All of this is just for the record, everyone who would want to know already knows. I finally bought and moved into a house. The deal closed at the beginning of February. I am paying slightly more than the house is worth, but not much, at least I am putting money into something which will retain some value instead of giving money away to a landlord. It is mostly in good shape, the only major projects will be relacing the roof sometime in the next couple of years, replacing most of the windows and window sills, and replacing the old wiring in the house. The rest is all cosmetic and mostly just making things the way I want them to be.

Work is going well. We were very short handed for a few weeks since one tech was on fmla leave, one tech quit, and one engineer quit. The engineer that quit seems to be doing well, secretly a few of us are hoping he comes back but that will not happen for quite a while at least if at all. For now the job has been posted and we will see what comes up and we have hired an intern to help out. She has the same last name as my grandparents which is interesting.

Personal life is the same as always, I know very few people outside of work. I would go out more but money is a little tighter than I would like. I just got out of my lease in Lubbock but am spending quite a bit on bills trying to get some things paid off before student loans start coming in. I will also be helping family financially, as always seems to happen when I start getting more fiscally stable.

There are really only two bad things happening right now. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last month so she will not be working much, and my brother is out of work and doesn't yet seem to want to find a job. His wedding anniversary is coming up and that may have a big influence on him.

That is all.

I watched "The Last Samurai" the other day. It was a remarkably good film and I am surprised that I did not notice certain things about "ancient" Japanese culture before. I have always, at least to my memory, loved warrior cultures. The high level of personal strength, discipline, and the concept of honor have always appealed to me. I never cared for the Japanese warrior culture and it never struck me before the actual reason why.

Humans have not evolved past their physical form and as such we still need, to varying extents depending on the individual, emotions and warmth. We need at least a few people to show us that we are cared for and are loved and needed as part of our community. The Japanese culture was, and still is in many ways, a very cold culture. They say/said that the warriors killed themselves when they lost a battle, or for almost any other reason, because it was the honorable thing to do and/or that they could not live with the dishonor of losing. I think it goes deeper than that. I believe that part of the reason why, or at least something that made the deed easier, people were so willing to kill themselves was that they were so very unhappy. Discipline can only be pushed so far before it begins to become a detriment to the person. People were never meant to live in such a vacuum of emotion.

I haven't read anything about ancient culture about this but one thing I do not like about modern Japanese culture is the concept of saving face. Many, particularly those in positions of some power, i.e. management, will give a bold face lie to make themselves look less at fault. The major difference between them and us, my experiences in this country, is that they are expected to do so. While many people in this country try to cover up their own wrong doings or shortcomings we at least find it contemptible to do so.

I submitted the contract with the counter offer today. It was a little bit of running around I dropped off a few checks on my way out of Amarillo and had to fax a few things when I got back to Lubbock. I feel that it really is a good deal but I will find out for sure after the inspection next week.

I also took the opportunity while I was out to buy some groceries and rent a couple of games. Hopefully I will not have to leave my apartment this weekend. I really hate this time of year. Everyone and their dog thinks they have to be out in the stores so it makes things a lot more inconvenient for me when I go out to get a few necessities so my plan is to not have to. I don't know if I hate going out this time of year enough to do without if I run out of something important but I may try. Everyone is out this weekend just buying things they can't afford for people who don't want what they are getting and will then spend the next two weeks taking things back making this month hell to be out in stores.

I am looking forward to next week for the inspections and eventually moving into a new home. Also Happy New Year to me!!!!

It was very hard in those first few months to quit drinking soft drinks. That hard time passed though, I did have a few cans here and there but the first few didn't taste very good at all and any others that I have had since then have given me headaches or hiccups. I think it is my body's way of telling me that I made the right decision to quit.

The first week of work went ok. I choose to start work a little early so that I could attend some training. The only problem was that the training started as 7. Luckily I have a coworker who is allowing me to stay the week at his place but those days which I drove in from Lubbock were harsh. I get my first full-time paycheck this Friday and I am excited about that.

I am also looking at houses. Due to the bad weather I have not been able to look inside any so I am getting a little behind schedule where looking is concerned.

