There’s something about airplane food—maybe the fact that it’s on the airplane—that prevents it from being filling and completely satisfying. Then again, it could be that I’ve just flown with Southwest too often.

I’m in Albuquerque right now, waiting to catch a plane to Kansas City, where I’ll meet up with the family and we’ll be off to a hotel for the night and then off to the wedding.

During the flight, I discovered that there’s a football player who is an Industrial Engineer (Dante Hall), that Air Crisps are good--but not like a hamburger--and that mandarin oranges are a “loose-skinned fruit.”

Before I scurried off to the airport, I took an Engineering Econ test. This test made me nervous, so I was pleased that it doesn’t appear as if it will cripple my chances of achieving a good grade.



The man walked briskly, importantly, as if he were going somewhere. He was headed to his car, and he had parked further away than he remembered.

He reached for his keys, which were in his right pocket. He was carrying a Bible in his right hand, but instead of shifting the book from one hand to the other and grabbing his keys with his right hand, inexplicably he reached awkwardly and tried to grab the them with his left. This proved difficult, but after some considerable maneuvering, he extracted the bothersome items.

He unconsciously fingered the automatic unlock button on his keyless entry unit, and hit the button several times, as was his habit. What he heard startled him, because his car was in sight up ahead, but the sound of the unlocking door came to him from his right and slightly behind.

Turning, he realized that his car was indeed to his right and slightly behind him, and the car he thought was his was one of the same exact make and model—even the same color.

“Very odd,” he thought, but, changing his direction, he opened the door, climbed in, and drove away.

Bible Study just rocks, it’s just great.

I think this is a tendency of human nature, though I’ve only confirmed it in my own life and my Aunt Rosie’s: things that a person doesn’t understand—even though they may be very simple—seem scary and complicated and intimidating if you don’t know about them. For instance, burning CD’s on a computer. A very basic utility these days, but I’ve never owned a computer with that capability or had the need to perform this basic function, so it seems a little beyond me. I know it’s not, I know it’s simple, but if I don’t think through it in those terms, it just seems difficult.

Well, the Gospel is something like that in my life. I know the basics, I know why I’m a Christian, I know what a person has to do, I know what Jesus did. But sharing the rudiments with another person? It's never been crystallized in my mind, where to start, where to go, what Scriptures to use. Now I know. We discussed it at our Bible Study this afternoon. I think that’s what I’ll have the next time I host a Bible Study or give a Topic of my own choosing.

It goes like this.

First, God loves you. (John 3:16)
Next, your sin separates you from God. (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23)
But, Christ died for you and provided a way to be reconciled. (Romans 5:8) He could do this because He was perfect (II Corinthians 5:21), He rose from the dead (I Corinthians 15:3-6). He is the only way (John 14:6).
Finally, if we believe, accept Him as Savior and Lord, we can have a relationship with Him. (John 3:16, John 1:12) It’s a free gift, there’s nothing we can do to earn it. (Ephesians 2:8,9)

That’s it, that’s the Gospel, all a person needs to know to become a Christian.

When a person is mimicked, it’s sometimes assumed that that person is getting mocked. For instance, Lancaster Countians have the coolest way of talking, so for awhile I picked it up, much to the annoyance of some (remember, annoyance is a choice). I got the feeling that people (at least one person) thought I was mocking them. I wasn’t making fun, I thought it sounded cool so I did it. And now we’ve got this professor from Sri Lanka who not only has a cool accent, but inflects his voice in a way very different than all of his students. I find myself trying to mimic him and I’m getting better at it. If you see me sometime ask me and if I’m in the right mood I’ll do some “Dr. Logen” for you. My, oh my, me and imitations.

Indexes are a wonderful thing. They’ve saved me more than once on exams. Like on one of my Thermo midterms last year, the professor came up with some electrical-tinged problem out of nowhere (like we were supposed to calculate a “Work” using like current and resistance or something, and that would propel us into the Thermodynamics of the problem). I had no clue, but I went to the index of our textbook (open-book test, of course), and what do you know? Tucked way close to the beginning was this handy formula.

And again today, another open-book test—this one SPC. I referred to the index several times to help me locate critical information in the book. Without it, I’ll bet my score would be two grade points less than it’ll end up being.

By the way, I'm leaving tomorrow for Kon's wedding. I'm taking a test at 9:30 and heading out on the plane at 1:25. If I'm a little sparse on blogs for the weekend, you'll know why. I'll write when I can, I'm sure lots of exciting things will happen.

