Oh that life was always simple. But can a baby be very fulfilled?

I find it hard to do schoolwork on Friday’s. Theoretically I have well over half the day of freedom at home. I'll do most anything, except buckling down and working. Like now, I really should be studying for a test. And I will, oh yes, as soon as I’m done with the computer. But when will that be? Five minutes or an hour? Let’s try to keep it closer to five minutes, shall we Byran? Ok.

So that’s settled.

The other thing is, I’m a softie and it’s got to stop. I’ll actually end up hurting the Math 20 students if I don’t stop being so nice. So a student does a bunch of problems the wrong way, but comes up with the right answer. I don’t want to make them do it all over again, so I just go over, explain the right way, have them do two or three and let them off with the expectation that they’ll do it right the next time. Sounds reasonable, but rules are rules and if they don’t do them right they need to. And then I’m really big on being consistent as much as possible so that if, in a moment of weakness, I let one person have it a little easy, then I need to do the same to others with the same problem.

So Byran, do better. Ok.

So that's settled.

Today I was in the computer lab working on a project for my Production Planning and Control class and a fly fell on my head.

Ok, Production Planning and Control. The teacher is from Sri Lanka with a very thick accent. It’s cool, though a little hard to understand. But he has an amazing policy regarding homework. I say amazing, because I can’t recall an engineering teacher ever telling students that they can’t work together on homework. I know why he does it. He wants the homework to be done individually, he doesn’t want groups to split it up (you take the first four, I’ll take the last four) and copy others’ work. There’s really no way to enforce it, and I’m sure a lot of working together happens.

I had my first Midterm today. It was purported to be an easy one and it was, basically. There were a couple of things here or there that you never know about. But I’m hopeful about a good score.

Sing along.

I get so clumsy,
I feel so foolish,
I can get so stupid
Then I feel so useless
But You're saying You love me
And You still want to hold me
And that You want to be near me
'Cause You're making me holy.
Still making me Holy, yeah.
-Chris Rice

I did something sort of stupid today. I have a hard time seeing the system as a whole sometimes. I get honed in on one thing and other relevant information just sits, frozen deep inside my brain, not accessible until it's too late. It was a scheduling thing, there was a seminar at OSU I wanted to go to (this seminar required something of a reservation), but then I remembered AHQ was rehearsing, but then David reminded us he couldn't, so that freed me up for the seminar. Then on Tuesday David said he could, but I didn't want to undo my reservation after flip-flopping around so much. Then I realized that I had to work Thursday evening anyways, which ruled the seminar out, but would allow a rehearsal. And by the time I told the guys, Tom had made a dentist appointment and David may not be able to practice until later.

My God is amazing, He's amazing
He can calm the troubled waters,
Make the blinded eye to see
My God is amazing, He's amazing
Whatever my God can do is simply amazing.
-The Anchormen

This morning another "permission to copy" letter came, this one by fax. I'm so encouraged by how God is working through my prayers.

I went to a Bible Study on campus this afternoon. Just four other guys, it's going to be great. It already was great. We're studying 1 Thessalonians and the leader guy is really good.

Exhibit 3. A large man grabs the leg of the victim, and plunges his ring-finger knuckle into his calf muscle again and again. The only thing is, we're not talking Medieval times. This happens today.

I love little children.

A few days ago I was not praying about one of the biggest stresses in my life at the moment. Teaching music at BMC has been a good learning experience and I'm enjoying it more all the time, getting the music around at such a late hour has been a problem. You have to research who holds the copyright, call around, try to get a hold of the right person, and then when it comes to big companies like Word, it can be very frustrating. So I committed this thing to prayer a few days ago and already two of the songs that were in limbo have been taken care of, for free even. There's stilll a couple I'd like to get out of the way, but it is exciting to see it happen, nonetheless.

I love my Engineering Econ teacher. He is miles beyond being self-conscious as he lectures, which is more than you can say for a lot of teachers. Most teachers seem comfortable speaking in front of the class, but that's not to say that they're not inhibited in their expression. This guy is pure "himself." Today he shut the door to the classroom 6 times within the first 30 minutes. He'd see the door open as he was expounding on some point and he'd ramble over there and shut it, talking all the while. But as he'd turn his back on the door, it would swing open again. Then 5 minutes later, he'd see it again and repeat the process.

I wanted to talk to him after class, but there were too many people in line. So this may be a misunderstanding, but I'll say it anyway.

There's this thing called calculus, and one of its fundamental concepts is the limit. For instance, if you have (1/x) and you let x get infinitely large, the idea of a limit says that you can let the expression (1/x) "go to zero." Basically you can consider it to be zero. Think about it, if you have 1 divided by a gazillion, the resulting number is going to be very, very tiny, and if you say that x is going to infinity, you can consider the expression to be zero.

