Good circumstantial day today.

School is like a very skewed normal distribution. *smile* That's really an ignorant statement, because there is--I'm sure--a distribution that fits what I see in my mind, but I don't know it. Picture the normal distribution as a bell-shaped curve. And when it's skewed, it just means that the high point of the bell is shifted over to one side or the other.

School starts slowly, builds throughout the term, until it's all craziness. But then the craziness gives way the end of dead week, and the pressure begins to relent. Finals week comes along, and the pressure is off, in a way. Yeah, there's pressure to do well on your exams, but it's a different kind of pressure than the pounding constant of assignments and projects and papers. And then, as finals week dawns, gradually you pick them off, one by one. There's less and less to do, and you feel lighter and lighter (literally, too, if you now find time to work out...hahahaha!). Then it's done and it feels wonderful.

But, folks, what really made my day today is that I'm now a scholarship recipient! I'd given up on this one, that I had applied for in April, but dad finally gave me this envelope that had been sitting on his desk for a week. And it was a congratulations letter. It's so cool. I just smiled. Couldn't help but do that. Made little exclamations. Didn't jump around or yell, but very happy nonetheless.

Ahem, I've been praying for financial stuff, though like I said, I'd given up on this one.

It's great, my little brother Trevin is sitting at the piano, pounding away. I can't hear him now, but he was playing notes and yelling (a supposed melody I suppose--I wonder what's in his head while he's doing that), all the while uttering jibberish.

One other interesting note about the concert on Thursday. Concert Choir did Hal's arrangement of the spiritual Knockin', which AHQ was offered! We tried it but it never "took" with us. It was cool, very well done.

We had a party for Hal this afternoon.

I don't think there's any feasible way for me to sing in Chamber next year, but it would be so, so great.

Then I hanged out with Brandon and Carrie. I don't do that very often, just hang out. It was fun.

Oh yeah, there was an IAC picnic tonight. There'll be some good people to work with.

Sam Haines was there, it was good to see him. He was telling me about what he's doing on his internship, it sounded pretty cool. Statistical analysis, a scheduling problem. Sounds like he's hitting the high points (from my perspective) of the IE discipline.

I've really got to make sure I really enjoy what I decide to do. Will I be satisfied as a statistician? And more than that, will I really enjoy it and have passion about it?

I'm not quite sure yet.

I need a stimulating musical outlet, somehow.

There's this girl that I don't even know, named Sarah. She went to Bible School with Randy this year. She has a blog that I want to quote from, because she's on to something, a real important thought at least to me.

"...what about the dreams i felt were so inspired by God? could it be that these dreams were very much my own and not really God's plan after all? ... God instills dreams and visions within us simply for the purpose of leading us to His ultimate purpose for us. i now know that God did indeed place those dreams in my heart...maybe only as a necessary means to lead me to where He wants me to be. i'm still not sure of where that is, but this whole life is a journey of faith. one that i know i cannot take alone but must rely on God for my direction."

What she's saying is that just because plans change doesn't mean that God wasn't directing you "back then." It could have been, sure, that you totally missed God's leading, but it also could have been that He did have His hand on you because that's the direction He wanted to point you at that time.

I feel that my creative mind is coming back.

I went to an LBCC choir concert tonight, and it was a special one because Hal is officially retiring at the end of this year.

Oh man, I want to sing so badly! I've got to find an outlet. Come back Tom! I need time. That's what I need more than anything, when it comes to singing. In the absence of AHQ, I've made commitments up to my eyeballs to where I can't even seriously consider singing in an OSU choir next year because of time constraints.

But this concert. Tom, they did a Janequin, and a Grandage (the Australian Birds song guy) that was so cool. And they did this cute little Tango number, and the a "sensuous" (straight from Song of Solomon, I think) piece called Let Him Kiss Me. And of course a madrigal and a couple of fun spiritual-types.

Nostalgia ends up being a cheap word, I think. One that is thrown out with much passion by the one experiencing it, but received by those listening without much understanding. Because you can't understand it, unless you relate it to your own nostalgic experiences and even that is hard to do because nostalgia is hardly on-call.

By the way, an observation. When an individual is in the midst of an experience, they tend to subconsciously think that it will never end and it's always been this way. For instance, in San Francisco, the Giants started the season off really slow, but have since come on fairly strong. A local sports radio personality admitted that even he had a hard time believing that they would ever pull out of their slump. When the Giants were in the midst of that slump, the fan looks around and sees all the deficiencies in the team and feels that they will never snap out of it because they just aren't good enough.

But the truth is, it will pass. Mark Lowry says one of his favorite passages in Scripture is: "It came to pass..." "It didn't come to stay, it came to pass...either it'll pass or you'll pass!"

One more thing. I'm sort of thinking that evidence of the objective and historic truth of Christianity is critical.

You can say all you want that being a Christian and having the Spirit inside of you 1) gives you power over sin, 2) gives you peace, or 3) has changed your life. All true, but not good enough.

Some else you can say all you want is that Christianity is "different from x religion because..." but if it's just anecdotal, if it's just experiential what we have is one person's word against another. Who's to say that we experience answers' to prayer every day but the Moslem doesn't? Or that a devout Buddhist monk doesn't have peace? Who's to say that?

But, Christianity has a fact in its history that validates it.

