Whatz Up Interprises

Uncle Jay Explains: Year-end! 12-22-08

2009-01-09T18:40:00.001-06:00

Good video

2009-01-08T13:52:00.001-06:00

A friend sent this to me and I thought I would share it with everyone.

2008 so far

2008-10-22T02:22:00.002-05:00

Wow, I am looking and I have not posted anything in so long that it pretty bad. Lets see, this spring I graduated from TSTC with an accociates in Mechanical Engineering. After graduation, I got a job in Kilgore Tx, but found out quickly that they were not whom I wanted to stay with for any length of time. For example, I asked the boss about moving up in the company and his reply was that I was pretty much stuck where I was. After I asked around, I found out that I was one of the higher paid people, even higher paid than the folks that had been there for 10 plus years. So, after working there for several months, the Lord was gracious enough to put me back to work in Stephenville. I am still currently working there and have been doing a few odd jobs during the week in Tyler. I did make a trip to Carlesbad Caverns the week after I got an apartment in Stephenville. I am hoping between now and Thanksgiving I can spend several weeks in Stephenville without going anywhere so that I will be able to gather some spending money to make another trip. I still want to go back to school to finish my bachelors but need to wait till some of what I owe already is paid off. No, I haven't found a gf, but then again I am not financially stable enough to support anyone at the moment either, so it all works out. Anyway, I need to get to bed. I have stayed up entirely too late. Night.

Hubbard, TX

2007-07-01T02:28:00.000-05:00

I am sorry I have not posted here in forever and that this is going to be very negative, but someone needs to say it. I am living in Wacko, TX while going to school so I have a tendency to travel back to Tyler where my family lives once a month or so. I use HWY 31 because it is the shortest distance between Tyler and Waco and currently has the least road construction. Well, there happens to be a little town called Hubbard in between. It is just a HUGE nuisance. To begin with, it slows down the rate of traffic to 35 miles an hour. Secondly, it has a stop light. Third and the worst part is that I have ALWAYS had to stop at this light. Tonight I thought was going to be my lucky night. I am cruising at the speed limit (wow) and the light has turned yellow about one truck length from the white line. Not a big deal because it would have out a flat spot on my tires trying to stop quickly. Not gasing it or anything, I go through the light and it turns red while I am going underneath it. I go a long for a ways still going the speed limit and then get pulled over by a cop. Great. Fun Stuff. I have not done anything wrong, so I am not shaky or anything. I am tired and I have heard horror stories about cops, so I tried to be nice. He comes up and asks for my license and insurance. That is no biggy. I have both. Not a problem. He then informs me that I have ran the stop light. At this point is where I almost loose my cool. I know that at this point there is nothing I can do, but to accuse me of that is just WRONG. I did not say anything. I just kept my mouth shut. He asked me where I was going and coming from. I told him about going to Tyler to see family and was coming back so that I could get to work this morning. He then hands me back my license and then walks around my truck looking for something else to write me up on. I ALWAYS walk around my truck before a road trip for this reason. He then goes and writes up a ticket for running a red light and a warning because my license plate is partialy covered by the dealer border. WOW. At this point I was thinking about how in the world was I going to pay for all this? I have to move into a new apartment and have to get ready for this trip later this summer. What am I going to do? I then ask him what the hours are and what city and what not because I have lost it. I also asked him what it would take to keep this off my record. He told me that this could "EASILY" be taken care of by defensive driving. He recommended that I rent the video from a movie house, "It will only take 6 HOURS of your time." The time I am not worried about. It is the money to rent or to go to defensive driving that I am worried about. How come when you think you might have it all coming together and might be able to break even with all your bills that people like this come around? First, it was the head of my majoring department informing me that I was going to be stuck here for another semester taking 2 classes each semester for the next 2 semesters and now it is a cop whom is writing tickets to the people whom are honest workers just barely scraping by trying to NOT go the credit card route that everyone else does. Of course I was a dummy and did not explain any of this to the officer. He does not understand that some people are legal and do their best. He just wants to hand out tickets. He is probably the one whom made that light such that it is the ONLY light between Corssicana and Wacko that is not flashing yellow after 1am. I don't know what to do. I am going to have to do something. Walking is not the answer because then it would take weeks (need to pay bills) to get home. Any other way costs money that I don't have. Am I missing something? What do I need to do? For starters, I am off to sleep so that I can go to work and maybe attempt to make some money. Later.

Girls.

2007-04-08T02:44:00.000-05:00

Well, I have realized that girls in the level of society that I am living in have alot different standards than I do. I guess that I am just talking to the wrong ones. I thought I had a good thing going. She was smart, had a good personality, and looked pretty good. Then came the fun two things that set us apart: she was not a Christian and she does not have the same morals that I do. I hope we can still be friends, but I don't want to get as close as she would like to unless we are alot closer to the same page. The interesting part is that she knows what I am talking about and can actually hold a conversation about some of the things that I have learned, so it is not like she does not know about Him, she just does not believe. So, I have decided that I am going to continue praying for her, but move on as far as gf and bf type stuff is concerned. We were actually doing pretty good and talking about all sorts of stuff that I have not been able to talk about since leaving a LETU due to the fact that no one else knew what I was talking about. Great stuff. Anyway, time to get back into the rat race, I have work early in the morning. Later.

Comments

2007-03-05T10:08:00.000-06:00

Sorry guys, I had to turn off the comments again. It seems that the spammers are taking over again. Later.

Power Plants

2007-02-10T08:18:00.000-06:00

This is very, very stupid. I am not sure if the rest of ya'll know about this, but is is big news here in Waco. They are wanting to build a coal power plant or two near Waco and alot of the locals don't want one here. This is kind of interesting due to the fact that the Texas power grid is starting to get close on its ability to keep up with power demands. It is predicted that withing a year or two we will start to see alot of black and brown outs. There are 4 ways to keep this from happening. 1. Install alot of windmills. 2. Dam up a few rivers and install power plants on the dam. 3. Coal plants. 4. Nuclear plants. All of these projects would cost alot of money, but the coal plant would be the cheapest. They already have a project that is being considered concerning building a windmill farm off of the coast of Texas, but this is old news and I have not heard anything about it in a year or two. It probably fell through. Rivers. We have already damed up too many of them and what few there are left don't have any water in them right now due to a lack of rain that has lasted 4? years or so. Nuclear. We all know that everyone is too afraid of a nuclear plant. Personaly, I think that a nuclear plant would be the cheapest way out. As long as you properly care for the plant and you don't hire stupid incompitant people (Homer Simpson) it should do pretty good. Everyone that I have suggested going nuclear with claims that it is too dangerous because of examples like Chernoble. From what I have read, that was caused by the plant not being properly taken care of. So, we are left with coal plants. So they are dirty polute the air a little. There is nothing that you can do that would be cleaner that would generate that kind of electricity and have it up and running in less than a year(I am not sure how long that they are planning to take to build these plants but it could be done in less than a year if properly motivated). Well, now I have shared my thoughts that are probably not well planned out when put on paper, but that is what my take is on the subject. Later.

Stupidity

2007-01-27T22:42:00.000-06:00

Why is it that I am attracted to the wrong girls? Is it because I am stupid or that I am just surrounded in that type of girl? Okay, let me give some background to this. I have been looking for a girlfriend and while doing so I have been trying to find out what I would want in a girlfriend personality wise. There are several that I have asked out that I liked. I do know that I like an outgoing personality. Quiet is okay, but I don't want someone that is intirely introverted. I like the idea of dating somone that likes to go out and do things and does not like to just sit at home all the time. I know that sometimes there isn't money to go out and do things, but to flat out not want to go out and do things is just not me. It would also be nice if I was able to date someone that lived close (ie while in Waco, date someone in waco). Another thing that I know is that I want someone that does not have kids. There is nothing wrong with kids themselves, but I am not currently in a position to support kids and so far, that is what all the girls I have tried to date are looking for. Along those same lines, I don't want kids. I don't care if you are on the pill, there is still a chance and I have several examples of people that were on the pill plus one or two other contraceptives and still have a kid to two to prove that there is still a chance of getting pregnate (plus there is the whole BIBLE thing that I am attempting to live by and am not doing such a good job of doing). So, there will be no sex for me UNTIL I am married. It is rather funny, out of all the girls that I have dated or liked in the last few years, only two of them has not had kids when they moved on or said that they would not date me (and the funny part is that one of them that has not had kids adopted kids AFTER she was married). It is driving me nuts, it seems that there are fewer and fewer girls out there that are dateable. Maybe the Lord has not put her in my path yet or that I am missing her and she is right in front of me? I don't know. Anyway, I said all of this because one of the girls at work that I liked that had a great personality, claimed to be a Christian, and was cute is now pregnate by some drunkard that has no intention of marrying her and was using her as a friend with benifits while his real girlfriend was at college in another state. (and yes, this is an everyday occurance with employees that are in my class of pay) Anyway, now that is off my chest I am going to play some music and do some homework. Later.

