I must be very, very disciplined this next week. I must be mostly business (besides pre-planned breaks, ala Church League basketball). I must be ruthless toward sleep.

This is going to be a telling week. It's essential that I am efficient with my time.

Will that mean I'll blog a little irregularly? Maybe. We'll see.

I'm making up for it today.

I feel like I'm ready to move out of my parents house and live by myself. Strange to say and mom might freak out if she reads this, but I think it's true, at least at the moment.

I thought about this as I was sitting upstairs in the library on this beautiful Saturday afternoon and observing the people that are in this open, round room with me. A lot of them are older--this isn't the freshman/sophomore party crowd--and they all sit quietly with their books and computers. What a wonderful, peaceful environment.

That makes me think of my future, that maybe I'll be like some of the people, far from home, living close to campus, and finding comfort in the peaceful setting of a quiet corner of my university's library.

Right now I can't imagine being lonely. In a way, I feel like Eugene Meltsner, when he waxed eloquent about the wonder of a long evening alone with his books.

But I can guarantee myself that I would get lonely, though there are lots of variables that could affect that. For instance, could I connect with a fellowship of believers that I felt comfortable and at home with?

What a beautiful day today. Mostly overcast, but not overcast in a way that is dreary--like you might think of London or Chicago in November--but in a very spring way, in a way in which the ambience is light and the views are clear and it smells like mowed grass.

So what if you were called a glutton and a drunkard and accused of keeping bad company? Pretty bad testimony, right?

Guess who was called that?

Luke 7:34. The Son of man has come eating and drinking; and you say, 'Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' (RSV)

Maybe that’s taken out of context, these actually may have been people trying to conjure up bad things to say about Jesus. I don’t know.

I do know he did hang out with sinners. But notice, he wasn’t influenced by them.

So anyway, not only did I have a horrible first half, I also had like three fouls. Then I get a fourth in the second half. At this point, my headiness should have kicked in, but it failed me, because I knew I had to be careful, but I wasn’t careful enough. And so, on a rebound, I was scrambling for the ball, and they called me for a loose-ball foul. Just like that, I’m gone, fouled out.

So I sat on the bench while the other five were huffing and puffing up and down the court, but wow did they play. Kon got hot, Phil kept on making plays and Kevin came up with some huge ones of his own.

We lost, in two overtimes. We had chances, twice, to win it at the free throw line, but we couldn’t quite get it done. I was very impressed and encouraged by the rest of the team’s play.

Monday should be fun.

The trend for young men playing basketball in high school: ankle socks.

Basketball Monday night.

We were missing three veteran players, and when I realized who we were playing I didn't think we had much of a chance. They were veterans themselves and they were pretty good.

We didn't score for the first few minutes, I think they scored the first seven on us. But we scored finally (Kevin's really good), and coupled with Uncle Phil's steady play, we kept up with them.

I, on the other hand had a horrible first half. Couldn't shoot, couldn't take care of the ball, etc.

Gotta go, more later.

This project, we didn't get it done. We turned in what we had (albeit a minute or three late) and now we have a new project probably even tougher and certainly bigger. This time, we're not starting on it so late.

I didn't deal with this whole situation very well. I don't get upset very often, but when I do I don't do a whole lot to check my frustration.

I've certainly learned from this experience how databases and computer programs interact. I think frustrating times like this can really cement knowledge in a person's mind, at least I'm hoping.

But more than that I'm learning that an upbeat attitude comes not from a certain level of things going right. Say 100 means the world is so incredibly beautiful and incredible and 1 is you feel like killing yourself. It's not like there's some threshhold that all of the sudden I lose my joy.

People know me as an upbeat guy, which is a good thing. But I'm learning my tendencies if things get bad enough, and that is to sit back and say, rather mournfully, "I can't believe this is happening..." instead of buckling down and resolutely, positively, trying to solve the problem.

Positive vibes, it's hard to work productively when there aren't positive vibes. I'm a Christian, there should be positive vibes coming from me.

Know what I'm saying, Vern?

I thought things were getting better. We talked to the teacher. But we're still pretty short on know-how. I think it's improving.

Maybe this will be an all-nighter.

What does God want me to learn from this? Why is this happening?

I was going to blog about my emotions about the basketball game last night, and they weren't particularly positive emotions. But the immense cloak of frustration I'm feeling now makes last night seem like a distant memory.

And my left eye is hazy.

Is it the teacher? Did he give us something that we just weren't adequately prepared to do? Or is it us, that we put it off a little bit and then didn't give ourselves the chance to ask for help?

Whatever it is, it's nasty and we're not the only group struggling.

I am so frustrated.

We have no clue, we're aimlessly casting about and we have no clue. And the program is due tomorrow and we have no clue.

I can't stress that enough.

I don't think I've ever been this frustrated with something school-related. We need help but there's not help in sight, at least not tonight, and tomorrow doesn't look that bright either.

I'm alive and emotional.

A girl told me I had good handwriting for a guy.

My handwriting can be pretty good, but it can be awful.

C'mon now. I'm taking this stats course very fancily named "Design of Industrial Experiments."

Stats...well, it tests my common sense standard at times. For instance, if you have two processes and you take 10 samples from each and one average is higher than the other average, the one with the highest average is the best, right? Seems simple enough.

But no, you have to perform a hypothesis test, because you have to take into account how much the data varies.

But here's the "c'mon now." In the latest homework assignment is a problem about 4 circuit designs that are being tested regarding how much average noise they allow (low is good). Circuit design #1 has an average of 19.2 (19.2 what, you ask--I don't know) and one of the other circuit designs has an average of 79.8. One of the questions was, "Is there a significant difference between any of the circuit designs?"

Well, yeah.

But it took me about a page to show that in stats-speak.

"The glory of God is a human being fully alive." St. Iranaeus

What does that look like?

Psalm 98:5,6 commands us to use musical instruments to praise God.

I mean, you ever thought about that?

I'm sort of talking to Mennonites here.

So you take that literally and you have to go find replicas of the exact instruments they used back then (cornets, dulcimers, etc.), but still, it says praise God in that way.

Maybe you can minister prophetically on a saxaphone.

You'd think that if there was something that people tended to overlook/turn a blind eye to (paying copyrights), the affected publishing companies would make it easy for those who do feel a need to comply to find out who and how they are supposed to pay. But AHQ has found that it is pretty hard to track them all down.

That's what I did for a good portion of this day. I got a lot accomplished, though.

Then I golfed in the mud and squishy grass that is Fiddler's Green.