yogurt on my white shirt. I am really a slob when it comes to food sometimes. Good thing I'm going home to the laundry fairy.

It ain't as easy as it looks to grow flowers in the dirt

So it turns out there is a song by a band called Fasball on an album I really like called "Sweetwater, TX". The lyrics are a bit abstruse, but the general feel from listening to it is about the same as the way you feel after living here for two months.

Last night, I was out running. My semi-weekly routine is to run to the high school, run a mile on the track there, then run home--about 4 miles in all, I think. Anyway, there were actually some people who sort of knew how to swing a tennis racquet out on the courts at the high school, which is the first I've seen of that in all my runs. There were two younger guys, who looked like they were on the high school team, and two older guys who could have easily been their fathers (turns out they weren't; the tennis community simply spans generational boundaries here in Sweetwater). I went up and talked to them after they finished their match, and our conversation went something as follows.

Me: "Hey guys, what's up? I was just watching and saw that you guys could actually swing a racquet. I was wondering if one of you want to hit sometime."

Old Guy #1 (in relatively strong West-Texas accent): "What part a' New Jersey you from?"

Me: "Excuse me?"

Old Guy: "You don't sound like yer from around here. I'm an English teacher and I pay attention to accents, and ya don't sound like yer from Texas"

Me: "Well, thank you, I guess. I'm actually from Arlington"

Old Guy: "Arlington, huh? Well my name is..." <continued conversation>

I would have like to have added something obnoxious like, "Oh, you mean because I enunciate and generally speak like an educated person?" However, I refrained. I stood and talked to them for a few minutes, and I'm going to go hit with one of the younger guys tomorrow night, so we'll see how that goes.

I also just finished reading Donald Miler's (the author of "Blue Like Jazz") "Searching for God Knows What". It is much better than "Blue Like Jazz", I think. He is a wonderful writer, and the line between his thoughts and systematic theology doesn't get quite blurred in this one (not that he did it on purpose in the first book, but it sort of came off like that from time to time). Much of the book talks about how God is relational and the Gospel isn't about a set of rules that you must follow. The main thing I took away from it was that man is broken and tries to get our fulfillment from an extremely weak version (from people around us) of the worth we have as loved creatures of God. Getting our worth solely from God, through the person of Jesus, is the only fulfillment to the deep longings of the human soul, and so many of our little religious systems are just ways for us to try to get approval from others or feel important or worthy somehow (I am too systematic, and my explanation here still ends up coming off as theology -- go read the book). Anyway, he makes a lot of interesting points. I still think that systematic theology is very important to understand who God is -- it is hard to love a being without knowing that information. Plus, human nature tends to distort who God is when not kept in check. So read the book, but still go read Calvin and Edwards and Piper when you're done. I just get tired of this whole idea of, "man, I don't want to think about deep issues like God's sovereignty and the implications it has on man's free will, I just want to love God." Which God are you loving? Issues like this are integral to understanding the nature of God and therefore the nature of the love, grace, mercy, justice, jealousy, perfection, etc., that he possesses. Ok, sorry, I'm rambling.

The summer of excitement continues

Last night I was tired from lifting and my sleep schedule was still a bit off from my weekend trip to Austin, so I went to be early (about 10 or so). Ryan (my roommate) comes running in at 11:20 PM (it might as well have been 3 AM -- it sure felt like it -- as I was out cold) and wakes me up. It took me several minutes to get my bearings and sort of figure out what was going on, but he kept saying, "Dude, did you hear that? How did you not hear that? Come here," and things of that nature. When I finally got out of bed and walked out to the living room, there was what seemed to be a late 80s Buick (or something similar...it was dark and I was out of it) sitting ON OUR FRONT LAWN. I could see the faint orange glow of a cigarette burning from about where the driver's head should be (I think his head actually was there, I just couldn't see it -- this story isn't THAT weird). I began freaking out a little bit, since this seemed even more surreal to me than it would have at a normal time given my state. I made sure the door was locked, and I suggested that we call the cops. After discussing this for about 4 seconds, we decided to do so, but right then the lunatic started driving off of our yard. He missed Ryan's car by a few inches. He proceeded to drive to the house next to ours, graze the car that was parked in front of that house, sit for a while, then drive away. The neighbors from the other side walked over, and they had already called the cops (apparently the idiot had already crashed into a trailer sitting in front of their house). After standing in front of my house in only my boxers for a good 5 minutes, just sort of laughing deliriously, I went back to bed. The cops found the guy later, staggering down an alley, completely wasted. They came by our house around midnight (I was long asleep) and asked Ryan how much the mailbox was worth, which apparently he had hit on his way into our property, to which he just laughed (for explanation, look a few posts back to the one about our shower). Here are a couple of pictures of the aftermath.
Also, I'm tired of being treated with no respect by a certain Ukrainian at my place of employment. That is all I'm going to say about that, because it would not be edifying for me or anyone else involved to elaborate.