Truck

2007-01-12T00:26:00.000-06:00

I think I finally got my truck working right. For what seems to be the longest time I have been trying to find out where a strange vibration and sound was were coming from. I found it today. I have been methodically replacing parts on my drive train of my truck. First the Pinion bearing. That was fun. I set the backlash wrong, so I took it in and got someone else to fix it right. The pinion bearing was not the problem and I also checked all the other bearings and seals while I had the rearend apart, nothing else there. Well, today my roommates and I replaced the u-joints. They were bad. It was so bad that on one of the bearings there was nothing but powdered rust left where bearings were suposed to be. I had an adventure getting parts. That alone is half the fun. First, I stopped at Pep Boys. They had the u-joints and I was stupid enough to purchase them. So, when I later took them out of the box, there were 2 completely different u-joints (both u-joints on my truck are suposed to be the same). One u-joint had a different clip system to hold it in and the other u-joint was a sealed u-joint that had been obviosly taken apart and therefore usless. So, I was able to bribe my roomates into taking me to different autopart stores to look for replacement u-joints after going back to Pep Boys to return the bad parts. We finally found a part store that had the u-joints but they were a bit more expensive than what I wanted (beggars can't be choosers especially at 8pm when everyone is closing up for the night). Putting everything back together was rather easy (might have been something to do with the lack of rusted, locked-up parts). We finally got everything back running, test driven, and cleaned up at about midnight. I think it went rather smoothly. Anyway, I have class early in the morning, so I am off to bed. Later.

Happenings

2007-01-07T23:16:00.000-06:00

Well, I have been working alot, which in itself is not bad, but leaves little time for blogging. Anyway, I had a good Christmas. I got to stay at home a few days. I was able to spend time with the family and did a few projects around the house. As usual, I spent too much on Christmas presents, but I had bought thing I thought would be useful and matched the person that I bought them for. I got a few updates for my desktop. I got a new video card and a gig of ram. Of course I got some clothing too. I am contemplating buying a new truck. As it stands right now, there is a vibration/noise coming from behind the cab. I can't quite pin point where it is coming from and that alone is driving me crazy. I know that it is not the tired or the rear end. During the break, I repaced a few of the bearings in the rear end to see if that was the problem. The ones that I replaced were blue from getting too hot, but that was not where my problem noise/ vibration is coming from. Next I am going to try to replace the ujoints. A few people have said that it if that does not work, it could be the transmission or the transmission might be out of balance. I am hoping that it is the ujoints, those are cheaper and alot easier to do. Classes start back up tomorrow. I am more than ready. I am going to talk to the department chair tomorrow to see if I can add a few more classes so that I can get out quicker. I more than ready to get out of college. I want to get away from Walmart. I want a full pay check again too. I do like the internet that I have on campus though. I have gotten quite spoiled, especially since I was one of the very few that stayed most of Christmas break. So, the internet was exceptionaly fast. Anyway, I am going to bed a little early. I worked almost 30 hours this weekend if you count Friday. Later.

LIfe in Waco

2006-12-13T23:48:00.000-06:00

Dang I have been slacking off. I was looking at how many posts that I have done in the last 2 months and have decided that I am way behind. Basically, I have been spendin all my time working, Farking, school, and hanging around with my roommates. I have been looking at getting another vehicle, but have decided that I had better not waste the money (I can still look though). I am interested in diesel, electric, and hybrids right now. A while back I wanted hydrogen, but there has been alot of legeslation and red tape put up reciently to keep hydrogen out of the market. On the other hand, hybrids and evs are coming along pretty good because of the private industry (basically it is almost at a dead halt, but going pretty fast for the amount of money spent on it compaired to other technologies). The corperate industry has done its best in the last few years to bury evs and they have not been really trying (in my opinion) to improve the hybrids. I also looked at diesel vehicles, but they have been more centered towards acceleration than gas milage lately. I was looking at the VW rabbits and pickups of the early 80s and they were getting 50 miles to the gallon on the hwy. The newer diesel cars get between 38 and 40 on the hwy. There are some people that claim that they are able to get 60 miles to the gallon with their rabbits, but I have yet to acctually meet any of them. I thought about making my own hybrid, but have decided that I am going to need a larger income to accomplish this. Something about it being an expensive hobby. Evs and hybrids use several different voltages. 6, 24, 48, 240, 480, and so on. Basically they are in multiples of 6s. Unfortunatly, you can not just use a car battery. Car batteries are made to be used in short bursts when starting the car. Marine batteries are just as bad about not catering to the ev or hybrid industry. So, when purchasing batteries for your ev or hybrid, you are going to need something a bit more expensive. Somethign to the tune of $200 a battery (small reminder, you only get about a year out of one battery). They hybrid idea sounds a little more primising because the method I would want to go with would be using electric motors to drive with a small diesel generator running at a constant load. this has 2 advantages. 1. Regenative braking. 2. Diesel motors are more efficient if you have a constant load at a constant RPM. So, I would have to do some math based on the generator to pair it with the motor and what voltage the batteries are set at (simple compair to Graph's Circuits I class). So, the more details I am telling the more thousands of dollars this project is looking to cost so, I will keep my moth shut and move on. The other alternative to making one is to purchase one. I did see a Chevy 4x4 hybrid that was an 06 model, but it only got 19 on the hwy and 17 in the city. I am sure this is an upgrade for a 4x4 model, but still that is not by any chance of an upgrade milage wise. I also found a hybrid pickup that was 2 wheel drive that only got 21 on the hwy and 18 in the city. The city part is probably an upgrade, but still not enough of an upgrade for me to sell my current vehicle to purchase one. Anyway, it is getting late and I am sure ya'll are tired of hearing about my research so I am going to sleep. Later folks.

My computer

2006-10-04T22:16:00.000-05:00

I have come to the conclusion that it is again time to make more upgrades to my computer. I am judgeing this by two things :1. My graphics card is no longer supported by its manufacturer. 2. My graphics card is selling on ebay for about $5 plus shipping. There is also the fact that it is no longer supported by most of the newer games. I am wanting to play Halo 2 when it comes out, but there is not a chance at this point in time that I could consider playing without upgrading first. More than likely, it will not even install. So, I am looking at graphics cards right now hoping to find a good deal. Anyway, it is getting late. I had better get some sleep. Later.

My Age Group

2006-10-02T07:44:00.000-05:00

I have come to the conclusion that therer are not many people that are my age that do not define their lifes by enything else but the next time that they get drunk. It is really depressing when you think of things this way, but so far I that is all I have found. I know there are some people that don't, but shoot, there are atleast 100 students at LETU even that are like that. I remember once when I went to a local gas station by LETU and when I got there the attendant saw my sticker and asked if I was getting the "usual." For me, the "ususal" would be a good cup of capaccino, but for some students aparently is a case of Bud Light and a couple of bottles of Jack or Capt Morgan. I don't see anything wrong with drinking. I don't mind 2 or 3 beers myself on occasion, but that is as far as I will go. I have nothing to forget, I have nothing to run away from. If you are wondering what made me write all this, it is called girls. There are several of them that I have been talking to here and there. They have great personalities, they are pretty, and they even have a bit of intelegence which is not so common here lately. BUT they all live to see the next time they get drunk. It is no fun. Where are all the good ones hiding at? Is there something that I am missing? Oh Well. It is time for class. I do not need to be thinking about this stuff all day long when there are classes to go to and Halo to play. Later.

School

2006-09-17T23:39:00.000-05:00

Well, I have started school. It is real easy. I did hw for the first time tonight. I finished it in less than 2 hours. We are basiclally going over stuff that I learned in Manufacturing processes lab back at LETU, except we are draging it out into 3 classes and over an entire semester. I am also taking a class that I did not spend enough time doing the hw at UT Tyler. I think it is called Strength of Materials. Basically, we are looking at metals and seeing why they are strong so far. Boring. Next Please???? I am also working several hours a week. It is alot diffrent here than it wwas in Lindale. There is alot more customers and freight. Fine with me, more job security. It looks like they are happy with me so far. Maybe I will be able to get a good schedule. There is one good thing about this semester, I get to learn more about the lathe and mill. I have never used a mill before this semester, but there is not much diffrence in requirements in order to run one or the other. I am being required to buy alot of tools this semster. I am waiting till my first pay check form this store to come in before I start buying.
On another note, I have decided that it is time to start looking for a gf. I am tired of not being able to have fun with a friend of the female variety. There are things that you just can not talk about or do with guy friends (ie. movies, plays, life goals, symphonies, etc). That is one thing that I miss about letu, if I asked around enough, I could of probably found a date for one of the previously mentioned activities. So far, there arn't any girls that I have run into that would even consider doing anything of the sort. Most of the girls that would be interested in such things are down the road at baylor, not here. It is annoying to have all this extra time and not have anyone to spend it with. At LETU, there was no extra time. Eithere you werre doing hw or trying to get aheadf so that you could do hw another night. There wasn't any time for girls, even though most people did make time. Anyway, I must be getting to bed. Later folks.