The prototype of the sword I ordered a couple of years ago is finally finished!!!! It looks absolutely beautiful from the pictures. In a few weeks I should have it in my hands. Now I am getting concerned about if I want to display it and where to get a display case or if I want to make it myself.

http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/sword-viking-valkyrja.htm

I cleaned out my office on campus today. Today wasn't exactly the last day I will be there but it is close, I will probably only be going back one more time but that act seemed so final. It's not that I do not want to leave but remembering all the time I spent there, I felt a little saddened. Memories of sneaking into the machine shop after hours, I did that last night to put some things back, all of the hours spent in the student lounge, almost every day of the semester I spent a few hours there, my office and the bench where I usually smoked not so much, I didn't start spending time there until this past year.

Next week I start full-time and since my responsibilities are mostly officially over I will begin looking more seriously into a place to live there. Until then I will have to deal with the long drive or stay with a friend. Speaking of which it is late and I need to get to bed.

That is all.

I would have to rate the conference a 5 out of 10. We left a day early so that we could see the city before starting the conference but thanks to a few lazy people and the changing of plans we ended up wasting the entire first day. There was a halloween social the first night and everyone in the group was supposed to dress up in a common theme. Someone had the brilliant idea of dressing up as luchadores. That was ok except two of us wear glasses and glasses and masks don't go well together. Mine fell off in the dark when I went to get a drink and I spent about 10 minutes crawling around on the floor looking for them with people coming and going in my area, no one bothered to help or ask if I needed any, until one of the people I was with showed back up. I left the party after that. There was a contest for best group and it was supposed to be based on the quality of the costumes, how well the group kept to the theme, and originality. There was one group dressed as ancient Egyptians. From what I was told a group dressed as a soccer team and another as characters from Shrek won, wow...how original.

I overslept and missed the first workshop but there were none that I think would have been interesting. We had Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast, yumm. The first workshop I attended wasn't that good. The presenter spoke more about the company than the topic. I did learn a couple of things though. The other workshops were much better. There was a "black and white" social that night on board the U.S.S. Iwo Jima I was on the first bus there and we got to see a little of the ship. There were quite a few of those in attendance who didn't seem to understand the concept of "black and white" and when the speaker started speaking half of the people there continued talking. There was also no seating on board. What's worse when we tried to leave people were rushing the buses, even while the buses were still moving. As one of my comrades put it, "It was like the fall of Saigon". There was no order in the crowd and it was like that for the entire conference.

The second day was better with all of the workshops I attended being of at least a good quality. We took off early and saw part of the city. At the dinner that night the crowd was even more rude than before with almost everyone in the room talking during the speaker. A comrade said that perhaps it was a difference in culture but I have never heard of a culture where it was not rude to speak when someone else was. I skipped the social that night to go to bed early.

The last day not much went on for me. That was the day of the career fair and since I already had a job I just kind of hung out and tried to get some work done. We went to see more of the city that afternoon and some of the others went out that night. I tried to get a little sleep but our comrades who went out that night came back drunk and loud. They were constantly coming and going into our room and yelling in the hall. It got worse when we started getting ready to leave at about 3am. We had taken one of the cars back and it took two trips and overall about 2 hours to get everyone to the airport.

The conference overall was well organized but the attendees were not that great. I attribute it mostly to the fact that there were no advisors present and there were not enough mature people present to maintain any sort of order.

Returned from a conference in Philadelphia yesterday. The "city of Brotherly Love" seems to live up to it's name. Having experienced the big city rudeness firsthand in certain cities I was caught by surprise. People were genuinely pleasant for the most part and some people would have the courtesy to look you in the eye as you passed by on the street and excuse themselves if they bumped into you. We only really experienced downtown but is that not usually the ruder part of town? I had more rude/inconsiderate behavior from the people I was traveling with than I had with any particular group of people in the city.