Furthermore, I have attached this, which I meant to add to yesterday's post but could not do so because Blogger.com was down for maintenance.

I think that the point of the beginning of Genesis is for God to demonstrate to Israel that Yahweh (redeemer God that they knew, saved them from slavery) is the creator and one true God of the universe. With that in mind, it seems like the literal, historical accuracy of the first of Genesis is less of an issue. Giving us a "scientific", empirical account of "the beginning" was definitely not God's point through Moses there. However, it doesn't seem like this is enough of a reason to say that it is figurative, just maybe that it isn't the point. Also, the Bible seems pretty clear that the point of creation is definitely humans. The current scientific movement that man is no more important than amoebas or tigers or trees or whatever seems correct if there is no God, but based on some explicit Biblical reasoning and some slightly more complex lines of thought which I won't post here, it seems like if there is omniscient, sovereign God, God's mercy and love to fallen man is the main story. This doesn't mean we should go on living like we are God over this planet and destroying other life and resources, etc., as the book says, but I think the reasons are other than "humans are no better than the rest of living things". I cannot accept that human consciousness can be fully explained by electrical signals which were produced as an evolutionary process. I haven't thought this through too well, so I'm not sure just yet how I feel about everything. Feel free to post your thoughts.

Ishmael

I just finished "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. It is fascinating. I am not a tree-hugger (the book was, among other things, a call to change the way we live and stop destroying the world), but the book was really amazing. I don't agree with everything the guy says by any means, but he is a really smart dude. From a hermeneutical (definition) standpoint with respect to Genesis -- evolution, 7 literal days vs. 7 figurative days arguments -- it provides some interesting questions and thoughts. Has anyone else read this (Brandon, I know you have)? What did everyone think?

Couldn't God have used evolution? Does it really make sense that the beginning of Genesis is 100% literal? When can you, if ever, say the Bible is figurative without compromising the integrity and validity of the whole thing? If God really did create the whole universe in 6 literal days as measured by a normal human clock, why the fossil record and other confusing evidence? Could God have created everything in sort of an "already seeming 100 billion years old" sort of way? Does it even make sense to talk about God creating something in some set amount of time, since it seems like time is just a construct of this existence, and not something God would be bound by or subject to? I could keep going, but I won't...

Anyway, read it if you haven't. It is relatively short, and almost all dialogue.

I'm kind of a big deal

Ok, so I'm not really a big deal or anything, I know, but it is really weird at work now because I actually am doing real work. People depend on me for things. A fraction, albeit a very small one, of the future of the company is in my hands. Today, Ken, one of the other engineers, said, "Alright, well I'm not going to draw up the design for this [photomultiplier tube] and order the parts until I get the OK from you." That is very strange to me. I guess it is just a big jump from school to the real world, and I'm just now getting a taste of it. With other jobs that I've had (teaching tennis lessons, tutoring, waiting tables), I've been providing a valuable service for people, but the stakes were just a lot lower. For those of you that have had actual corporate jobs, maybe you know what I mean. Anyway, I just thought I'd share that. You may now return to your normal daily activities.

I don't want to work...

...I just want to bang on the drum all day.

Seriously. I need to find a job at a piano bar or something. That would be more fun. I think I'd have to become more talented first though, which probably isn't happening...