Apartment

2006-08-27T14:47:00.000-05:00

Well, I moved into my apartment yesterday. I ended up with the apartment with 4 bedrooms. There are 3 other guys. 2 of them are ME and the third is a welder(or however you spell it, I am too lazy to look it up today). It is nice. It was rather funny to see the diffrence in the types of parents. 2 sets could not make it. One set like literally kicked their son and his stuff out of the car and left. The last set stayed almost all day and I was begining to wonder if they were moving in too. I went to my new church today. I liked the sermon. I am not too sure about the Sunday School or the Communion, both were diffrent than what I am use to. I thought that it was rather wierd, I only saw one couple that was older than 50. Most of the college age people that were there for the sermon did not show up for Sunday School. It was rather interesting. Of my age group, most of them were from Baylor and most of them were girls. Most of the people there were not in the tax bracket that I am used to dealing with at Walmart. Communion was diffrent, everyone walked to the front of the sanctary and recieved and consumed the elements there. I am used to the elements being passed out by the elders and the entire congergation waiting till everyone was served until consumption. It just seemed less formal to me. I don't think that there is anything wrong, but it just did not feel right. Pastor Simmons was right about one thing, it is going to be hard to plug down here. Anyway, now I am looking for something to do. No classes till tomorrow, so there isn't any hw, and there isn't any church activities today. Work hasn't started either. Well, if all else fails, Quake 3. Later.

Last Week

2006-08-23T03:09:00.000-05:00

Well, this is my last week of freedom. Monday night was my last night to stock at the Lindale Walmart. I don't have to officially work again till September 4, 2006. Wow, I have almost 2 weeks off. I move into my apartment this Saturday. This will be my first time to live on an almost permenante basis where I am atleast 200 miles from my parents. THis could be a good thing for me. I have picked out a church in Waco already. I will attend services for the first time this Sunday. http://www.redeemerwaco.org/ I have listened to their online sermons and have talked to my Pastor about going down there. Bothe my Assistant Pastor and my Pastor have friends at this church, so that should make the transition easier. I have grown up with my current church. I was there even before I was born. I know everyone there and they know me. I like my church because alot of my local chrches are centered on saving people and that is it. Myy church not only wants to save you, but wants to educate you. There are some brilliant people at my church. People that could give Dr. Hummel a run for his money in a theological debate. The Lord reciently brought us another pastor. Our last one retireed after 15 or so years. I believe that we needed this change. Our new pastor actually stands up for the things that he believes. This has caused our church to loose a few people, but by the looks of things, that was a good thing (ask me and I will tell you the details that I know about). Anyway, I have a few days off before going to school. So far, I have started cleaning my room. I will not finish until after all my bags are packed and in the truck. When this happens, I am going to fill up the dumpster with whatever I think that I will not use in a year or 2 (of course all old clothes will either be thrown away or taken to Goodwill depending on the condition). Here in 2 hours or so, I will be making a trip to Waco to pay tuition and my first month's rent. Tuition has to be paid before 5pm friday, or you will have to reregister on Monday (monday is when classes start). I looked at paying the 2 thigns online, but the charges for doing so would add up close to $80. It only costs me a little under $70 to fill up my truck, so I decided that I wanted out of the house. I have one more service call for Nexicore. They sent me an lcd monitor. I am suposed to install it, but I can not seem to get in touch with the guy. Oh well. I will give him 4 more calls and send it back if he refuses to return my calls (I would keep it and close out the call, but it is cheaper for me to buy one at Walmart than it is to buy one from them). Also, I got bored with Linux. It works all the time. I have no trouble with it, so I installed Windows again. I felt like I needed a challenge. Don't worry, I still have my linux hard drive, all I have to do is plug it back in. I have been downloading all sorts of stuff to make Windows work. So far, out of a 200gig hard drive, I have used 25.8 gigs. I still have not put my anime or my music on the drive. I have installed a few of my games, but not all of them. I haven't even installed my mapping software. Nor have I put my pictures on my computer yet. I still have a few pictures from my first roommate if anyone from 41 is insterested. Oh Well, good thing I have this large hard drive. I found a neet progra, called Windowsblinds. Basically, you can download premade skins to go on your desktop. I found one that looks remarkably like my linux desktop. I have been playing Mechwarrior 4, but unfortunatly there is something wrong with the install, so I swithced to Battlefield 1942. I got bored with that, so now I am here blogging. Well, it is almost time to run. I had better get ready to go. Later.

More Happenings.

2006-08-12T11:15:00.000-05:00

Lets see. I bought the Naruto series, episodes 1-198 (I have a few episodes to watch before I return to school). I have found youtube.com. There are video blogs, there is anime, and all sorts of wierd stuff. Basically, it is like Ebaumsworld.com with cleaner commercials. I have done most of the preparation to go to school in Waco, including getting a job down there. Actually, with much persuation, annoyance, and begging; I have managed to transfer down there within my current company. I have also managed to get signed up for classes. Next thing to do is to pay for classes, and that should be rather easy compaired to LETU. I actually have the cash (cash not loans, not credit cards, nor any other form of borrowed money). Sorry that I have not been on AIM. My dad has turned off the port that AIM uses so that I can not logg on. I tried the web based version, but it likes to kick me off when I am in conversations so I do not use it. Well, I have to keep this short. Tomorrow is church, so I have to get extra sleep now so that I will not be sleepy during church. Later.

Shoulder

2006-08-01T09:58:00.000-05:00

Well, I was talking about work ethics because it is something that I have noticed that not many people have any more. It could be because that most employeers seem to fire the people that are close to retirement that have put their entire life into a company, but I could just be wrong. Anyway, the other night I hurt my shoulder. I threw it out of socket, again. basically, I was haveing to do the work of about 5 other people due to the fact that 18 people could not take care of a small grocery and general merchandise truck (so what if 6 people called in, at my previous job 4 people could have thrown the freight and left by lunch if we did not face the store). So, basically I was flying. I threw Infants, zoned it, and then threw all dairy. I was throwing cases of juice to the top of the storage shelves when my shoulder decided that it did not want to be in socket any more. Well, that hurts a little bit and it happens often, so it was not that bad. The bad part was when it went back into socket. It took nerve with it or it stretched my rotator cuff more than normal. One way or the other, it hurt. There were people coming into the cooler asking if I fell or something. Well, needless to say, that was 2 nights ago and my shoulder is still killing me. It took me about 40 minutes to work it back into place or whatever and make it so that I could use it to pick stuff up.
Inorder to understand what caused me this problem to begin with, you have to know that I broke it about an inch below the socket when I was 13 or 14. They told me at the time that I may have torn my rotator cuff, but at the time it was not bad enough to need to operate. So, now I think I need to take it in and get it looked at, but not till I get some sort of insurance. I have not looked at prices, but I know that I will not be able to afford anything at this point in time. So, basically I am going to hit up my place of employement to purchase something to keep the pain down to a more acceptable tolerance. Anyway, time to run, later.

Work Ethics

2006-07-31T08:08:00.000-05:00

I have an interesting question: Is it the employee's or the company's fault that employees do or do not care about their job?
See, I work with alot of people that literally do not care about their job. They call in to work saying that they are not coming, they steal stuff from the company, and they just steal time in general talking and not getting things done. Whose fault is it?

On one side you can say it is the employees. The employee was the one that wanted the job. The employee should be gratefull that they employer spent the time and money to hire them. They should be glad that the employeer pays them on a regular basis and the such.

On the flip side, most of the people that I work with think that the employeer should be grateful to have them. They beileve that because employers should have "slack" or something to allow for their frequent call ins, their lack of productivity and the such or they just have never thought or known diffrently. Basically, they have no respect for the company nor do they care about moving up or anything of the such (although I have seen several managers stealing from the company, mentionted it to them and they don't care).

See, I came from Brookshire's. You were expected to work when you clocked in and then rest when you clocked out. It was okay if you called in with good excuse. I will have to say that I agree with Brooksire's on this. They told me what their expectations of me there, and that is what I followed through with. I called in once the entre time I worked there and I knew the store better than most of the employees there. For enforcement, you were either written up, hours were cut, transfered to another department, or fired. Of course being fired was last on the list due to how much it cost the company. Generally the lost of hours (leading to the lack of a paycheck) gave employees the incentive needed to work. Walmart is another story all together. They tell you that you need to show up and that you have to throw 100 cases an hour every night and all sorts of stuff, but in the end there is no enforcement of any kind. So, most of the people at my store have never thrown more than 50 cases an hour nor have they gone more than a month without calling in. BUT, I understand why they do this. There have been too many lawsuits about "how bad of a company they are" and the such. In reality, they are just another company that is trying to make a buck, and because they are making a few bucks, people are super critical of them. Anyway, more later.

School.....again

2006-07-26T05:01:00.000-05:00

I was off tonight/day and I decided that it was time to make out my school schedule. I looked at it and have decided that it is going to be a pain to make it all work out and still work a few hours, but it will all be okay. I am only working to have a little spending money, right? After spending about 10 or so minutes looking at the degree program that I want and my transcripts, I will have to actually talk to someone about what classes I can or can not take. Anyway, I set up a myspace page the other night and today I went through and added friends and folks I could find from highschool. If I did not add you, it is because I could not find you. Anyway, I am going to get a nap it. I am going to try to help out with vbs. Later.