We stayed at the Marriot downtown and most of what people would want to see is within walking distance of the hotel. There were bus and subway stops near the hotel and the hotel has a bellroom to store luggage but despite this my companions decided to rent vehicles. Parking in the area is very expensive by most standards. The cheapest lot we were able to find was 4.75 per hour. Parking on the street was much cheaper at $1 per hour ($.25/15 min) but was limited from anywhere to 30 minutes to 2 hours. The hotel has a per day rate and lets you come and go at will. Definitely the best way to go if you plan on doing a lot of driving. Since the others decided on a car rental I did not get to see what the public transportation was like. Judging from the frequency of busses and subway trams it should be as good as the reviews I have read. Since most of the tourist attractions are so close to this particular hotel one scarcely needs transportation besides to and from the airport. For this there were options of which we found out after our arrival we could either have taken a shuttle which would have costed $10 or a cab(s) for roughly $25 (at least from what I was told). It would definitely be my recommendation to pay for the shuttle and buy a day pass for the public transportation system ($6) if you plan on going far.

The following were places I visited.
Liberty Bell: 6 blocks, free
Independence Hall: 7 blocks, free but need tickets from building in which Liberty Bell is housed. A nice lady from NY was nice enough to give us her extra tickets as we did not know we needed to get them elsewhere.
Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary Soldiers: 8 blocks, free
Mütter Museum: ca. 20 blocks, $8 students $12 adults
Miscellaneous art museums: 10-20 blocks, we did not go in any but I looked at some of the artwork and fountains on my way to meet my companions who wanted to see the Rocky statue.
Places I ate:
Hardrock Cafe: 0 blocks, good but somewhat expensive
Dunkin' Donuts: 0 blocks, very good, fast breakfast very cheap
Ho So Gai: 3-4 blocks, very good Chinese restaurant in Chinatown
Reading Station Market: 0 blocks, various vendors and restaurants vary in quality
Pizza Palace: 2-3 blocks, pizza was good but had been warmed over and they were stingy with the topping by my standards

I will write about the conference in a separate post.

Working two days a week makes my projects/work time seem almost unproductive. My project is coming along very slowly. It seems that I spend anywhere from 2-6 hours each day doing training or taking care of other paperwork due to me being new. That does not leave much time to accomplish useful stuff. At this time I am not sure how much I can post about the job due to the company's policy on information.

The drive isn't that bad, I am from Texas after all, but the alternatively getting up at 7 and 5 coupled with going to bed late can wear the normal person out after awhile. Today I forwent a community service project because I did not want to get up early, and partly because I was not interested. I am completely and utterly not a football fan which is strange for Texas and did not want to spend 6 hours of my day centered around a game of said sport, even if it was to take some underprivileged kids.

Overall things in my life are much better, I have a better outlook, and am not so worried about things which is very weird for me. I know I will not get to see friends as often with the new job but I am sure I will make some new ones, maybe. Ok for me but not so much (maybe) for the friends I have now. That is one thing I have been thinking about, which of the acquaintances and friends I have here will actually make the effort to keep in touch. I will do my part but I guess only time will tell.

The two people who probably read this already know but I wanted to post for the sake of longevity. I always say that I have incredibly bad luck and I can usually count on that. I told my mother last month when I was deciding on a place to move into that as soon as I get committed into staying in Lubbock I would probably get an offer and have to leave. Well two weeks after I signed a year long lease I was made an offer to work in Amarillo. I am not really sure about the town but I will be working in the industry I want to work in and the job is going to allow me to work with every part of the plant.

I start part-time this week, and excited and nervous all at the same time. So far it looks like everything is working out fine and that makes me a little more nervous (I am sure a psycho(ill)logi(c)st would have a field day with me) I am simply so used to things not going perfectly. I had to drop another class so I am (technically) down to only two. Those two courses and my TA work are not currently enough to keep me busy so I am finding a difficult time getting things done in a timely manner. I procrastinate a little too much but I'll work on that later ;)

The only thing bad that has happened lately is that the University did not pay us on the 1st like they were supposed to. Instead most of us are having to wait until the 24th for this months pay. Other things are going so well that that does not even seem to bother me right now. I seriously doubt that they will pay for the overdraft charges so I have not even bothered.