When I got to the IME library this morning there were already people there studying. And as I sat and read the paper and studied, more and more people kept coming in. It turns out there was a test in the Lean Manufacturing class, and people were getting their last-minute studying done. In the course of their many conversations, I picked up that for whatever reason they may have been required to memorize some stuff. That got me to thinking. When was the last time I had to sit down and memorize a list for something at school? Like, not very often, and certainly not in engineering classes. That's one thing that's very nice about engineering. We're talking concept and application of concept, NOT rote memorization of anything, including formulas. I still remember that kind of stuff in school. Not fun.

It's funny, in my Econ class we're learning basic stuff about loans and bonds that my dad could probably do in his sleep. The fancy formulas they come up with to generalize the stuff might give him some problems, but he could reason it out no problem.

I talked to my IE367 TA today about a homework problem involving Capacity Resource Planning (basically, we were calculating how many labor-hours and machine-hours a certain forecast required), and once again I'm reminded about how much students gripe about teachers and how often it's totally undeserved. I even saw a profanity about this particular TA, along with sundry other comments about how hard he grades. And in the interest of full disclosure, I chimed in with affirmations of his grading toughness. Hopefully I didn't complain. But it turns out that he is simply trying to mimic the teacher's grading policy. So the TA's trying his level best to do what the professor wants him to and as a result he gets the class thinking he's some sort of fiend. Doesn't make you really want to go into teaching at that level does it?

But he's a PHD student who's research interest is Operations Research. This is something I'd definitely be interested in looking into. He said that Information Systems is what the industry around here wants, so there's not much OR at the undergraduate level. I need to talk to Dr. Billo about whether doing the IS option will crimp my desire to explore OR. And I need to talk to Dr. Arthur over in Statistics about what exactly OR is and what curriculum is available.

I've heard that OR is just a bunch of crusty mathematics, very dusty and boring. But this is from a Manufacturing Engineering major who's really interested in the nuts and bolts of manufacturing as opposed to trying to improve it from a mathematical and theoretical perspective.

Yay for theory!

This is called perpetuating a personal stereotype.

But I'm running my mouth before I really know what OR is. For all I know it could be a lot more directly applicable than what I'm implying.

This may be my imagination, but I think when students go into a professor’s office to talk about a test, the teacher automatically goes a little bit on the defensive. This is the result of the myriad of people that come in and moan that they got the shaft and how the teacher was so unfair in their particular case. So they tend to think everyone that comes in has a bone to pick with them. Why can’t everybody just be nice? Huh?

Do I have regrets about my school-related past? Sometimes I do. If I knew then what I know now I would have done stuff a lot differently. I might have even decided to go away to school. Back then I didn’t even consider it as a viable option. But I could’ve gotten so much more involved in campus life and campus ministry if I was away from home. I would’ve been forced to develop more close relationships with people on campus. I know the dangers inherent in this idea though, and if I would’ve gone away, I probably wouldn’t have had the Bible School experiences that I’ve had and am going to have. I wouldn’t have been able to be involved with AHQ (which, when I stop and think about it, probably would have been the deciding factor in staying local).

I think Bible School, AHQ, and college are the three, extended experiences that have impacted me the most spiritually, for different reasons. Bible School because of all the things I learned in class, the stuff I learned by being real with people outside of class, and about God on tour. AHQ because of ministry and accountability. And college because it forced me to dig into what I believed.

But that seems to be selling some things a little short by not including them. Things like the Mexico Trips with Larry Warfel and the guys’ prayer group that meets before church. And just church in general.

And another, separate category: the people that have impacted my life.

Note to self: do not get hair cut short because it accentuates the size of ears. And said ears need absolutely no accentuation.

The words "abstemious," and "facetious" both have all the five vowels in them in order. This could be the quintessential useless fact.

Tonight after we got home from Seattle I lingered around home like…like my girlfriend was there. But it was my family instead. That's nice.

The psychology of a football fan.

In the paraphrased words of that wise Mennonite farmer Lowell Kropf, “It’s just a football game. A football game is not something you get depressed about.”

He’s right. I don’t think I should get depressed about something as eternally meaningless as an athletic event.

So I’d been wanting to visit my friend Barney in Seattle for a long time, and finally I got the chance when my brother and a friend decided to go up and visit Barney’s younger brother who’s attending the same University. Also involved was this eternally meaningless athletic event, also known as the Ducks vs. the Huskies. It wasn’t pretty, if you are a Duck supporter. For some reason the debacle set me off into this really gleeful mood, which rather annoyed Barney. Sorry Barney.

I forget where I was going with that. Maybe I was going to wax high and mighty about how sports shouldn’t take too high a priority in our lives. If that was the case, I should shut up, because me waxing high and mighty on that subject would be like the Walton clan getting on a soapbox about the danger of wealth.