For all your (all y'all's) references:

Other meanings of the word Zot. 

My personal favorites include the name for God, and the sound of lighting from the Usenet Oracle.

    Alright, don’t get your hopes up, I’m not going to draw any exciting new analogies between Hot Dogs and the Son of God, nor am I going to necessarily put forward any unusual views. The title does make sense though… you’ll see…
    So starting a few weeks back there was a class at my church that started on Creationism and science. As a firm believer in Christianity, but also a science-oriented individual, this seemed pretty interesting, so I went to that. There was a lot of info there, but the overall view was that life was incredibly complex, yet perfectly balanced that to have it spontaneously occur is too improbable. One of the more convincing arguments for this was certain biological structures that would not have made sense in any form between their current form and nothingness (ie the idea that these things formed slowly over millions of years doesn’t really make sense, since about half-way through their evolution they would have been such a burden on their host creatures as to wipe them out entirely). There were all sorts of other ideas put forward too, my other favorite of which was a large 16×16 grid of squares. Some of the squares were orange and some were yellow. The first slide had the squares pretty much randomly arranged and the presenter explained that the probability of getting that exact arraignment was 2^-265 (a rather small chance that this would happen). The next slide had the same number of yellow and orange squares, except there was quite obviously a large smiley face in the middle. The probability that the smiley face would show up randomly exactly the same as the random pattern before, and yet it has so much more meaning that is was clearly designed as opposed to having occurred randomly.
    Also a couple weeks ago I went to a bible study with some college friends. We played some board-game style games and did a short Bible study and a little worship. Nothing incredible, but I’d forgotten how much I liked worship without amplified instruments; just a guitar and peoples voices. A lot of church groups anymore like to amp their guitars and add drums, a bass, piano, tambourines, etc…
    The Creationism and science class also briefly mentioned the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which I haven’t heard much about lately (I’m guessing the whole Kansas school board thing is resolved by now). I checked out their site again and I still think it’s a great movement (the hate mail is especially entertaining). I also think they make a nice model for other religions in their toleration of opposing religious views. I mean, I’ve never heard of any Pastafarians trying to forcibly push their views on other people (unlike a lot of mainstream religions).
    Speaking of trying to get the word about about religions, today, the Cornerstone Bible Fellowship was selling Hot Dogs for 25¢ and Drinks for 25¢. They had a couple people handing out flyers that had meeting times for their group, I heard them asking some people if they went to church, but they didn’t bother me about anything. So I got two hot dogs and a cup of Squirt for 75¢, and then came back for a refil for the other quarter of my $1 total I spent on lunch. Thank you CCF!

    And so there you have it, Jesus connected to hot dogs. Nothing profound I’ll admit, just felt I should mention the various religious things that’ve been going on with me lately (especially since they involved really cheap food). Generally I’ve been really thankful for my life lately. I’ve also started reading through Psalms a chapter at a time. It’s been going pretty well so far since the chapters are nice and short but still end up with a good message.
    And so ends my very religious post, because now I have to go study for a midterm. Good night all!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I’m thinking it’s
probably due to the fact that I’ve had people to talk to online, so I’ve
been venting any events and thoughts on them. Hopefully they don’t mind
too much.

At the beginning of the week I thought I had 3 midterms today. One of
them got cancelled yesterday, and as it turns out, another one was never
really scheduled for today (I don’t know WHAT I was thinking). So, that
just leaves the physics midterm which I’ll have to go take in 20 minutes
or so. In the end it probably worked out for the best since now I’ve
already studied for my polisci midterm on Monday which I can’t study much
for this weekend because I’m working on a haunted house.

Alright, so it’s really more of a haunted forest that we’re calling The
Forbidden Forest. My friend’s church hosts a “Trunk or Treat” every year
as an alternative halloween. The last two years me and my friends have
participated in the trunk decorating, but this year we’re instead helping
create and run a haunted house/forest. I’m personally in charge of
ambient lighting, which should be too difficult, but will take quite a bit
of time to get set up and working. Plus I’m sure I’ll be helping with the
effects lighting and general power stuff. Looking forward to that.

Generally life is good right now. I mean there’s school, work, tests, etc
to be worried about, but aside from all that.

Huh, as cool as this facebook-blog sync thing is, I just realized I’d have
more to say if I didn’t think it was going to be posted on facebook.
Perhaps I need to find a separate blog… You know what would be cool? A
blogging system that would let you tag different paragraphs (or even just
sentences or parts of text) to be visible at different levels of
viewer-ship. Like I could throw in a paragraph just for a certain group
of friends, or even better, throw in inside jokes just for the people that
would get it. Are you listening blog maker people? This is a good idea!

Alright, that’s all for now, time to take a physics midterm.

First of all, I’d like to point out this article. I’m far from skinny… this is good right?