Chucky is getting along well in the neighborhood. No one has said anything since the first week about him being outside and even then it was only someone who thought he had "gotten" out. It kind of sucks for him to be on the second floor with dogs about because there really is nowhere for him to go if a dog blocks the stairway except for him to try to jump to another building, they are actually close enough, or jump down to the first floor. The kids in the complex seem to like him but he is not quite used to them yet.

Mostly by recycling, we had 50 gallon drums which I would fill with aluminum cans from our household and any that I collected in the neighborhood. It took a long time to fill but two 50 gallong containers would bring about $50 back then. I tried other materials but it took a lot longer to collect and did not bring in as much.

Yesterday morning was probably by far the most perfect weather I have ever seen in Lubbock. It was completely overcast but enough light got through to have very good visibility. Also the clouds were grey, instead of that annoying white which doesn't help much at all. It was cool but not too cold for shorts with very little wind. Consequently yesterday was also the last day I had to move the rest of my belongings out of the old house. Having to load things into the car I did get to enjoy the weather a little, but as they say all good things must come to and end. The sun came out at around noon, I was sad. I think I may remember the weather that morning for the rest of my life, or at least until I move somewhere where the weather is more favorable to my tastes.

Not wanting to go back at the last minute for anything I piled every seat in my car, except for the driver's, to the ceiling and that is where it will stay for a while. The apartment has less space than the house but plenty of closet space. I haven't seen any place quite like it, there is a close next to the door, one in the bedroom which takes up the entire length of a wall, and one in the bathroom. I think I will like living there, the people seem nice, I even had a guy call me because he thought my cat was lost. The kids seem to adore Chucky but he is a little wary of them especially when they are making noise as children will do. So far he has also been quite gentle with the new furniture and seems to already have his favorite spot.

I finally got my office last week and have just finished setting up my desk. There are five graduate students in this office but only two LAN connections. Retarded? I think so. Luckily today the wireless network is working well. I will speak to some people tomorrow and see if we can get some more connections working. My laptop has wireless capabilities but doesn't always like to stay connected which can get very frustrating so having an ethernet connection would make my life quite a bit easier.

One funny little thing happened, well funny for me, when I was checking out my desk. It's an old desk, so old in fact that it has a typewriter drawer. Some people may not know what that is, I sure didn't until last week. I am from the crossover generation so I know what typewriters look like but have not used one since I was a child. I simply saw this cabinet type section, a little larger than space current desks use to store computer towers and I thought at first that that's what it was. The catch was that the bottom was a shelf that slid in and out. I thought to myself how convenience the tower goes here and you can pull it out to make your connections. The thing looked adjustable so I started looking at it wondering if I could get the height set so that I could put my laptop on it. I saw two little catches on the bottom and decided to release them. Once that happened the shelf slammed to the top of the cabinet with a loud bang. Being in the Mechanical Engineering department I simply thought that a professor or graduate student had designed and installed it for some unknown experiment or purpose. I spent several minutes wondering what on Earth a person would want to crush with in their desk. It wasn't until later after looking at a similar desk which still had an instruction plate attached to the shelf that I know what it was for. All I needed to see was the word typewriter to figure out what it was for. Apparently one does not manually release the catches, a good thing to know because the shelf almost crushed my fingers. Rather a person places their typewriter on the shelf, adjusts the tension in the spring and when they pull the shelf out all the way it automatically raises to bring the typewriter to a comfortable level. One then pushes the shelf back down and in to store the typewriter inside the desk. So much for using ones desk for tenderizing meat.

I spoke too soon about the wireless network. Before I finished typing this entry I lost connection and was never able to get it back.

Pink Floyd

Despite what you might think of the religion the man created, anyone who says this about physchology, even if it is in a work of ficion, can't be all that bad.

