Cleansing Waters

People do not, generally speaking, keep things because they believe that they will use them again. People keep things because they remind them of their past. Things root people – they prove and validate their existence; they provide a map, a trail, sign posts. Whatever I am now, this is who I was or who [...]

Read Full Post »

I Deserve This Famine

I get about 10 hits a day. It’s pretty sad. Of course, who wants to read the same week old entry over and over again? Especially now that AE’s gone. Anyway, in brief, Jen and I spent the weekend in Buffalo on an unexpected funeral induced vacation. I only talked to my Grandfather-in-law once…he seemed [...]

Read Full Post »

You Are What You Have Been

I was thinking about it in the bathroom stall at work a couple of days ago. I should have been in the Army – I’ve said that enough times now that it’s probably true. Long ago, I thought that I’d need about 4 lives to accomplish what I wanted to do. In one I’d do [...]

Read Full Post »

Two Wrongs Never Make You Right

Where there’s conflict for me it has rarely been, “is it my fault, or is it your fault?” It’s always my fault. My pertinent questions are “is it entirely my fault? do I need to start implementing damage control measures?” Once you’ve caused as many problems as I have, you stop wondering if someone else [...]

Read Full Post »

Double Helix History

I think that RC Sproul Jr was reading Romans 9:7 literally when he claimed that the one commonality between Christians worldwide was that we were all children of Abraham. He could have dropped down another level to Isaac. I personally have no moral requirement to read that literally, though if Abraham existed (which I do [...]

Read Full Post »

Time Compared To Whom?

My watch keeps track of time on two different counters. The idea, one presumes, is that I could commute back and forth to Chicago and shift my watch by an hour without having to reset anything. I suppose it’s useful. Unfortunately, T1 was correct and T2 was 2 minutes slow. The watch loses about 30 [...]

Read Full Post »

Signal To Noise

In my profession, the concept of pulling signals, meaningful pieces of information, out of the cacophony of useless slop is central. Radar is just that – looking for the specific signals you’re interested in when there are thousands of tiny blips, real and imaginary, getting in the way. No matter how convoluted the collection process, [...]

Read Full Post »

For Sake Time

It is extremely common for me to set my watch timer, both at work and home. Sometimes it’s a reminder – my watch will start beeping seemingly out of the blue and I’ll have to piece together what it is I was supposed to remember. Most of the time that’s something like “take the recyclables [...]

Read Full Post »

I’ve Been This Way Before

Wait just one second. I’ve seen that tree before. I know this road. I’ve been here – I know where this goes! I know where it ends! I’ve been playing this game forever and a day; I’m quite certain I can’t win at it. It’s the definition of insanity you know, doing the same thing [...]

Read Full Post »

Schodinger’s Cat

There were so many tangents at Bible study tonight that I can’t recall what context brought it about, but I used Schrodinger’s Cat as a metaphor for whatever it was we were talking about. In my explanation, I fused the explanation of it with spooky action at a distance, but the principle is the same. [...]

Read Full Post »

Why The Why

Like a good reformed theologian, I subscribe to Table Talk from Ligonier Ministries. I actually signed up for a 3 year subscription. It was very economical, and it isn’t my intention to change appreciably between now and 2 and a half years from now. I also need to compensate for being only 70% reformed, but [...]

Read Full Post »

Five Year Plans With Four Minute Shelf Lives

I found a new ab workout last night. By four in the morning, when I tried to move my legs or reposition in bed, I thought I was going to rip my stomach in half – it was that effective. I was so proud of my clever masochism, because, damnit, it was going to make [...]

Read Full Post »

The Day Tomorrow Wasn’t

Today, in one of my (4) meetings, we were discussing status – a popular topic in my industry. Despite having over a year worth of work, our schedule only went for a couple more months. Our de facto group lead pointed out, “Well, this schedule’s only until the end of June and then…” 600 years [...]

