nanovivid

I hope your Christmas is as wonderful as mine has been so far. With so many incredible blessings in life, the presents become secondary, sort of a nice thing to have but really not that important. Thanks Jeremiah for mentioning Heifer International. Through them I feel like I was able to give some gifts that will really make some sort of a lasting difference in peoples’ lives.

I don’t want this to be a long entry, just enough to say "Have a very merry Christmas." :-)

♫ Formant - Dropkick

I’m at my parents’ house during this break time which is OK except for the lack of high-speed internet access. Surfing at 56k is not my favorite thing in the world. But I, I will survive.

Here’s a brief summary of things other than starting my job that have happened recently:

• I recieved my new keyboard (which is exactly the same as my old keyboard, only the new one hasn’t had water spilled on it).
• I found out my semester grade for geometry. But I’m not going to tell you what it was. Muahahahah! Ok, ok, it was a B+. Happy now?
• I went over to the Culbertsons’ and watched a couple of Christmas specials that I hadn’t seen before - A Pinky and the Brain Christmas Special and Pee-Wee’s Christmas Special. Both provided much entertainment (kinda like the community burrito provided much nourishment).
• I’ve had some incredible talks with friends that have given me a lot to think about. And that’s always a good thing.
• I was hoping to get to see LOTR: The Two Towers yesterday, but the people I was going to go with ended up going too late since I needed to get home in time for dinner (mmmm… salmon…). And since I didn’t really feel like being a "third wheel" with Scott and Tina (love you two ;-), I’ll just have to wait on that one.

My plans for this week-and-a-half include Christmas-y activities (of course), time with friends, maybe seeing and hopefully getting some good reading done (including re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia).

Finally, here’s a Bob The Angry Flower cartoon that I found hilarious: Iron Chef Idiot. If you’ve never watched Iron Chef, you might not get it (you are also a very deprived person who doesn’t know what they’re missing ;-).

♫ Antidote - Euphoric Recall

Tonight we had a Mexican potluck and MST3k funado (Funado, n. A tornado of fun). There was lots of yummy food (including my world famous bean dip — thanks mom!). We watched Time Chasers. "Stupid grandma leaver-outers!"

I lost about six hours of my life on Sunday watching the Taken marathon on SciFi. (Taken is a twenty hour miniseries about aliens and conspiracies and fun stuff like that). I was a little disappointed with the ending, but it was ok.

Saturday night I put together some ideas for some new compositions. I’m not sure when they’ll see the light of day, but they’ll probably show up eventually. :-)

This is fun (and by fun, I mean sad): I killed my keyboard. That’s right, I, the "computer god" (as Andy M. likes to call me) spilled water on my keyboard and now it’s dead. So I’ve ordered a new one. Yay half.com. Thanks Scott for letting me borrow your keyboard even though you don’t know I’ve got it.

Now here’s something that really is fun: I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Advertising Slogan Generator!. Make slogans for anything. Using nanovivid.com, I got "Naughty, but nanovivid.com," and some other good ones that I don’t remember. Have fun!

♫ Tru Funktion - Lakrids

As of just after 2pm today (when I turned in my geometry exam), I am finished with college. How insane is that? I’ll tell you, it’s totally mad. And by totally mad I mean really freakin’ awesome.

Speaking of the geometry exam, it was quite… difficult in places. I actually didn’t spend as long on it as I did the last one, largely because I got some hints from the professor early on. But there were still some not-so-easy problems.

So there’s this question on the geometry exam that says “Prove that if three points are chosen, one on each side of a triangle, then the circles determined by a vertex and the two points on the adjacent sides of the chosen vertex meet at a point.” and I answered as follows:

Once upon a time there was a student who wanted to get a good grade on the exam but he had no idea at all how to go about solving most of the problems. Then he talked to his teacher and she helped a lot but he still couldn’t solve two of the problems. Since the student couldn’t prove either of the problems, he decided to write a story about one of them and draw a pretty picture.

There was once a triangle named Fred. He was a very nice looking blue triangle. Then one day Fred got the chicken pox. All of a sudden there appeared six red spots, one at each of his vertices and one on each of his sides. Fred was very upset by this and called his circle friends to see if they could help him out. George, Bob, and Jim hurried right over. While they were inspecting Fred’s spots, Bob exclaimed, "Look at this! I can fit myself over the spot at your left vertex and the spots on your adjacent sides! " "Great. " Fred said dejectedly. "You just go on ahead and lie there. It’s not helping me get any better." Then George made a similar discovery: "Fred, I fit over your top vertex and the spots on the adjacent sides!" This did not help Fred’s mood. "I called you guys over here to help me get rid of the spots, not to play on them!" Discouraged, the circles were about to leave when Jim tripped and fell onto Fred. "Um, Fred, I don’t want to cause any trouble, but I just fell onto your right vertex and, well, look!" Amazingly all three circles were meeting at a single point. "Wow!" said Fred, "How can I ever repay you for helping me figure out the reason for my spots?" "Well," Bob replied, "you could prove why we are able to meet at a single point like this." So Fred tried and tried, but he couldn’t determine why the circles all lined up like they did. He died an old and bitter triangle. The end.

And the moral of the story is: If you have three green circles for friends, don’t let them play on your chicken pox.

Maybe I’ll get some points for creativity. :-)

Other things happening lately: I’ve been watching Taken on and off. I’m not as addicted to it as other people, but it’s an interesting show. Tuesday night I watched Pi with some other people. I enjoyed it… it’s a kinda messed-up-but-cool movie, and i found it to have a lot to say about the search for meaning in life. Oh, and I really liked the music… I gotta get me some of that. Also, we had an ice storm on Tuesday. That was exciting and very pretty. My roommate took some cool pictures.