From Mission Earth, Vol. 2 Black Genesis by L. Ron Hubbard

"'Well did you get your diploma?' said Heller...
...'Oh, yes," said Mary. "You have to graduate to amount to anything. I'm a full-fledged Doctor of Philosophy. I even got my sheepskin in my bag. I'll show you. Psychology, you know."
My ears tingled! Ah, this dear girl! A psychologist! Empathy flooded through me.
The car almost left the ground over a rise.
"Psychology?" said Heller. "What's that?"
"A lot of horse (bleep). It's a con game. They try to make you think you're nobody, just a bunch of cells, an animal. They can't do anything. They teach you that you can't change anybody. They even have total conscousness that they're fakes. So why bother to practice it?"
I went catatonic with shock!
My newly formed empathy shattered utterly into nonraport! A heritic! A foul nonbeliever! She had no reverence whatever for the sacred! Absolute antisocial negation!
The Cadillac was racing down a bumpy lane. The screams of the cop cars got louder.
"I was an A student," said Mary, "but every time any of the professors (bleeped) me, they'd say I should be more libido oriented. That's why they kept putting me on drugs. Listen, if psychology is so good, why are all the psychology professors so crazy?"...
..."They preach free love so they can get it free."...
..."They're all bad (bleeps), too. I suppose it's the constant overstimulation of the erotic sensory capacity that causes the consequent response deterioration. But they say it's a lot of hard work to turn every college dorm into a whorehouse. You just missed that cow."
Heller said, "But if you got your diploma, why couldn't you get a job?"...
..."The public won't have anything to do with psychologists. They know better. The only people who employ psychologists are the government. They think they need them to teach kids, to defend the bankers and wipeout dissidents. The government thinks the psychologists can keep the population under control...'"

The entire series is very entertaining or at least what I have read of it so far.

Tonight I have to hold a discussion session for the class I am a TA for. I am excited and nervous. It is the first act of teaching, except the occasional tutoring, since I taught an astronomy lab several years ago. The first week of that didn't go so well, luckily we taught in groups of two because I was so nervous I could barely speak. It's hilarious now that I look back on it.

I will write more in the next few days considering my move and such, but for now I need to get back to work.

I was out of town again for quite a week to help my half-brother move. His oldest (step)daughter stayed because she didn't want to leave her friends. I know that everything will work out ok for her either way (if she makes it or not) she has some very good (and some quite attractive ;) ) friends there and her (step)father will have a space for her if things don't work out there.

You wouldn't believe all the crap had gone on at that house. First off I decided that I should leave before everyone else so that I could make sure we could get into the house when the truck arrived. It is a good thing that I did. No one had a key to the bottom door locks and they were instructed to only lock the top deadbolts when they left, but of course they "forgot" or something so I had to creatively find a way into the house (in this case breaking in a door, it was probably going to be replaced anyway). Then I found a frying pan left in the upper oven which still had grease in it, broken glass in various locations. They also insisted on feeding their dogs on top of my car there despite the fact that I asked nicely for them not too. I believe that all this was done on purpose by the people living there before, upset because their free ride was coming to an end. I really hope that I do not find out that they actually did do this stuff on purpose. I am pissed off enough right now to do something drastic.

One of the things that has always kind of pissed me off about the ME department at TTU is the fact that they change their schedule at the last minute almost every semester. I am sure that sometimes it is done with students in mind, I, however, almost always get the short end so to speak. This is my little inconvenience for the semester. The entire summer one of my classes (engineering analysis I) was listed as TBA only a few weeks ago did they decide on a time. Well the time they set conflicted with another class (advanced automotive systems) I was enrolled in. This class (engineering analysis I) being the slightly more important than the other one (I don't have to have many more design courses) I withdrew from the other and found a class (non-linear dynamics) I did not particularly want to take but found acceptable. A few days ago they rescheduled the class (engineering analysis I) which was TBA so that it no longer conflicts with the course (advanced automotive systems) I was planning on taking. That class (advanced automotive systems) is full now and so far I have been unable to get permission to get into it. What's more is that I had purposefully scheduled myself so that I had only classes on Tuesday and Thursday and they had rescheduled the class to the other days. So now not only am I stuck with a class (non-linear dynamics) I do not really want to take but am not burdened with the inconvenience of a schedule I did not want. Isn't a bureaucracy wonderful? I didn't attend that class today, he he. I will just have to get the notes from someone I know in the class.