So I’ve been having a lot of trouble ordering food recently. The tales are as follows:

Stop by Taco Bell to order some food for the family:
Hello, welcome to Taco Bell etc, etc
Hi, I’d like a soft taco, two double decker tacos, two mexican pizzas, a combination burrito and a small diet pepi
Teehee, k, two double decker tacos and a soft taco…
…
… that’s all I got…
K, two mexican pizzas, a combin–
Two mexican pizzas
… yes. And a combination burrito… and a small pepsi…

I did eventually get my order correctly.

Drove through Carl’s Junior for some late night food for me and my friends. After finding out they don’t have shakes at that particular time, instead of giving me a combo and an order of fries, he just substituted the combo fries for the one I ordered. Plus, they put onions on the combo I asked for without onions.

Today, I drove through In n Out in Westwood (no small feat to begin with since the entrance is hidden in a pay-for-parking lot. So I pull up to the speaker:
Just a minute sir
Sure
…
Hi, how are you?
Fine, I’d like a hamburger with no onions and no to-
Hi, how are you?
… FINE, I’D LIKE A HAMBURGER WITH NO ONIONS AND NO TOMATOES, AN ORDER OF FRENC–
A hamburger with no onions and no tomatoes. Is that it?
NO, I’D LIKE AN ORDER OF–
I can’t hear you, can you move close to the speaker?
(Yeah, sure, my car can move laterally too (right). So I back out, and pull in like a foot from the speaker)
I’D LIKE AN ORDER OF -
I can’t understand you…
I’D LIKE AN ORDER OF FRENCH FRIES, AND A HAMBURGER
(So my voice is echoing off the walls of neighboring buildings at this point, which satisfies me somewhat, even if I’m still not getting my food)
Sir, I can’t under–
SHOULD I COME IN??
…
FINE, I’LL JUST COME IN
So I left. I meant to go in, but it turns out there isn’t a parking lot… so I just left. Went to Panda Express, it was closed, finally went to Bruin Cafe. Though the cashier managed to stumble through the order taking process, it turns out every item you order needs a separate receipt because of how they hand out food. Now, I understand this happens to work, but there HAS to be a better way to do that.

Anyway, grr to all you bad-order takers. 7 more weeks of school (can’t come soon enough).

So I just watched Mr. T’s new reali-T show; it’s great. Mr.T’s really an amazing guy in real life too. Anyway, the show’s on Wednesdays at 10pm, and I pity the fool that don’t watch it!

I’ve been trying to get Facebook to import my blog for a while, but it kept grabbing one random post and saying it was from August 24th (why that date, I don’t know). As it turns out Facebook doesn’t do RSS 2.0, so I switched the feed to RSS1 and I’m good to go.

Just eight more weeks of this quarter (but who’s counting right?). Things have settled down, I’ve got mandatory discussions Tuesday so I’m just working Thursday, which is fine.

Looking forward to Mr. T’s new “reali-T” show at 10 tonight. Also looking forward to band tomorrow (got a new song to try out), and midnight madness Friday night at the Bren. There’s some sort of Halloween theme, I’m going as the Grim Reaper 8′), looking forward to that too. Marie’s visiting this weekend, so I’m looking forward to hanging out with her. All in all, good weekend coming up starting tomorrow night!

That’s it. No deep insights or thoughts this post. Maybe next time.

