Saturday's aren't very good blogging days. I was 23-9 in picking the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. I shot a 52 for nine holes today at Trysting Tree. I helped some people with SAT prep. We're going to watch The Lion King 1 and a half.

La la la.

It is so nice to be done with this term. I can't stress how nice it is. My life already feels a bit less uncluttered.

My hair is cut, a personal monetary deposit is made, and a quartet one made as well.

Even getting a little copyright stuff done. But I need to do a lot more of that.

I got an e-mail about Walgreens coming to campus in April for interviews for interns and retail trainees. Yawn. Retail is not high on my list of job types. And besides, I'm not exactly on the job market (though an internship is a bit of a different story).

But then I saw that they were going to have a Pizza Party while they talked about themselves, so I got out my datebook and jotted down the details.

Yay for pizza.

So I was walking past a table in the library with two guys sitting at it, and I heard, "...you know what else (stinks), that Byran's such an idiot..."

The way it was said I thought that the person who said it must have known me and was just trying to be cute and get my attention. But I didn't know the guy.

Byran is not a very common name.

In Thailand, some people believe that if you point your foot at a book, you'll get a bad grade.

Life is so complicated. You think it's going to get simpler, easier, slower, less frustrating, and then something else comes up.

The key is to have "something" that is a constant through every situation, horrible or wonderful.

First grade is secured! A in IE337. There's really only one that is a question mark, and that's the infamous Visual Programming class. But I've been having a good feeling about it, which scares me because usually I have bad feelings about borderline classes and they turn out good. So what happens if I have a good feeling about a borderline?

I'm very pro-nuclear.

Which would you rather have, perfect doctrine or strong, strong love for other believers?

Well, I'd preferably have both, it's not really a fair question, but the Bible does say that we'll be know, not for our doctrine, but for our love for each other.

So the question becomes, how does that love play out practically in my life. Does this love I have for others, does that define me as different to everyone I come in contact with? How does that actually look?

I'm not sure, actually. I mean, most people are pretty nice to each other most of the time. There are certainly times when my relationship with God would prompt me to react differently than most other students, but that seems to be a reactive issue. Love seems to be a proactive concept.

It can't be just being nice, because there are too many nice people that aren't believers.

It's all about God. Even the glory that He wants from us is not for our benefit, but for His.

Think about it. If God put the most value on anything less than perfect (us, for instance), He would be less than perfectly righteous.

That's sort of hard for me to grasp, but the bottom line relevance to my life is that I must be God-centered, first and foremost.

And folks, I don't want to come across sounding as if I'm desperately defending school. School doesn't need to be defended. It is what it is, a joy to some, horror to others. Good for some, bad for others. It's all about where God wants you, how He's made you, where He's taking you.

It's where I'm at right now, I like it (not counting the last three weeks), and that's that. Whether I or anyone else classifies it as real life really doesn't make a whole lot of difference.

Just some perspective for myself.

I guess I was coming at the issue of real life with the simplistic viewpoint that real life is just "reality" as opposed to what we normally thing of it as being. I mean, would you say that a person who went to college straight out of school, graduated with a PhD and immediately got a job teaching at a University, would you say that that person has never experienced reality?

Different? Sure. But is school or living with your parents or living in Poland any less "real" than living by yourself trying to make ends meet? I think it's different, and certain of those scenarios may be more difficult than other ones, but they're just different ways of experiencing reality, one is not any more real than another.

I think it's probably true that we tend to consider "real" whatever we're familiar with. So I think school's real, you might think working outside of academia is real, Kobe Bryant thinks a glamorous life of a basketball star is real.

But what defines real life?

That being said, I understand the meanings we attach to terms like "the real world." "The real world" is basically whatever is not sheltered from the stark realities of this world. But again... And I could go off about how school illustrates this.

This is getting a little dangerous from my perspective, because folks, I don't care if you disagree with me. In fact, I'm only pretty sure that I'm thinking clearly on this. I do think it all is a matter of perspective, though.

Some classmates were just discussing the Bush vs. Kerry and who they're going to vote for and I was hoping like crazy they wouldn't ask me if I was going to vote.

That didn't set too well with me.

So I wonder why?

First, we have to get past the awkwardness I feel talking about my relationship with God in the lab, but I think possibly a bigger issue in this particular case is that I'm not personally convinced about the whole two kingdoms concept. If any of you try to convince me, I'll launch into my "low-level society" scenario...

To me there's a lot better case that can be made for refraining from running for offices that in our society would inevitably lead you to compromise (President, for instance) than making a blanket statement (as most of the conservative part of my denomination does) that being involved in the governing of our nation - and voting - is 'wrong'.

Anyways, that's why I didn't want to get into it with them, because it would have been too complicated and I couldn't have given them a satisfactory (to me) answer. Although "To honor my church" actually isn't a bad one come to think of it.

Ok, so I'm ready for them to ask me now.

This is the first time in weeks it seems that I'm sitting in front of a computer at school with nothing urgently pressing to do. It's nice.

Actually, I have a final at 6 this evening, but it's not a class or an exam that I'm very worried about. I'll study for it, but I've got over six hours.

I've taken two exams so far. The first didn't go particularly well, but that was to be expected, considering the type of test it was. We're talking a closed-book, closed-notes test covering the equivalent of two or three hundred pages of material on Visual Basic and UML. I'm not very worried about it because I know this professor curves generously, and I'm confident that I'm in the upper end of the undergrads and probably competed well with some of the grad students. But I don't want to talk about that class. All I want is a good grade and then fo-gedda-boud-it.

Then I took a Manufacturing Processes exam this morning. It went fine, though as Sam said, it's a Jensen test (out teacher), he nickel's and dime's you.

We explored welding theory in that class by the way.

That huge, incredible burden that was IE411: Visual Programming is over. Completely done. But the final stretch run wasn't without some twists in the road. We had to demo it and it didn't go very well. But I don't want to talk about it, certainly not dwell on it. I have a sneaking suspicion it might turn out all right. But even if it doesn't, it's ok. It's past.

Randy's team won the BMA BI basketball tournament.



I know three of the guys in the back. Aaron is on the left, Randy and Brandon are on the right. The other guys, dunno (a Jason, a Gordon, a Peter). Probably just hanging on the western boys' coattails.

Randy hit 8 threes in the last game and he wasn't even the high scorer. That was one of the non-western boys.

Let me lament about my lack of activity in the last few weeks. It goes with the hecticness, but it’s bad because I don’t work out and I come home late and snack around. I’ll betcha I’ve gained two or three pounds in the last two or three weeks. Good thing for basketball every week.

Weight is relatively important to me. I think I inherited that trait from my mom.

Last winter/spring when I went to Bible School and then toured for a month with AHQ, I was concerned about how much weight I was gaining! So I decided enough of this. Thankfully, by being a student at a University, I have access to their workout equipment (one of the many good things about going to school), so I started working out.

But whenever stuff gets too busy, exercise gets cut out pretty quickly. Like now.

For anyone who wonders, I weigh between 170 and 175.

New rule. If you comment on this message you have to say how much you weigh! That makes me smile.

Kidding.

How about this: any guys that comment on this message have to say their weight.