Read Full Post »

Won’t Catch On

Forgetting, for the time being, the repugnance of a pregnant “man”, I have a couple of other issues with this video. First, there’s a fantastic sound bite of a “man on the street” (“woman on the street” would have a different implication) saying that she hopes more men would give it a try. You see, [...]

Read Full Post »

Scrubbing Mania

I’m about two posts away from needing a category exclusively for personal hygiene. This evening was one of those weekend nights where I…go to Wegmans. Now, granted, Wegmans is the greatest supermarket on the planet, better, even, than SuperFresh, but normally I wouldn’t brag about being there on a Saturday night. No, normally I’d have [...]

Read Full Post »

Free To Dream

I’m back on Glucosamine/Chondroitin, which I postulate led to a dramatic increase in dream rate a few months back. I have had dreams the first two nights after starting to take it again, and I happened upon one that I can share last night. It involved Captain Picard/me. I think we were essentially the same [...]

Read Full Post »

Learn The Only Way

Human experience is a series of punctuated equilibria. Months pass as you float aimlessly through life. You think nothing, feel nothing, you barely live, numb, vaguely contented, perhaps imprisoned, all the while aware that life exists; it does, it must. At rare intervals the clouds open. Various manifestations yield the same end result, something I [...]

Read Full Post »

Sunrise Stripped

The first time one investigates the rumble strips on the side of the highway while motionless is always an eye opening experience in perspective. As you whiz past at 65 mph, they seem narrow and deep. That’s not really the case. Each depression is really a foot wide. The depth is almost insignificant. Changing your [...]

Read Full Post »

All For None

Today in Radar Class, the teacher mistakenly had a two equations superimposed on top of each other on the same slide. My new computer has a dual core processor. It can handle two independent tasks simultaneously, be they independent of or in parallel with each other. I decided it was time for humankind to split [...]

Read Full Post »

Better Never Than Late

Last year’s Thrall trip yielded a bumper crop of old books, including ‘The Selected Letters of John Keats’. I don’t know John Keats from Jon Arbuckle. And I had no intention to read this entire volume, especially the introduction which would have given me some context. I did, however, take a shining to his love [...]

Read Full Post »

Momentary Lapse of Reason

I spent several hours Saturday morning tearing a roof off someone’s house.  When you own only brown casual shoes and worn out running shoes, roofs can be surprisingly slippery, especially when a fine layer of dust is generated from the debris.  I skidded enough times to temporarily sound the alarm, but it wasn’t really a [...]

Read Full Post »

Associative Property

I have a voice recorder in my car. I’ve thought of its existence three times. The first time was driving north on Route 1 out of Raleigh early last year – sick of writing ideas on scraps of paper while driving, I decided that rambling semi-coherently into a recorder would be a more manageable option. [...]

Read Full Post »

Debt to Society

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been reading books for other people. Previously, I read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael so that I’d understand some family a little better. That link will take you to my review on the afore mentioned Good Reads. Next, I just finished Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian for a guy at work. He [...]

Read Full Post »

Overextending Metaphors

I have a small reading list, provided by well wishers with hopes of broadening my intellectual horizons. I have no problems with such endeavors – knowledge, by my estimation, is never intrinsically bad, thought is never completely useless. I recently finished “The Black Swan”, a book which launches a frenzied attack against the normal distribution [...]

Read Full Post »

The Future Is Essentially Unknowable

A brief look at Hurricane Felix this morning revealed that it would be a Cat4 hurricane within the next 24 hours. Yet the models didn’t say so, so neither did those over whom the models reign. And speaking of models, take a look at the monster hurricane the Canadian model has running up the Cheasepeake [...]

Read Full Post »

The Collapse of All Possible Alternatives

It probably surprises few that a mid-twenty something person such as myself would be faced with an existential dilemma (especially since I write about this about once every 5 months). Truth be told, I’d rather be faced with such philosophical upheavals than to not be – I feel that numb contentment forebodes far worse underlying [...]