I will probably have to get moved sooner than I expected. My landlord called this morning and told me that people were interested in renting the house but that they couldn't wait until October. As there was no mention of them simply moving in with me I assume they must be a couple or family. My guess is that they haven't looked at the house yet or are new to this market. I cannot imagine someone really wanting to stay at the price he is asking, for four students it was wonderful because it was so cheap, when split four ways, and there were no leases so a person could leave at any time. A person can buy a home here for less than what he charges for rent. I will probably know where I will be at the end of this week and as soon as I have the keys to the new place will get everything out of the main portion of the house.

I am looking forward to a new place as I have already spent some of my loan money on new furniture and am waiting to get into a new place to accept delivery. My only worry is that the places I am looking at will not be big enough for it. The places I am looking at seem big enough but I didn't bother to take measurements.

I've got a meeting in 20 minutes so I think I had better get going.

I have read quite in many places recently that many people feel the spirit of adventure is dying out. The truth is that it is dying out in the only group of people who can actually afford to do anything. Capitalism has driven up the cost of traveling so high that it simply costs too much for the average person to have an adventure. Couple this with the fact that virtually the entire world has now been mapped and/or populated, meaning that scientific explorations are essentially a thing of the past. There is also the fact that in years past so many stupid people have gone into the wilderness unprepared getting themselves lost or killed that there are now laws and regulations keeping others from going certain places or increasing the cost to where it is out of reach of the ordinary person.

Several issues have come up with the house lately. The disposal unit hasn't been working for a while so we can't use that part (i can't even bring myself to call it half) of the sink and we have to rig the dishwasher to drain into the other part of the sink. The hot water heater started leaking a couple of days ago, the lawnmower stopped working yesterday, every time I tried to patch the tube in my bicycle I've found another hole, my roommate's water bed started leaking, and one light fixture in the house keeps burning through bulbs. It kind of makes one wonder why so many things should happen at the same time, what is the statistical probability that so many unrelated things should break at the same time. I think all this may have contributed to a dream I had last night.

The dream took place probably about 2000 or more years ago, and no I wasn't in this part. It was at a party, though surprisingly some of the decor was quite modern. At least I think it was a party because all of the gods were there and somehow I don't think that they would all have just lived together. I remember seeing the Christian god, Odin and a couple of other Norse figures, Shiva, and even Buddha was there chilling out at the salad bar. Anyway, the Christian god started crying and whining that he "wanted more people to believe in him". It was in the same tone that you would hear someone complaining that they have no friends. That dream was a short one and lead into this one, this time with me in it.

I was in the local GameStop and they were as usual asking me if I wanted to reserve upcoming games. I asked about few the upcoming games I was interested in and of course they asked me about the new Halo. I then went on a bit with my rant about how the master-chief (or whatever the fu** he's called) was nothing but an abomination and how I would rather watch him die than actually finish the game so in other words I was not interested in reserving it. I told him how computers should never be integrated into human flesh and should have no direct control over a person's life. To make a long story short I compared computers having control over humans to the church having control over God. That was the end.

As a side note, every fan of limp biskit should watch the MadTV parody of one of their songs entitled "posin'"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi2ploapbm0

keep posin' posin' posin' posin'

It's great. That is all.

try this little game on long drives. it can even help the driver pass the time as long as they don't keep their attention too long away from the road.

on a partly cloudy day start from the letter A and try to find clouds which look like an object with that letter. once found move to the next letter.

other rules:
do not look near the sun
decide before hand if the word cloud is acceptable for play
if you are driving use common sense and if you find yourself looking too long from the road stop playing.
words must be nouns
make up other rules as necessary for your situation.

this game is best when there are a large number of small clouds.

if the weather does not permit playing consider searching for signs with words in alphabetical order instead.

either of these games are better for children instead of letting their minds rot on movies and video games.

i ended up not going to the job fair last week. i decided that i didn't like the fact that the only funds i would have access to was the money in my pocket for gas and any emergency. i decided to wait until the one tomorrow. i'm set on going and have already begun preparing. hopefully all will go well.