Summer

2006-07-19T05:11:00.000-05:00

I remember what I thouhgt summer's definition was, a length of time to enjoy you time away from school and a time to relax outside with your friends. This is what I have always thought of summer being, but as I think about it, this is not what has happened since I was 15. When I turned 16, I have worked every waking hour (so it seems) to earn money for college, a vehicle, and in the last 2 years a cell phone (with college taking the most amount of money). Now, I have bought several computers, backpacks, all of my clothes, and tools with all this money, but what else do I have to show for it? I have almost no freinds outside of work now. I did have a few at LETU, but due to finacial reasons, I will not be able to return there before they graduate. I have also decided that it is time to go camping. I have done it several times by myself, but that is not as fun. Unfortunalty, most people that I know do not like camping, something about missing a bed or something. More than likely it is the shower thing. Anyway, I am going to have to st up a camping trip. I will have to see whom all wants to go. It would be nice if I could get friends to go, but if I need to, I will go by myself.
Then again, it has not been all that bad. I have been playing with computers alot too. I like to mess with computers especailly when there is a tough problem or something that I have not ever messed with before. Like the other day I had to find out why this computer refused to install AOL. For no reason, the computer did not want to install it. So, I had to go into the regestry and remove AOL that way and then reinstall it. It took me a bit, but I finally got it working. I always end up with the interesting problems. The ones that others have trouble answering or fixing, but that makes life interesting. I am learning about computers, but I think that I need to learn more before I open a buisness or something of that sort.
I have been thinking about my options. Looks like I will have to come up with about $500 a monht for any of them just to pay off school loans. I had origionally thought that I was going to graduate from LETU, but things happen and things change. Right now, my main goal is to go to TSTC and get a degree in Mechanical Engineering. It will be an associates degree, but a degree all the same. The options that I have been toying with are staying in Waco after I get the degree, going to Dallas after the degree, or coming back to Tyler all to finda job and work. Another thing that I have toyed with was going to Alaska and seeing if I can get a job up there. I have always been a planner. I have always had a plan whenever I did something. The whole leaving LETU thing completley turned things upside down for me. but I have to ask if that is what God intended for me to do? I think it was. Then He decided that I needed to do something else. I have learned alot about people since then also. I am one of the few people whom give everything to the company that I am working for at that moment. For instance at Walmart, I am the only stocker that cares if my department makes money. I am the only one whom cares if the shelves are full and look good. If I say anything to anyone about the way that they are doing things, they just look at me funny. I guess that I am just too diffrent for them. I take things too seriously for them. So, I have been questioning what I should do. I thought I was suposed to go to LETU, get a job, and marry someone I met along the way, but things have changed. I have been praying for answers, but all I get is the word patience. That is something that I know I need to work on. I have never had it. That is why I get so much done at work. I have always blamed it on the ADD, but I know that it is also something that I have to work on. Anyway, this is getting depressing. I will shut up now and watch a movie or something. Later.

I don't know

2006-06-11T13:26:00.000-05:00

Sorry, I am not as good as Ma Hoyt when coming up with titles. Well, I have not done anything but work and think since last post. It looks like it will all pan out money wise if I work about 20-25 hours a week while in school. I know that funds will be close, but that is half the fun of being in college. Anyway, I have started paying attention to the people around me. I am always looking for more people to go have fun with, but I am looking for some one whom has some of the same interests and whom I can talk intelegently with (ie. something besides basketball, beer, being drunk, and what not). By intelegently, I mean things like current events, computers, religious matters, and things of this sort. Technically I could drive to LETU at about $65 a trip to talk to some of the people on campus, but that would get expensive quick.Anyway, time to read everyone else's blog. Later.

Colleges

2006-06-07T03:17:00.000-05:00

This is a negative post, you may want to skip it, but then atain it is a good read for incoming freshman to take into consideration.

School is just around the corner. I hate to break it to you, but it is. I have been having all sorts of "fun" trying to get everything lined up for this next semester. It would seem that schools would be more than willing to help you out after you paid them tons of money, but it seems that is not the case. I have had to jump through all sorts of hoops lately to get my transcripts sent from one school to another. If I were to do it my way, I would just get each school to hand me a print out of the transcript of that school and I would hand devliver it to TSTC. Seeing that my way of things is not buricratic enough, that is not how schools do it. First off, most schools sent transcripts electronically, but TSTC does not do that. So, there was a wonderful mess up taking weeks to find out what was happening. Then it gets better. I ask for them to be resent. For TJC, I filled out 4 request forms over a period of 6 weeks, but only 2 are on record with one of them being an electronic transfer. With UT Tyler, one request was sent electronically before I discovered that I can not get it done that way, while the others were all blocked because there was a hold on my account at UT Tyler. It gets better. I call UT Tyler to find out 5 weeks later to find out why TSTC has not recieved my transcript from them, and they then inform me of the hold. So, I transfer over to the engineering department to remove the hold. I had to talk to 6 diffrent people before I was able to get it through their heads that I was not taking courses at UT this year or ever again if I had any say in it. I am currently at the point of waiting to see if they have sent it. TJC has sent theirs, but it has been 10 days (8 buisness) and they have not recieved it. Wonderful. So, next is to find out where I am staying. Well, seeing how I was having trouble with getting transcripts sent, I used DHL to send my housing application, deposit check, and immunization records. Somewhere there is at TSTC, they have lost the deposit check. They have the immunization records, but it took them 4 weeks to find the housing application for the dorms at which time the dorms were full. So, today/night before I go to bed, I have to fill out an apartment application form and send an online (lots better) deposit so that I will have a place to stay this next semester. Because I have to live in the oncampus apartments, I am going to have to pay almost $2,000 more for the school year. That HURT. It should not be too much of a problem, but that does mean that I am going to have to actually find more work for the rest of the semester and hopefully I will not have to pay for too many more extra expenses due to electricity bills or anything of the sort. Fun, fun.
On a brighter note, I read some blags today/night and looked at Rachel's wedding pictures that are on the Gullman family website. Highly recomended. I wish that I had been there, but it was either that or miss work. Unfortunatly, most overnight positions anywhere do not generally have enough help so that they can cover all work on a regular basis. That is why overnight positions generally get paid more so there is an incentive to come to work. Well, I am falling asleep in my computer chair. Time to take a nape. Later

Happenings

2006-05-16T15:08:00.000-05:00

Note: This is 2 weeks worth of things that I have wrote about, so this is going to be REALLY, Really long.

Well, lets see. I have completed my third week at Wally World. So far, it has been an okay place to work. Several of my friends from high school are there. There are not many people there that know how to use a computer or even what the componets of a computer are. There is even one lady that works there that is so spoiled that she has never mowed the lawn before (talk about poor parenting). The more I work around people like this the more I miss LETU and the people that it attracted. The people were more educated. I could say the name "Edgar Allen Poe" and more than likely a student for LETU would know whom I am talking about and may have even read a few of his works, but say that at my place of employment, and you may get one or 2 out of the entire crew (10 to 20 depending on the night) that can even remember the name. Totally diffrent level of society. Now if you are talking about alchol or narcotics, the crew that I work with know everything and have tried just about everything. (Makes you want to work nights doesn't it?) Most of the people when asked what they want to do in the future have no clue except that they want to pay the bills and get drunk on their next 2 days off. I am going to TSTC next tuesday to make sure that everything is happening the way that I need it to be. If I am lucky, I might even be able to talk to someone about the courses that I can take, but that may be a little bit too optimistic.
Dad rented a backhoe weekend before last and we dug about 300 feet of ditch in hard red clay. Since he rented it, he was the only one that was able to get really good at working it. I was allowed to dig about 20 feet of the ditch, but that was about it (something about time limitations).

My Windows partition died. No more Halo or Riven for a while. Luckily, I found out how to rewrite my fstab so that I could access the data on my windows drive, but that does not fix the Halo or Riven problem. I tried using Wine to install Halo, but the install program for Halo will not let me insert the product key. I have come to the conclusion that I will have to wipe the entire drive in order to fix the problem (there are a coulpe of bad sectors in the first partition). But anyway. Now for the depressing part of the news. I should have read up on some stuff before taking the semester off. Come to find out that since I took the Spring semester off and summer, I get to start paying back student loans in July, exactly 41 days (not really, but the number has some importance when talking to LETU students) before school starts. Fortunatly, I have the money for the first payment or two, but that will cut into my money that I was going to have for college. But, that is why I got the current job. I got it as a fail safe so that I could transfer to a store local to TSTC and have money coming in. So, over all, it is not too bad.

What I am doing wrong? I need to find a way to market myself to other people so that I can sell computer services or something of the sort. I know alot about computers, not near as much as most people at LETU, but for this area I have been labeled a "Wizzard" several times (something about being able to fix the little problems, ie. the cord not pluged in, in several seconds to the more complex problems having to deal with the MBR).

I gave up on the SAT-T60, but that is okay, mom went with Dish Network that came with DVR. Just in case you don't know, a DVR is a Digital Video Recorder. Basically, I tell it what I want it to save to the hard drive. It is literally a computer running linux, it has a hard drive, motherboard, and a modem (what else does it need to qualify as a computer?) So, I currently have it set to record all the TNG episodes that come on (any channels that we suscribe to), the new Doctor Who (it was one of my dad's avorite series along time a go), and between my brother and I, we are recording all episodes of the Myth Busters. One day, I will have to start watching these things. I spend all Wed morning watching and deleting TNG episodes. That was good, but I think I should try to read a little more.