    Well, it’s time for school again.
    The week started off well, played with the pepband at the new student convocation. I really missed band and all the bandos, and it’s great to be back. Monday I also hung out at the band booth. Played some Uno, threw around a football, and had quite a few people sign up for band; Thursday should be great. Wednesday I again hung out at the band booth and played with Airzookas. I also won a stuffed anteater at the New University booth! He’s cute; I named him Pedro. Went to Disneyland; got to walk through splash mountain to get off when the ride stopped.
    Friday was the first official day of school.
    My International Relations class will be interesting. The professor seems nice, and the material should be interesting, but the kids in the class are all very politically opinionated, and it looks like there’s going to be a lot of work. I guess since it is a poli sci class, it’s understandable that it’s full of political students. For example: the professor would ask a pretty straight forward question about government, or war, or rules, and the student answering would say something like “Blah blah, in Iraq, blah blah.” I’m sick of hearing about the middle east as it is, and now I have to sit through a class of it. There are mandatory discussions, and debate topics that will supposedly be debated during these sections. I don’t know how 30 students will participate in a debate, but it should either be a lot of fun (I like debates) or really annoying (I dislike stupid people).
    Next up was Physics. The professor is from somewhere in Europe (I forgot where) and has a pretty thick accent. She’s agreed to post notes online though so any misunderstandings should be cleared up pretty easily by that. Based on the first lecture, I’m pretty confidant I’ll do alright. She explained sin and cos to the class, which seems really basic and maybe a waste of time, but it also means she isn’t going to assume too much about our previous knowledge. Which is a good thing for all professors to do. Up until the class I’d been thinking I was going to learn the last part of physics (past what I took in high school), but during the lecture it occurred to me that I had learned all this in high school, but just didn’t get AP credit for it. So it shouldn’t be too bad since a lot will be review. Unfortunately I looked at the book today, and it looks hard. I also wasn’t feeling well, so that might have affected what I was experiencing. The basic concepts are all familiar, but the equations looked very big and scary, and I couldn’t remember what all the variables stood for. I think once the prof. starts teaching the material I’ll be able to relearn it pretty well.
    Met up with my friend from high school, to have lunch and buy books and stuff before Informatics at 3:30. We hung around, killed time in the lab, and then went to the room only to find out that the class was cancelled. More on this class after Wednesday.
    A couple of good friends from band had graciously invited me to dinner that night, and I’d planned on going after class. Since class was cancelled though, I was suddenly available for the band gig that afternoon, but didn’t have a shirt or jeans. Fortunately Eric lent me a shirt and I got to play. After the band thing I had some delicious chow mien at my friends’ apartment, and then headed off to the FOAM PARTY!
    I had expected the party part to be pretty bad, and it was. I don’t like dancing, loud music, hip hop, rap, or scantily clad people grinding near me. However, the foam was an interesting experience. Had quite a bit of fun, and got really soapy and pina coladay (the foam smelled strongly of pina colada).
    After the foam party we went back to my friends apartment. I walked back hoping to dry off some as I went. Every time we stopped walking for a second I’d find that more foam had oozed out of my shorts. When we got there I got a towel and did what I could to dry off. My shoes were soaked and as I write this are still wet and pina coladaed. I sat on the floor on a towel for a while until one of my friends (who was fortunate enough to own a shower near by) showered and brought back a DVD. We watched the DVD til 2am or so, and I finally got a ride back to my car and drove home. All in all a great afternoon/evening and an okay first day of school.
    The biggest problem with school I’m facing now is that I have two mandatory discussions on Tuesday, and school Mon, Wed, Fri. This leaves only Thursdays available for work, and as much as I’d love to work just one day a week, I can see how that might not be preferable for my employer. I’m going in this Tuesday and hopefully something will be worked out.
    I’m also feeling rather under the weather today. My nose is stuffy, and I’ve a bit of a headache. I blame all the excitement of school starting, and the inhalation of foam. My eyes are also kinda burny which is probably due to the nose/sinus thing, but might also be left over foam-sting. I don’t feel that bad though, so hopefully it’ll be gone by Monday. My earliest class isn’t until 10 this quarter, which means I get to sleep til 8 in the mornings, which means if I’m in bed by midnight (not an unreasonable feat) I’ll get a full 8 hours of sleep. Yay!
    I hope school’s going well for everyone (or WILL go well for those of you who either don’t have class on Fridays (you know who you are), or who’s schools haven’t started yet). I’ll try to post more regularly (I should have plenty of time to kill between classes in the lab).

I highly recommend the musical stylings of Jonathan Coulton. You can listen to any of the songs here, and they’re all downloadable if you look at the source code. Usually I’m all about free music, but this stuff’s really creative so I bought an album anyway to help support his work.

Maybe a real post soon… I hope…

http://www.planetxbox360.com/index.php/articledetails/show/452/1

Just thought I’d send that along and say, “I agree.”

Yes, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. Life’s busy (just as a rule of thumb, I think). School’s getting close, we’ll see how much time I have to post when it gets started. I hope you all (are)have(ing) a good school year.

    Well here we are… five years after a terrorist attack. What’s changed? Well, mostly it’s just harder for us to travel or have privacy. Some people argue there’s more security/safety/etc, and some argue that security is just as bad as five years ago; They all agree it’s harder to travel or have privacy though, so at least one thing has changed for sure.
    Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a good American and such, and I think it’s too bad that some people died due to a terrorist attack, but at what point have we remembered enough? On the news this morning, a principle at an elementary school was explaining how they were educating the younger kids about the terrorist attacks so they could participate in “remembering” those who were lost. Now, it may just be me, but do kindergardeners really need to know about all the gruesome death in the world? Also, why must we keep being reminded of it? Sure, yeah, I remember a lot of people dying, but I don’t want to keep thinking about it.
    Bottom line is, I think there needs to be a lot less grieving over the past and a lot more looking to the future. I do however, agree with the general population that there needs to be some sort of memorial, and I’m totally in favor of whatever kind of structure they have planned for the land previously occupied by the twin towers.
    I’m not trying to be all risque, or inflammatory, I just think people need to generally focus less on the past, and today is an excellent reminder of this.
    This is also my first blog post to be automatically sent as a note from my Facebook account to all of your Facebook feeds. Kinda nifty cus I’ll probably get more people reading than if it only showed up on my blog (http://siap.awardspace.com/blog), but kinda unnifty cus you don’t all really care and it’s being forced upon your feeds anyway. Hopefully they’ll add an incoming feed filter soon…