Remember what Paul said. Without it, we are of all men most miserable.

Think about that. I've thought about it, I've puzzled over it. Because the Bible says that. But it doesn't make sense, because say Resurrection was not a historica fact. Wouldn't I still have the same peace, the sense of purpose, just because I believe Resurrection occured?

But the way Paul says it makes it sound as if this event is the single most important one in our religion.

Don't elevate experience to the height of objective truth, because from the question "what is truth?" everything stems.

Interestingly, in the last few weeks there's been a slight increase in the amount of people that visit the by-log, but ever since I changed to Blogger commenting, the volume of comments has dropped significantly.

Two reasons, I think. The primary one is that the new commenting system is a pain, especially for dial-up connections. I'm going to switch back to Halo Scan, stupid ads and all, when I have some time (which might be...a couple years).

The other is the content of my posts. Not as conducive to discussion. But whatever.

All I know is it's going to be a ltate night tonight, a real late night, trying to finish this database project. It's really cool, it has all of the songs that AHQ has ever recorded, and information about them. And then I have copyright information too. The idea is that I will have stored all of the pertinent info regarding copyright payments and album orders. Blah, blah, blah.

It used to be fun, but the deadline for me is tomorrow at 9:30.

But I want to go to a concert tonight. It's going to be a long night for sure.

I can get all the sleep I need when I'm dead. And I'm young. And it's the end of term.

Excuses, excuses, you'll hear them every day. Well Byran, he'll supply them, if from sleep you stay away.

It's interesting. The number of people visiting the by-log has increased a little over the past few weeks but the number of comments has dropped like crazy. I wonder why...

When I get time, I'm going to switch back to Haloscan as comment host.

Ugh, I can hardly carry on with my work because it seems so daunting. I should have known that this database project would involve a lot of work at the back end. Konwing that, I should have worked on it more yesterday. It might be a late night tonight, a real late night.

I want to go to a concert, my old choir director's finale as a full-time instructor. So I think I will.

It's going to a be a late night tonight, a real late night.

Right now, in our research, we've developed two computer programs, which really need to be one in the final analysis, but it's ok for now.

The first one has 1245 lines and has at least 100 variables. The other one, which we're currently working on has 1293 lines and probably at least as many variables.

Maybe I'll figure out a way to post a snippet of it, somehow, but right now the format's terrible, so I won't worry about it.

I with there were 36 hours in a day,
I could sleep 18 and still have 18 to play
(and study and work out).

-Once I was at a New Year’s Eve party and they wanted me to make a New Year’s resolution. I was in my final year of high school, and I didn’t know what else to say so I said “I want to make sure and graduate this year.”

-The question was asked at Prayer Meeting tonight: what would you rate yourself, holiness-wise, on a scale of 1 to 5? A wise lady spoke up and said, probably the closer to five you get the more likely you will be to give yourself a one or two.

-I bet that David Phelps considered the song “Virtuoso” to be the title cut of his new album, but then decided against it because of the arrogance it might project.

-Two criminals in the UK escaped their prison because it was to “open” and turned themselves in at a stricter one. They had stopped using drugs, but the open prison was so infested with them, they found it hard to pursue their new path of uprightness. They were not punished, but allowed to stay at the stricter prison.

For my Advanced Production Planning & Control class, we were assigned (in groups of two) a published research paper on various topics within this area. We're supposed to write up a 2-3 page summary of the paper and give a presentation for the class.

The first presentations were today, and boy, there were some painful moments.

I realize that if English is not a person's first language, then communication can be very difficult, and it may seem that the presenters know less than they really do, but even trying to take that into consideration, there were some painful, painful moments. And to make it worse, the teacher wasn't afraid to ask questions in front of the class and let the students fumble around.

We're presenting Thursday.

Gotta run and pound some code. Brent's here.

Back when I was at Bible School in 2003, I got into the habit of journalling. A real good thing, very positive. But, I've gotten out of the habit of it. Time is probably the biggest culprit, laziness too I suppose.

Yesterday I made an entry into my journal.

School this term has numbed me, spiritually, I think. It's created an environment that has not made it easy to spend quality time with God. A lack of time spent with God will just leave you dry and empty.

I know,
Life can take you up and it can bring you down;
Priotities ideals can get so turned around.
'Til all that's left is just a shell.

But you say,
That you require more of me than empty talk;
It's a life you want to guide me through my daily walk.
It's rewarding more than I could ever tell.

In all that I say,
In all that I do,
This is my purpose,
To live a life that's pleasing to you.

Here's some from that journal entry:

"It hit me tonight as I was looking at the Sunday School lesson: something’s missing. It’s like this term at school has numbed me. I thought back to the song we sang at Bible School “There’s a Stirring” ... The passion, the excitement that I felt for heaven. Where is that now? When’s the last time I longed for…anything. It seems like whatever spirituality I’ve had lately has been rather manufactured. I’m still doing what I’ve been doing, but anything emotional has had almost to be made up.

Something’s missing, something’s wrong.

I was also trying to remember that C.S. Lewis quote that goes something like: “If I find in myself a desire that nothing in the world can fulfill, the only conclusion I can reach is that I was made for another world.” That truth doesn’t really sink in until you really do feel something missing, which I do."

I had some quality time with God last night.