We are having troubles with the neighbors again. See, they moved out here about a year or so before we did. When they buried their water pipe that went across the road, they only buried it about a foot deep. Well, it has been about 17 years since they buried it and the pipe is on top of a hill. After all these years, the pipes have become exposed. Well, they have contributed this to all the trucks that come to our house and have begun to treaten all forms of delivery to our house. When I say trucks, I mean FedEX, UPS, Central, and just about anyone else that they can. There is two HUGE problems with this : we have a road evesment of 14 feet all the way to the end of the road and my dad's buisness depends on these vehicles. I don't know how other states classify roads, but this road is classified as a private road. It is classified as such because it was privatly maintained. If the person whom drew up the deed had dedicated the road to the county instead of the public, then the county would maintain it and we would not have this problem. This road evesment is pretty rock solid though. This property was origionally one peice and when it was divided, there was a copy of the eavesment stated in each property deed and a seperate deed was set up for the road it self. Dad tried talking his problem to a lawyer, but the lawyer said that he thought that the deed was well written so that there was no mistaken that these said trucks can go down the road and that he did not like doing litigation. So, we are trying to find out what to do next. We really do not want to sue or anything of that sort (they hate us enough) and the lawyer said if we take them to court over it that the court might change the restrictions on the road (with a possability that the changes would not be in our favor).

So for all those that made it to the end of my long windedness, I have to go. I have a computer job lined out in Longview for the morning, so I may drop in at LETU providing that there is someone to talk to. Later.

Important Question

2006-04-23T20:07:00.000-05:00

I have been strugling with a very important question : At what point are you too involved in Worldly things? I like electronics alot. I could play around on the internet all night long and not learn enough. I could do the same with Anime or Sci-Fi movies. I also can do the same with mechanical devices. Jump for joy, here is something else to take apart "fix" and put back together! I don't know why, but I am questioning if I am living a life that is too worldly. It would be nice if there was a step by step guide telling me exactly what I needed to do, but that does not exist. I went to church this morning and the Sunday School lesson was about a Biblical mind view. Basically, what I learned was that I need to see the Bible as a whole. I need to be looking not a a section, chapter, or a book, but as a large concpet that I need to be living my life by. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it does to me. That is all that counts right? Or I could refraise it so that I said that I need to know the Bible form cover to cover and apply what I know from it, but that would only be part of it. In order to apply it, you have to have Christ's help. I guess it all boils down to that I do not spend enough time in the Word or in prayer. IM me or leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Working

2006-04-16T20:16:00.000-05:00

It seems that all I do here lately is work. I have nto had any more interesting plans or projects. This is not a good thing. I am assuming that it has something to do with lack of sleep or sothing along that nature. I have not been working on as many computers as I had previously, but I have been playing with a TiVo. I have found out that they are basically computers that are running a version of Linux. I reciently accuired one that has a bad hard drive in it. I have been spending alot of time trying to find a free hard drive image. If you are wondering what I am talking about, I am looking for a copy of someone else's hard drive. I have found several pay sites, but they are all down for Easter break. My uncle was nice enough to provide me with a 300 gig hard drive, but now I need the stuff to go on it. I thought with all these hackers and programers that there would be several images floating around. I was wrong. Well, I have to cut this post short, time to get ready for work. Later.

Computers and other electronic gadgets

2006-03-25T16:29:00.000-06:00

Well, I have been working on alot of computers lately. I find this good and bad. Good because I like the influx of money nad bad because I have to deal with Windows. One of the projects was to make a program or find one that would back up a database file daily and about every 10 days or so, write over the older files. My Uncle whom has a computer based career gave me a program called Robocopy. It is a great program. I like it because it is 100% text based. I used a batch file to make it all work and then used the dreaded Task Scheduler to make it work at the appointed time in the evenings after the buisness closed. It has been working for almost a week. My parents have cancelled most of their Direct TV stuff and started with this Netflix thing. So far it is okay, but I have one huge problem. Normally I do not get Dvds until they are on the 5.99 rack at Wally World, so I had no clue that this was going to happen. We got in an older and a newer movie, "Clear and Present Danger" and "Walk the Line". Both of them where pretty good, BUT neither one of them would run all the way through wile I was using Xine to play them. I tried to update xine, but that did not help. So I went to the dreaded Windows partiotion and tried VLC. VLC would not play them either. The only program that I had on my computer that would play them was Window$ Media player, and I had to allow it access to the internet to update because I have not let it update since I installed windows.
My dad was complaining about his blue tooth ear device so he bought himself a new one and gave me the old one. So, now if you see me, you will more than likely see me walking around with it on my ear. It is all sorts of fun. At home, I can leave the phone on my desk while it charges ( the V710 has a VERY short battery life) and walk around the house with the headpiece on. I can still make calls while IN the house, but if I get very far out of the house, the Bluetooth will disconnect. Darn. Oh well.
On another note, I was talking to someone the other day about Tesla. He was an interesting scientist that had all sorts of inventions that were FAR more advanced than his time. Like he had a way to wirelessly transfer electricity to any device within a certain range of his antennea. I have heard of this invention, but for some reason I have not been able to find much information about it. I am willing to bet that it has something to do with money. Where are they going to put the power meter? I would like to do some more research on the subject, but there never seems to be enough time in the day.
I have been looking for a small laptop for my truck. I have decided that it would be interesting to mount a computer to my dash so that I can have a multifunctional computer for my truck. I already have a gps unit for laptops and the software to go with it. Unfortunatly, it is for windows. I have about 10 gigs of MP3s (don't worry, I have ALL the cds that these mp3s came from), so I would liek to hook this laptop to my truck's speakers. That is easy enough. So far, the hardest 2 things is finding the laptop and/or the mounting bracket. I have a laptop, but if I use it, I will want to be able to remove the laptop from the truck. So, I have been looking at RAM mounts. Unfortunatly, they do not show a model that will fit my truck (so that I can copy their design) and I do not want to pay $200 plus dollars for one. Looks like this one is going to have to be a home done job. Well, I ahve to be at work in about 5 hours and I have not been to sleep. Later.

Computers

2006-03-13T15:22:00.000-06:00

What happens when the computer guy's computer breaks? THe computer guy's computer does not get fixed until he spends money that should of been spent elsewhere. That is right. My motherboard on my desktop died several weeks ago. I was ablt to get last Sat. off to go to FirstSaturday and purchase another motherboard. Actually, I ended up going to Fry's. The best thing about Fry's is that they are good about keeping full shelves. When there is a particular part that does not work right, then it is returned and the shelve will be full of the returns. This is your sign to look at another model of motherboard or other computer component. The motherbard I wanted was about $30, but after seeing that there was one un opened motherboard and 20 returned ones, I looked a the ad to see what I could get. So, I eneded up getting the motherboard cpu combo and spending $120 instead of $30. Oh well, I got a computer upgrade out of the thing. There were not any returned ones in the bin where my motherboard came from, so I am sure that this model is ok. Anyway, I now have a better computer because of the situation. Now if I could only find a way to make laptops that easy to upgrade..... Well, I must sleep later.

Posting...

2006-02-24T04:11:00.000-06:00

Well, if you have not noticed, it is hard to post to your blog when you are working 40+ hours a week at one job and 3 to 4 service calls at the other. I am not complaining about it. Actually, I am rather happy that I am able to get this much work. I need to be able to pay for the next 2 semesters in cash along with the licing expences WITHOUT have to borrow money or work. I might have to work, but it would be nice if I was able to keep from having to do that. Anyway, I have not had much time to do anything with my idea that I posted last time. The flu has been going around at work and I have missed several days off ( more over time :D ) due to it. This last week my motherboard died. The IDE controller messed up. For an example, turn the power on once and the hard drive will not detect, reboot it and then either the same ide device or a cdrom drive will die. I think it is a bug of some sort, but I could be wrong. The drive that started messing up first was the windows drive, but I took the hd out and to another computer and it worked just fine, hence the diagnosis. Anyway, I am now an Alltel user. My dad wanted a new phone and the only way that he could get the one that he wanted was to add another line to the family plan. So, being the good son that I am and the fact that my contract was up with Verizon, I switched to Alltel so that he could get the new phone he wanted. The only grip is that he did not give me much notice to doing it. He did it on the 20th and then told me on the 21st that I needed to go down and move my number to Alltel in the 2 or 4 days. Dads are great. Anyway, I like the phone I ended up with. I have the v710. I had the choice of that or some Nokia peice of junk that had software problems. I like the phone so far because I can do just about anything with it. I have a usb cable that allows me to transfer anything from music to games to the phone. Do you know the weird ring tones that people have? Well, I can make my own. Right now, I have the opening song to an anime series called Hellsing as my ringer. I had to buy the OST to do it, but I did it. Motorola has a real nice program for making all this happen and it also made it easy to move my contacts, but be warned, the software is very Window$ dependant. As a mater of fact, Motorola has used M$ window$ CE on all of the hand sets that I have owned from them. Kind of scary if you ask me. Anyway, I am going to make a Walmart run. Later.