With that in mind, let's look at a circle. A circle is round, obviously. It's a curve. But what if you zoom in on a part of that circle? If you zoom in enough, that curve begins to look awfully straight. This convenience is used in other areas of calculus and it's even been used in one of my classes this term in relation to forecasting.

The reason I bring this up is because my Econ teacher basically said that this idea is an outdated concept, which I have a hard time believing. Like I said I may have misunderstood him, but he was making the point that the world is not a linear place. We do all these simple applications that involve linearity, but he says in the real world it's much more complex than that. I agree there, it's just that I still think zooming in on the curve and assuming a straight line gives us a wonderful approximation of that curve over a short distance.

I must say, the smell of coffee can be very, very good.

Let’s say God is leading me down my life’s road in a big Hummer, my aforementioned life is a Ford Thunderbird, and my future plans are the windshield--a little dirty, with a few cracks in different places—but still usable. Today, God decided to take the hulking rig through a deep patch of gravel, picking up a piece as He drove through and sending it hurtling at the protective glass in front of me. It didn’t shatter, but it did send a myriad of cracks shooting in all directions. And it made a big impact on me, because I was clinging to the security of that windshield, however imperfect and tenuous it was. Now who knows much of anything except that I need a new windshield.

People say that the world is worse now than it’s ever been and it’s declining all the time. I think I disagree. Do you know what they did to torture people back in the Middle Ages? Exhibit 1: place a cage, with no bottom, on the bare abdomen of subject. Place rats in cage. Place hot coals on top of cage. The rats, seeking to escape the heat, burrow through the subject until free. Exhibit 2 is just as bad, just as completely barbaric and inhuman. And then there’s Sodom. You know how messed up they were. For all the sin and debauchery in our society, I don’t know, for sheer brutality and acceptance of atrocities and evil in the name of whatever, there may have been ages in the past that make our own pale in comparison.

The children of Israel passed through the Wilderness of Sin, and that is not a metaphor. Exodus 17:1.

I’m still having warm fuzzies about homework, mostly because it’s been pretty easy so far and we’re crunching quite a few numbers. I like both of those things.

Here’s how our church does Communion. We always observe this beautiful ceremony on Friday evenings, but before you take part in Communion, you are expected to be “of like faith and practice” with our congregation. Then the Sunday before or directly preceding Communion itself, you are expected to give a testimony as to your standing with God and man and your desire to take Communion here. That meeting the Sunday before is called Counsel Meeting, and we had it tonight. Very encouraging, I love to hear people talk of what’s happening in their lives.

There’s a line in Rescue’s song “2000 Years Ago” that grabs me every time I hear it. It’s a song about how Christ was thinking about each one of us as He died for us. I don’t tend to think that I would have been a part of the mob that called for Jesus’ death, no, surely I would have recognized His divinity (it was so obvious, right? how could anyone miss it?). But then I look at how many times I have slapped God in the face and this line tears at me: “…but I know from my own life, I’d be in the crowd.”

2000 years ago, they put his cross in the ground.
2000 years ago, His blood flowed down.
And though my foolish heart finds it hard to believe
2000 years ago, He was thinking of me.

The word “zephyrs” refers to gentle breezes. This fact is for your general enlightenment, but specifically for thou who wilt lift on high his voice in a hymn which containest that word therein. It would also be great in scrabble.

Communicate, people. Let me advise you in that way.

Unmitigated disaster? No. Lacking in many usable pictures? Yes. At least according to people in the know. We must have taken 500 pictures yesterday at the AHQ photo shoot, so you’d think there’d be quite a few that were pretty decent. Personally, I haven’t seen any since yesterday, so I can’t say for sure what will happen. But reports aren’t particularly encouraging.

Our working idea for the cover is something with four individual pictures instead of a group shot. So we came up with a couple of white sheets to serve as our background, and then Randy and Konrad spent over two and a half hours taking pictures of each of us individually and then as a group. Our biggest problem was that we didn’t have anyone there with a lot of formal photographic experience that completely took charge and told everybody what to do.

In the evening I went to a concert with some people from our church. The group is Rescue and they are phenomenal. They’re special because not only do they have the lowest bass singer in the world (literally, Tim Storms is in the Guiness Book of World Records for singing the lowest recorded note on record) and three other guys that can sing like crazy, but they are clear and obvious in their presentation that it’s all about Jesus Christ and a relationship with Him.

There's more here, inside of me, but not now.