going back to lubbock on friday. i'm going to miss being here but i think enough time has passed that my brother and nieces should be fine and i don't want to out stay my welcome. i am also missing my own bed and home, not to mention playing xbox anytime i want instead of waiting until no one is using the tv.

the good news is that my brother already received a phone call from a company he turned in an application to today. the company is in abilene and he is planing to move himself and youngest daughter into my grandparents old house. it looks like they will be moving this summer after all but of course things can change.

there are some problems with the house though. a cousin of mine, living in the house at the time, punched and kicked various walls and doors and there is now several gallons of paint and some nice ceiling fans came up missing. revenge, i tell you, i want revenge, ha ha ha. just kidding but not really. now he's refusing to leave and inviting people who do not belong into the house so now my parents have to go through some minor red tape to get him out so that my brother can move in.

anyway people are waiting to use my computer and i'm getting hungry.

things sheeple have in common, aka top indicators that you or someone you know doesn't think for themselves.

1. you own an ipod and or an iphone
2. you only listen to the top 40 station in your town
3. you think MTV still stands for music television
4. you try to use the words soldier and warrior interchangeably
5. you believe that your country (or church) has never done anything bad
6. your screen name has a number higher than 10 at the end because 30,000 "people" use the same one
7. you vote straight ticket on every election for the same party (after all that's what your parents told you to do)
8. it never occurs to you that the politicians in your party could be corrupt in any form
9. you think fashion design is a useful and worthwhile profession
10. you are over 18 and you are still surprised by the endings of teen movies

if you meet 3 or less of these requirements you may be ok
3-4 you should be worried
5 or more and there is probably no hope, don't buy a book or an original film for this person they will never read the book and will hate the film.

i will probably do this again in about a year, if i remember to, to see how my feelings on this subject has changed.

it really sucks that i am so young but already feeling some of the effects of aging. i'm not sure though if they are real, perceived, or brought about by some subconscious desire to be old, or near the end of my life. i've begun having heart burn regularly, almost everyday during the more stressful parts of the year, and having near constant back pain. nothing i can't deal with, i'm mostly worried about them getting much worse as i get older since they are already starting now when i'm under 30 years old.

once upon a time i could drive for six hours and turn around and do it again in the same day. now after sitting that long of a trip all i seem to want to do is sleep. sleeping is almost all i wanted to do when i got back to lubbock on monday night and the same was true for my trip back to killeen on tuesday night.

death seems to change a lot of things. in the time since my sister-in-laws death until her funeral my youngest niece was actually nice and pleasant to me, i.e. she didn't feel the need to hit me for no reasons apparent to me. just an interesting observation, she seems to be mostly back to normal now.

as mentioned before i went to lubbock for a night to pick up some things i needed. mainly the research i am supposed to be working on and some software i wanted to (try to) install on my laptop for the website i am working on. if i can decide on and learn a programing language for the extras of the site, or if i can talk one of my friends into doing it, the website should be up by the end of the year. the only things which i believe will initially be available will be the registration, forum, and hopefully the book exchange page. the exchange will probably not be in anywhere near its final form. to make the entry easier i would like to be able to connect to a database to retrieve information about the books so those who participate do not have to enter in all of the information i think would be useful for every book. later i would like to include a social networking part of the site, since this site will bring together those people who like to learn or teach i think it may be worthwhile but whether it will have the same things other social networking sites have i do not know. the networking part will probably be one of the last things to be done.

i'm going to a one company job fair tomorrow in houston and am following some leads on a company in midland. i don't feel the need for urgency in the matter since i am, at least for the moment, taken care of. i'm not the type of person who needs or wants a lot of money so the $1000 i get paid for being a TA is enough for me at this time.

i also brought my cat back with me so that he could visit my bother and his daughters, his original "owners". it's kind of funny that he wouldn't get into the carrier at my house and fought me a little bit trying to get him in, but once we got into the car and started driving he wouldn't get out.

anyway, i believe that is all for now.