Interesting Idea

2006-02-13T07:52:00.000-06:00

Well, I was looking through the new cell phones on the market and what all they did. Most of them run Windows CE. There are a few of them that run Linux, but most of them are not in use in the US unfortunatly. I kept seeing VoIP advertisements all over teh place while in my search. Then this real neat idea popped into my head. What about making a small laptop or small PDA into a VoIP telephone device? I know that several of them already have web services and I know that you can get a pcmia card for your laptop, so why not? I am sure that someone has already thought about the idea, but I have not really seen my idea. I got to looking at the pricing for the PCMIA wireless device for my laptop to see if I could do it that way, and if I could find a way to add a regualar wireless card for hot spots and a wirless card for cell tower use, then I would have it made. The wireless card for the cell towers costs about 40 a month for a limited amount of mb or about 60 a month for unlimited access. If you went with unlimited access, then you would want this "phone" to have web capabilities so that you could get on the internet and do everything that you normally do with the net, but be anywhere. On the other hand, if you had the limited mb use, you would want your "phone" to have a regular wireless card so that you would not have to use all of you mb talking on the "phone". You could take it to a local wirless hotspot and use someone elses bandwidth :) Anyway, I thought I would share the idean and maybe a smart LETU student could find an easy CHEAP way to make it happen. Later.

What has been happening.

2006-02-09T08:37:00.000-06:00

Well I have been working. Alot. I have been working 41+ hours a week. Don't get me wrong, it is nice to see that paycheck every week. I am currently about 1/8th of the way of saving up for next semester's tuition. Anyway, I have been thinking of all sorts of ways to make money without doing work. If I wanted to get fat and lazy, there is a trucking company that will hire me for about 1100 a week after I get a cdl license. That would be okay, but I really need to know more before jumping head first into such a thing. Anyway, I have also been trying to set up a printer on the network here at the house. It is being a pain in the rear. Basically, I can not get the administrative rights to the thing without becoming OkiData certified. The story behind it is that dad bought an expensive color laser printer for the office and wants to use its features as a network printer and not have to have a computer to serve the printer to the rest of the network. Well, the printer has a login similar to that of a home wireless router. You can log into it the same way. There are some interesting features that are visable WITHOUT the administrative login, but without the login, you can not easily change printer network settings. The OKIDATA website is of no help what ever. The pages load very slowly, and you can not download anything but the manuals from that page making it very useless. Why can't this printer be like the printer that my dad had priviously? It even worked easily with linux. Oh well. I will have to play with it more after a few hours of sleep. Later.

Updating....

2006-01-26T07:57:00.000-06:00

Sorry that is has been almost 2 weeks since I last updated. I have been working and actually starteing to hang out with friends every now and then. I have been trying to gather up everything for my tax return. If I do not hurry and get all of my dedictions gathered up, I will have to pay in about $100. I am going to have to get all of my mileage added up, "office" supplies added up, and all my oil change expenses. See, I have to figure how much I spent on oil filters, oil, grease, washer fluid, and several other things because I change all the oil for my dad's company. I also need to add up all my truck expenses for going around all over East Texas. From waht I have added up, I have spent alot in gasoline. It looks like I might get another computer job. If it works out, I will quit the night stocking job to do it full time. We will have to see. It will be fun. Basically, this company has 3 places of buisness and a medium size warehouse. It makes most of its sells off of Ebay. That is right up my alley. All sorts of fun. Anyway, I am off to see what all kinds of trouble I can get into today. Later.

Work

2006-01-14T09:32:00.000-06:00

Sorry about the delay, but I have been working. We did what is known as a case count last night. This is the first one that we have done in about 2 months. A case count is where all the cases of groceries are put on the floor close to where they go on the shelves and you are then timed to see how fast you are at putting cases of groceries on the shelves and then clean up. My average BEFORE clean up is around 100 to 120 cases, but with clean up it is about 80 to 90. Last night I was at 82, but I had the isle with the most cases (176 cases). I had the canned meat and veggies isle. The only complaint is that they need to put grooves on the bottom of all cans manufactured so that they will easily stack on top of each other without falling. I was the second fastest last night. The fastest guy, about to be our Grocery Manager, threw 130 cases an hour, and that includes a trip to the bathrooma nd periodic stops to check up on the rest of us. In defense of the rest of us, he had the easiest isles. He had the condoments isle ( salad dressing, ketchup, mustard, bbq sause, etc)and the juice isle (gatorade, welches, coffee, koolade) and to top it off, only 105 or so cases, the least amount of cases. The slowest time was 71 cases an hour. Theoretically, if you do less than 80 cases an hour, you will be written up. We will see what comes of this.
For my othe "place" of employment, I went to the big town of Hallsville yesterday. I replaced a power supply. Nothing big. In and out in about 30 minutes. It would not have taken me so long if I had did not have to follow procedure. They want me to check for a grounded plug, make sure that all drives are working, has sound, the printer works, and several other little details that take up time. It is not all that bad if you get three of four of these lined up in a row, but this rarely happens.
On my way back from said service call, I stopped at LETU and tried to say hello to everyone. Unfortunatly around 1:30 or so PM on a Friday, most students are in classes. This makes it hard to talk to them. On the other hand, I am sure that they would have liked the interuption if I had given it to them.
Even though I am working two jobs, I am still looking and pray on what I should be doing. I have an uneasyness that I think means that I am not were I need to be, or it could be the thought of the huge amount of dept that is hovering above me getting bigger by the day. I would personally like to go back to LETU, but the money is not there. I do know that if I do anything school related again, I will have to skipp the whole working thing. Judging by last semester's results, school and work do not go together at the University level. I did enjoy having the "extra" money around, but in the end, it was very expensive money. I am not sure where I need to go or what I need to do. Tomorrow night, I will have to ask my boss what he thinks I could do for some more money per hour. I know alot about computers, but for some reason or another, companies do not care about how much you know, they want a very expensive piece of paper saying that you know what you have already learned. I was looking at degrees at a tech school, and come to find out there is a degree or two based on the stuff that I already know. I thought it was rather funny. Well, it is time for some sleep. Later.

Can't sleep.

2006-01-09T19:00:00.000-06:00

For some reason or another, I woke up at 2pm and could not go back to sleep. So, like every other night person that can not sleep, I turned on the tv. I watched a few of episodes of TNG that I know that I have seen atleast 3 time each and then proceeded to channel surf. There was nothing of real interest on, but I did see a little documentary on Denali National Park. I love to go camping, hiking, and canoeing. This made me think, when wasthe last time that I actually went REAL camping and not some over nighter? The answer is about 6 or 7 years. So, for the fun of it, I typed in my address and the park mentioned above adress into my DeLorme Street Atlas, and came up with the following:
Total Distance - 4,061.90 miles
Gas Bill - $564.15 one way
Estimated fuel stops - 13 one way
Estimated arrival - 99:33:28

I also looked at the web page. There were some interesting facts on it, but nothing of much help. Basically, it says to talk to a visitor center. It may be cheaper to fly up there and rent the supplies. BUT, any way you look at it, I will not be affording something this costly any time soon, although there are credit cards :).
I know that that is not the answer, but judging by how many applications they send to me in mail box per day you could easily come up with that solution. Anyway, more later. I think it is time to get a nap in before work tonight. They have cut the grocery crew down to 2 people tonight and we have a 800+ case truck comeing tonight, so I ahve alot of work to do. Later.

Oh and another thing.....

2006-01-09T17:19:00.000-06:00

I am looking for a song by Superchick called "Holy Moment". I have yet to find it at any of the local stores on the internet. At one time, I had an illegal copy, but that was deleted before I went to college due to the whole " I might get fined" scare. Ayway, if anyone knows where I can find a legal copy, I would be very greatful. Thanks. And now about that sleep.......

New Years Eve 05

2006-01-02T08:31:00.000-06:00

This picture was taken on top of Pinicle Hill or Mountain (depending on what map you look at) which is about 4 miles North of Big Sandy.

Linux.

2005-12-29T10:27:00.000-06:00

I love Linux. Unfortunatly though, to use alot of the programs I like, I have to use Windows. Yesterday morning, my windows install on my laptop crashed. It no longer booted. I reinstalled without formatting. It would boot, but it would not install programs. Interesting. So, I formatted it. For this reason, I have a partition on my hard drive for nothing but data. Well, in the process of reinstalling windows, Micro$oft in its infinite wisdom decided to over write my boot partition ( no biggy I can reinstall grub later) and decided that my data partition with my music, emails, pictures, etc should be a hidden drive that I should not be able to access from inside windows. Interesting. This is why Knoppix is your friend. Insert Knoppix 3.6 or newer distro, boot, and use the wonderful program called qtparted to unhide the partition. After this is accomplished, reboot. Everything, or almost everything, is now fixed. Now to install grub.... I will wait till later. I know that I am not suposed to, but I use Knoppix at work all the time when fixing computers. It helps me decide if it is a hardware issue or a software issue. If it is a software issue, I tell the customer that it is. Use knoppix to erase the drives partition table, get the windows restore disks running, and tell the people to have a nice day.

Sun Set

2005-12-28T02:02:00.000-06:00

Here is a sun set that I took on Christmas eve this year. It is amazing what all happens to one's blog when they have a night off and are not allowed to make any noise at 2am in the morning.

New Tractor

2005-12-28T01:56:00.000-06:00

This is the new Tractor. It is a 35?hp Branson diesel. It does alot more than the old 12?hp (that is probably a higher estimiment than needed) of the old Ford. This tractor requires diesel to make it run. The old Ford required gasoline and about 2 hours of work for every hour of operation. Notice that this tractor has a set of homemade pallet forks on the front. Dad bought the forks from a scrap yard and made the adapter to the tractor lift. Great stuff here. Makes it alot easier to move thigns around the house.