Read Full Post »

Corraborating Witnesses

I grilled some bacon wrapped scallops today. You start the bacon early (since it takes longer), then eventually pull them out, wrap the scallops and toss them back on the grill. I accompanied mine with butter and olive oil, as I continued my “Summer of Aluminum Foil.” I do that, learn in segments. Photography for [...]

Read Full Post »

Formulate Infinity, Store It Deep Inside Me.

I have written about flying at night before. I’m not sure if I can accurately portray how mesmerizing flying is for me. On the east coast, every parcel of land has some story. I don’t think the same is true for the west. Or, if it is, the stories appear greatly simplified. There is so [...]

Read Full Post »

Only One Way To Get The Y

Grandma and Grandpa’s wasn’t my favorite place to go when I was a child. Every week during the summer, I’d spend at least 3 days there, probably 12 hours a week on average, sometimes much more. The food was less than delectable – with the exception of Strawberry Rhubarb pie of course. Grandma would overcook [...]

Read Full Post »

What’s A 21st Century Guy To Do?

Lets say, for a moment, that you’re a twenty-something megalomaniac of above average competence and ambition in the 21st century. As a patrician in Roman times, from say 100 BC to 400 AD, your path was clear – hone your skills in combat (for what else were you doing as a child), rise through the [...]

Read Full Post »

One About Me

I spoke with 8 different people in my 4 hours of visits on Friday. They asked many of the same questions. I hate answering the same question the same way twice, even if it is to different people. I refuse to reuse witticisms, even if there is no possible chance that the two audiences will [...]

Read Full Post »

Like the Natives

Now, not all information is profitable for application in your life. Most of it is meaningless and a lot of it is misleading, whether intentionally or otherwise. Regardless, I have always believed strongly that information, when filtered through the lens of truth, is almost never bad. If your lens is clear and focused, no object [...]

Read Full Post »

The Cowboy Christology

Recently, when noting how silly it was that thousands of Penn State fans would spend hundreds of dollars to drive hundreds of miles to be in the vicinity of their game against Notre Dame, even though they didn’t actually have tickets, I was rebuked with a whithering “ummm, how can you NOT do that” sort [...]

Read Full Post »

Signs

In the movie “Signs,” each of the characters’ personality foibles are exploited within minutes of each other in the climactic scene. To the preacher whose faith had been wavering for a large part of the movie, seeing seemingly disconnected and asinine traits fuse into their personal salvation is enough to send his mind spinning into [...]

Read Full Post »

Din of Night

A word popped into my head this weekend. Words of the week are typical for me, except this isn’t a word. I don’t remember what it meant, but it was reminded of it as I slept in my brother’s room. Actually, before I mention the words, my mother has a habit of opening windows throughout [...]

Read Full Post »

Privilege Versus Right

I tend to optimize my car for my use. After all, I am typically the only in it. I close off vents so that the air blows stronger on me, I adjust the seat precisely to my standards, I leave items on the backseat for easy access, that sort of thing. I also lock my [...]

Read Full Post »

My World, Delivered

I’ve subconsciously known this for a while, God knows I’ve been told often enough, but this morning I realized that AT&T and Singular can join together to deliver the world that matters the most: mine! As I drove through the parking lot at work, I spent 15 seconds or so thinking about this. My world [...]

Read Full Post »

Smell You Later

“That song. What is that song? It’s wonderful, I’ve never heard anything like it. A chorus of angels, oh, the beauty.” That’s what I want to say to the guy across the cube farm who spends most of the day whistling haphazardly. His sense of pitch is astounding. I can do nothing but listen to [...]

Read Full Post »

Reference Planes

I spent the second half of my commute this morning (which takes roughly 14 minutes total) thinking about how I could create a reference frame where I was at rest and the entire earth was spinning beneath me. Well, perhaps “create” isn’t the right word, I clearly can’t produce any actual results in this endevour. [...]

Read Full Post »

Onions

You know how sometimes people claim to be like an onion, with many layers of complexity and such? Well, all the layers of an onion are pretty much the same. You’d peel off another layer and be like, “oh look, more onion!”

Read Full Post »