Speaking of pictures, I wish I had a camera with me this morning. After our networking exam, Dave and I walked up on "the hill." The valley was so amazing, with fog and rising and the trees all covered with ice and shining… it brought new meaning to the phrase "winter wonderland" :-) Somebody did get a shot of it though — the top right picture on the ice storm page on EMU’s website is a bit like what we saw. But of course it’s not nearly as cool as being there.

Now that I’m done, what’s next, you ask? Working, of course. I’ve got a full-time job doing IT type stuff. Sound exciting? Oh, you know it is!

♫ Reverence dj mix by DJ Lorraine (listen at DJPatD.com in the music section).

Wow… I got back a few hours ago from one of the most intense and very cool weekends in recent memory (heck, in my whole time at college). We had a retreat for my worldview class to present our projects, and it was totally awesome. I feel like the thirteen of us got so much closer over the thirty hours we were there, but how could we not with all the very personal and honest interaction? My presentation went very well and I felt like everybody else’s did too. The projects ranged from art to poetry to drama to storytelling to sharing of experiences. I have to admit that it was a bit draining at times, and now I’m pretty tired, but in a happy way. If anybody from class is reading this, thank you, thank you, thank you. :-)

Speaking of my worldview project, there is a final piece entitled reflection. Also, the worldview section has been changed to reflect the page I used for my presentation.

♫ Something Corporate - I Woke Up In A Car (thanks Jeremiah!)

As you can see, nanovivid.com is looking a little different. I was inspired by Jeremiah’s little piece of holly on his logo and decided to give the site a holiday theme. Then yesterday I discovered christmas light by kreigs on inertia stock.xchng and knew I had to use it. So I present to you my little piece of holiday cheer. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

This is my last week of classes before exams and then after that, I’m graduated. It’s crazy to think that I’m done with college. Wow.

In computer-related news, I’ve started seriously considering purchasing a PowerBook G4 as my next computer. They’re just such dang sexy computers and packed full of features too. I’m pretty excited about the idea. It’s really Jeremiah’s fault. After all, he is a Switcher. :-)

Oh, and it’s snowing! Yay!

♫ echo chamber culture - headtrip

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few days about thankfulness. Maybe it has something to do with this whole Thanksgiving holiday thing. But I was even thinking about it before good ole’ turkey day. It’s just staggering to think of how privileged my life is and how little I’ve done to earn anything I have… and how unfair that is compared to the lives of so many others. I guess humbled would be a good description for how I’ve been left feeling for all the wonderful undeserved goodness that has happened in my life.

Last night, the sky was incredible. I’ve been living on the outskirts of a medium-size city for the past few years, so I had almost forgotten what it was like to see the sky without so much light pollution. It was pretty cold out, so I bundled up and took a short walk out to where I had a good view of the sky. The moon was just coming up and the stars were twinkling like I’ve never seen before. It was breathtaking. The sky looked like it was no more than a couple hundred feet above me. I even saw a few shooting stars. The best word I can find to describe my feelings at the time is intimacy… a closeness to love and beauty… I can’t really explain it. Usually, beautiful nights like that make me lonely, but somehow last night was comforting and beautiful and just a major wow life doesn’t suck ™ moment. Somehow the experience seems to fit perfectly with my recent thoughts of undeserved goodness and beauty.

I think I’ll end this with a short list of things I’m thankful for. Sure, it’s kind of a cliché thing to do, but it’s the most real thing I could think to do. I’m thankful for the little things that make life worth living every day and for the beauty that I keep finding in this mess. I’m thankful for everyone who has been and still is being patient and caring with me as I go through this totally insane thing called life. Most of all, I’m thankful for those who really know me intimately and keep showing me such incredible love (you know who you are). God bless.

On a lighter note, here are a couple of fun Japan-related links to brighten your "black friday." First off, Irrational Exuberance (aka Yatta! - thanks to Mattt for the link) is, well, unique. It’s a bunch of random images and text set to a Japanese pop song. Be forewarned, a) it’s a relatively big download (1.5 megs) and b) it’s not for the easily offended or confused, and it’s probably not good for those prone to narcolepsy. The second link I have for you is Engrish. Engrish is "the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design." Enjoy!

♫ Andy Hunter° - Sandstorm Calling

Steve and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie tonight. We both enjoyed it and were surprised when we realized that we had been sitting for three hours. The movie definitely kept me involved and I didn’t find myself getting bored like I have with some other long movies *cough*starwarsepisodetwo*cough*. It’s a very enjoyable and well-told story that has good pacing and (mostly) interesting characters. Dobby was a bit annoying at times… well, most of the time, and the villains seemed to be two-dimensional (evil for no apparent reason) at times. But overall, I liked it. Thumbs up.

♫ Current music: Daft Punk's Discovery album... so good!

I have officially decided that Kline’s pumpkin ice cream is sweet nectar from heaven put into creamy, frosty treat form. I can’t believe I’ve missed out on this for the three and a half years I’ve been living in this town. Too bad they only serve it twice a year.

To all you praying people out there — could you send one up for my bro Jeremiah? He’s having a rough time with finding a job and figuring out what he wants to be doing while in California. Thanks a bunch. No, we’re not actually related. I mean bro as in my brotha, my homeboy, my man… yo. ;-)

♫ Dijitol Kitchin's Snax for the Masses album

Last night I had a strange and funny dream… well, a whole sequence of them, really, but the strangest one was about (da da da) Trading Spaces! I dreamt that Trading Spaces came to my parents’ house and was redoing the living room. Doug was the designer, and they were going to paint the walls a light reddish-brown and use a darker variation for the ceiling. That’s about all I remember except that I woke up right as a truck with furniture in it was pulling up to the house. So how about I lay off those PB&J sandwiches right before bed, eh.

♫ Ry making up a song... nice background music :-)