Old Tractor

2005-12-28T01:50:00.000-06:00

This is the old Tractor. It is a Ford 9N. I mowed many hours on top of it and pulled many pine logs with it. Most of the time while pulling logs the front tires were off the ground and I had to steer with the brakes. Now for th emost part we have a better tractor. If nothing else, a bigger tractor ( can not haul it with my truck).

The Gas Hog

2005-12-28T01:42:00.000-06:00

This is what eats all my money. This last semester, I put about $150 a week in the gas tank and paid $270 a month on the truck payment. And people wonder where all my money goes.

For MaHoyt

2005-12-28T01:38:00.000-06:00

I figured that I would not let MaHoyt be the only one whom puts up pictures of sunrises and sun sets. Here is the sunrise that occured on the 22nd of December, I think. Basically, this is the first major frost East Texas has had, and no I do not claim to be half the picture taker that Ma Hoyt is.

Christmas Break thus far

2005-12-20T23:47:00.000-06:00

Well, I went out to and saw a movie. No I did not take anyone with me (no one wanted to go with me). I saw The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I liked it, but unlike most people that I know from LETU I am easy to please. I have not read the book in about 6 years or more, so the book is a little fuzzy. I thought that the movie was real close to what I remembered from the book. I have not really read what others think about it. I will have to re-read the book before I make any judgments.

I have been working nights. It is all sorts of fun. We are currently weeding out the people that do not want to work, ie the people whom don't show up, show up on time, or show up without sleep. Hmm, only one person fits that discribtion and he was fired/quit on tuesday of last week. They were real happy to hear that Wedsday was my last day of finals, so Thursday night I started working full time hours again. Friday nights at 12am are the end of the week and I clocked out Monday morning with almost 30 hours. Wonderful weekend. We were only short one night because someone called in sick, but he was really sick. What happened to the work ethics that people once had? Have we become that scared to fire someone when they don't want to show up, or is it that it is too expensive to fire them to get rid of them? I wonder. I know how to order, I know how to stock, I know how to make out the schedule. I know almost as much as the assistant manager does about how the store works, but yet I still will not move up even if I wanted to. All I need to do is to gain the speed that the current manager has in order to be worth something. Maybe I will be worth something and get a raise.
I still have not decided on what I want to do next semester. I would like to go back to LETU, but the money is not there. I DO NOT want to go back to UT Tyler. I have found out that in order for me to pass at a University of any type, I can not work any during the week. Then again, I hate being broke. I like to be able to go buy a Dr Pepper when I want or to be able to just drive and let loose some horses or jsut cruse. I thought about taking the semester off and driving a truck. I have a friend that said that he can get me on Swift for pretty good pay, about double what I am doing for Brookshire's. This would be good, but probably not the best option. What I really want right now is to be completely out of school. I have been in college for over 4.5 years. I have only had debt the last 2.5 years. The first 2 years at TJC I paid for in cash. When I went to LETU, I spent more money that first semester than I had made in 2 years. Then, because I had not worked in 2 years, I had to borrow money to go to UT Tyler. I need to get a real job and quit borrowing. I see all these things of the flesh that I want, but they will not help me any. I don't want out of college nessicarily for the money as much as the fact that I don't want to owe more than what a house costs. I think the main problem is that I really do not know what I want to do any more other than out of college. I think that I am going to start ignoring my mom. She did not want me to go to LETU, she wanted me to go to UT TYler form the get go. Now she says that my grades are not good enough for even there. If it was up to me, I would have started out at LETU a long time ago, back when I was still driving the Geo Tracker. Prayer and reading are ahead of me to try to find guidance, so I am going to get some sleep in. Later.

Finals Week

2005-12-12T09:00:00.000-06:00

Finals Week is finally here. I am not sure if I am ready for finals, but I guess that I will have to be. I have been ready for classes to be over with for some time now. I am not sure what I am going to do next semester yet. I really want to go back to LETU, but the money is not there. I do not want to go back to UT Tyler. I just can not get motivated there. There is too much happening at the house and too much work to make it all happen. I have to go to work to pay for my truck, cell phone, and college. I am running into the same problem at UT Tyler as I was at LETU, not enough money. Atleast here I can make some during the school year. I have my first fianl at 11am this morning. It is my Into to Government final. I am sure that I know enough to walk out with a B after taking the final. Having my laptop back has helped my grades. I can take notes that I can read. Plus, I peck at the computer keyboad making it easier to remember what I typed the first time. I am currently armed with a 2liter of Dr Pepper. I am set for the next 8hours of studying if I can make myself do it. Have you ever had trouble making yourself study? It is hard for me because I know all this stuff. I have heard it before. I have done most of it before. What is going to Kill my calc grade is that I have gotten too used to using a calculator. The calculator is my downfall, or you can say that I am just not good with numbers. I can do the work without the calculator, but I have trouble with the simple stuff like carring numbers. The fact that I am under pressure to make an A or better does not help any. For once, I will actually be awake on a Monday. I was able to get last night off due to finalls. I will be off till Friday night. I told him that I could work Thursday, but he was nice enough to let me have an extra night off. So, I went to bed Sunday at 4pm and got up this morning at 5:30am. That is a good nights rest. I like the whole night thing. I just wish that I could get all the rest of the things I like to do to happen at night (mainly classes). I have found out that waking up early like this allows you to have fewer distractions, but the ones that you do have are very big distractions. Depending on when my check comes from Nexicore, I might go camping Wed after my last exam, or I might buy Christmas gifts. Another idea would be to take someone to a movie if I can find someone that actually wants to go with me. In the theaters right now, I would like to see Aneon Flux and I want to see Narnia as soon as it makes it into theaters. I know I butchers the name, but I am too lazy to type out the whole thing. Anyway, I am lookig at how long I have been typing and I think that I should return to my studying. Later.

Happenings.

2005-11-27T23:01:00.000-06:00

Well, I have been working alot. It has been fun. I put in about 52 hours at Brookshires over the Thanksgiving holidays and ran about 6 service calls for Nexicore and I still have 2 more calls to go. I recieved an interesting job offer. Texas' electricity has been deregulated, therefore if you have tons of money you can open your own buisness to sell electricity. I recieved a job offer to sell this deregulated electricity. I would be paid on commision. It sounded like an interesting job for part time, but I do not know when I could get the time. I am still debating on what to do next semester. I am tired of living at home where my parents think that I am not doing enough at home nor am I doing enough school work. I am doing school work, but just not here at the house. They seem to think that if they don't see me do it, then I am not doing it. Oh well. I am considering going to TSTC in Waco next semester. I don't think that I will be able to make at UT Tyler. There is not enought time in the day to work and go to school here. UT Tyler is trying to be like LETU in its course load. This is will not work well for me. My main grip about the school at the moment is that they do not allow any form of calculators in the math department, and since they did not accept any of my calculus credits form LETU (not even the Roden class that I passed), this does not fly well with me. The main benifit of going to TSTC would that I would be getting out of school in about 3 semesters maybe 4. If I keep going to UT Tyler, they want me to go another 3 or 4 years(most of the credits form LETU nor TJC transfered). The main problem with going to TSTC would be that I would be getting a technology degree, in other words, less money after I graduate. If I do go there, I intend to go there, I do intend on going back to college at a later date after loans are mostly paid off. I finally got my replacement laptop in. My old laptop was messing up and it was going to cost me more to fix it than it was worth. The newer laptop is the same model as my old one, but with a bigger processor and a few less scratches. I don;t know exactly why, but the newer one has a longer battery life than the old one. I installed UT 2004 (a very power hungy game) and was able to play it for 2 hours after installing several other programs before my laptop was begging for another power source. Anyway, it is time to go to work. Later.

Motivation

2005-10-19T19:30:00.000-05:00

Since this semester started I have lost all of my motivation. I don;t know why. It could be the fact that every week I switch from a night schedule to a day schedule, or it could be that I am going to a school that is not Christain based. There are other reasons that this could be happening, but I am not sure what all they would be. There are several disapointments that I have with ut tyler that I would like to fix. I think the 2 biggest have to be that none of the math teachers know what or how to use a calculator. The second thing is that the school did not transfer my math credits from LETU in. I think that is the biggest shock for me. I hate math. Math is just something that gets in my way. It is used to prove what I already know. For instance, it could be said that the engine on the Ford Mustang blew up because it was a FORD, or with math it could be said that the engine blew up because the moron that was driving the ford put a larger engine than the radiator could keep cool. See. I was right, just do not drive a ford. I am sure that there are other instances, but right now it is roughly 30 minutes till my calc 1 mid term and i am not ready to take the test and did I mention that I hate math? Anyway, I must return to craming. Later.

Posting

2005-10-12T10:30:00.000-05:00

I figured that I needed to post something, so I thought I would post something from my dad'd cousin.

2 States - 22 Observations...

1. Texas: Productive industrious state run by Republicans.
Louisiana: Government dependent welfare state run by Democrats.

2. Texas: Residents take responsibility to protect and evacuate themselves.
Louisiana: Residents wait for government to protect and evacuate them.

3. Texas: Local and state officials take responsibility for protecting their citizens and property.
Louisiana: Local and state officials blame federal government for not protecting their citizens and property.

4. Texas: Command and control remains in place to preserve order.
Louisiana: Command and control collapses allowing lawlessness.

5. Texas: Law enforcement officers remain on duty to protect city.
Louisiana: Law enforcement officers desert their posts to protect themselves.

6. Texas: Local police watch for looting.
Louisiana: Local police participate in looting.

7. Texas: Law and order remains in control, 8 looters tried it, 8 looters arrested.
Louisiana: Anarchy and lawlessness breaks out, looters take over city, no arrests, criminals with guns have to be shot by federal troops.

8. Texas: Considerable damage caused by hurricane.
Louisiana: Considerable damage caused by looters.

9. Texas: Flood barriers hold preventing cities from flooding.
Louisiana: Flood barriers fail due to lack of maintenance allowing city to flood.

10. Texas: Orderly evacuation away from threatened areas, few remain.
Louisiana: 25,000 fail to evacuate, are relocated to another flooded area.

11. Texas: Citizens evacuate with personal 3 day supply of food and water.
Louisiana: Citizens fail to evacuate with 3 day supply of food and water, do without it for the next 4 days.

12. Texas: FEMA brings in tons of food and water for evacuees. State officials provide accessible distribution points.
Louisiana: FEMA brings in tons of food and water for evacuees. State officials prevent citizens from reaching distribution points and vice versa.

13. Louisiana: Media focuses on poor blacks in need of assistance, blames Bush.
Texas: Media can't find poor blacks in need of assistance, looking for something else to blame on Bush.

14. Texas: Coastal cities suffer some infrastructure damage, Mayors tell residents to stay away until ready for repopulation, no interference from federal officials.
Louisiana: New Orleans is destroyed, Mayor asks residents to return home as another hurricane approaches, has to be overruled by federal officials.

15. Louisiana: Over 400 killed by storm, flooding and crime.
Texas: 24 killed in bus accident on highway during evacuation, no storm related deaths.

16. Texas: Jailed prisoners are relocated to other detention facilities outside the storm area.
Louisiana: Jailed prisoners are set free to prey on city shops, residents, and homes.

17. Texas: Local and state officials work with FEMA and Red Cross in recovery operations.
Louisiana: Local and state officials obstruct FEMA and Red Cross from aiding in recovery operations.

18. Texas: Local and state officials demonstrate leadership in managing disaster areas.
Louisiana: Local and state officials fail to demonstrate leadership, require federal government to manage disaster areas.

19. Texas: Fuel deliveries can't keep up with demand, some run out of gas on highway, need help from fuel tankers before storm arrives.
Louisiana: Motorists wait till storm hits and electrical power fails. Cars run out of gas at gas stations that can't pump gas. Gas in underground tanks mixes with flood waters.

20. Texas: Mayors move citizens out of danger.
Louisiana: Mayor moves himself and family to Dallas.

21. Texas: Mayors continue public service announcements and updates on television with Governor's backing and support.
Louisiana: Mayor cusses, governor cries, senator threatens president with violence on television, none of them have a clue what went wrong or who's responsible.

22. Louisiana: Democratic Senator says FEMA was slow in responding to 911 calls from Louisiana citizens.
Texas: Republican Senator says "When you call 911, the phone doesn't ring in Washington, it rings here at the local responders".

Sorry, but I had to temporarly turn off my comment section. I was getting some wierd comments with links to places that I did not endorse.

Interesting comments

2005-10-03T14:33:00.000-05:00

I am considering trunign off my comments. Recently, I have been getting junk comments form people trying to advertise their webpages. I fidn it interesting that these sites are sites that you would not catch me on unless I was to click on something by accedent. Anyway, if I do not delete them or something, you are now warned.

Long Time......

2005-09-28T04:07:00.000-05:00

Lets see, what all has happened since the last post? Well, for starters, I am up late tonight trying to decide on what to write. I have a paper die for Materials Engineering and it is very hard to write up reports that are meaningless. I am still working for Brookshire's, but have cut down to only working the weekends. I have been working alot this last week for Nexicore. Last weekend was a killer at Brookshire's though. The people of and around Lindale went nuts. They CLEANED out the shelves. No batteries, milk, bread, butter, canned veggies, and anything else that did not need refrigeration. by monday morning, we filled the entire store up. I have not been up there since to see what has happened since, but that is ok. There will be a huge truck friday to finish filling the shelves before inventory which has been moved indefinatly. There is one good thing though, we had almost no backstock in the entire store friday night. We cleaned Sat night and faced, that was it. Here is the part that confuses me, why did they all panic? Does the power going out That big of a deal? Anyway, I had better return to my hw. It has to be done sooner or later.

Project

2005-08-14T16:30:00.000-05:00

I have decided that I need to make something. I have all this junk that is doing nothing but collect dust. I am looking for ideas. I have about 4 remote control cars and tons of junk that can be reused to make a device or a another toy. I thougth about making an alterain vehicle, but figured that there might be something more fun to build. I thought about making a personalized computer case for my desktop, but then got too lazy to actually make it. I also thought about making a few programs for my dad. A few of the programs I thought about making one that linked his address book to all the invoices on his computer aranged by customer and the other one does load calculations. A load calculation takes almost every characteristic about a room and adds all the rooms to a house and tells you what size a/c unit is needed and what size vent to put in the room. There are many load calculation programs out there, but the ones that I have seen have WAY too many bugs. The one that dad currently uses "forgets" rooms every now and again. (Okay, bear with me I am going to start using computer talk) It is based off of Microsoft Acess. What happens is that each house is saved in a Access spreadsheet file and for some reason the last room is moved down to row 155 or so. So, what you do is open up the Access file and move the data back to where it is supposed to be. Any way, there is a book called the "manual J". The manual is only about 600 pages long with a size 8 font. What I would like to do, is use the manual that the programmer put into the computer. The problem is that I have yet to learn to program enough with c++ to access the data in a spreadsheet. It would also help if I could make a GUI to go with the program, but that would slow it down alot. Anyway, more later. It is WAY past bed time. Later

Patience

2005-08-12T15:06:00.000-05:00

Well, I have tried to post twiced since my last time, but each time my post is lost even after blogger says,"sucessfull." Oh well. I have tried to talk about many things since my last post, but they were all just updates to how I was doing. I bought 4 books. 4 good books. The Dilbert Priciple, The Giver, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Deerslayer. I have read all but the Dilbert book. I liked all of the others and thought them good enough to buy and put them in my collection at the house after rereading them. Anyway, back to what I origionally wanted to post. I have been thinking alot about things in my life and how I want them to go, but the more I think about them and attempt to make my goals reached, the more I realize that I need to slow down and look for God's plan instead of my own. As I have talked about before, I have been looking for the one to spend the rest of my life with. I have talked to many girls, but most of them have diffrent goals than I do. I realize that some goals should be diffrent, but there are some goals that should always be the same such as trying to make God #1 in my life. I understand that wanting to do so only comes from God and only happens because God wants it to, but yeah. Most of the girls that I have talked to or know about do not have those types of goals. I find it rather depressing at times, but then again, if God wanted me to find the right one he would show her to me. What makes me really depressed is that most of the girls that are around me or that work around me are not pure. The attempt to show everything that they have, they have sex with almost every boyfriend ("I thought he was the one for me, but we did not get along after......."), and most of them smoke. Now there are a few exeptions to the above statement, but the ones that are an exception......(don't get mad at me if I leave something out here) where not ready for a relationship closer than friendship, I did not have the guts to ask them out, or they wanted nothing to do with me. There I said it. If you think that those are the wrong things to say on a blog, oh well. I have been up for 19 hours and it is way past my bed time and I need to write something here to make people think that I am still alive. Anyway, I guess what the Lord is trying to teach me is patience. At times, it is something that He gives and not something that we learn, or is it a combination of the 2? Anyway, that is what has been going through my mind the last few days while putting groceries on the shelf (I have to be thinking about something besides which can goes where). Sleep time, later.

Stocking

2005-07-24T04:10:00.000-05:00

Well, I got the stocking job, stocking groceries that is. It is all sort of fun. I finally got my hours turned around so that I can stay up all night and not feel tired. I have not had a job like this one in a while, so I am a little sore at the moment(back, neck, and legs). I hear that it is a good thing that I am a little sore. I might be building muscles or something of the sort. Any way, I am sorry for not posting in such a long time. I have been busy. My schedule last week was working from 4pm till 9pm making subs and then stocking from 10pm till 7 or 8am. I have not been fixing any computers reciently, but we will see what happens I have a job on the board, but the parts have not arrived. I intend on being online on aim and yahoo on my nights off so that I will keep my sleep schedule correct. I am going to try to stock and go to college this semester, we will have to see how that goes. I will not be making subs and I will cut my stocking hours down to two nights a week, possibly 3 nights a week for the frist few weeks of school till the hw gets laid on real thick. I did manage to get signed up for courses last week among the hustle and bustle. I also read the most recient Harry Potter book (I won't comment on it, read it for yourself first). Anyway, I am going to watch some anime till 8am or so then go to church. Later.

Jobs

2005-07-06T01:15:00.000-05:00

Well, since most of my friends are out taking classes right now, I figured I would clue them in to what they are missing in the job market. Right now, I am working at a Subway in Tyler, a computer comapany that does warranty work, and for my dad doing what ever he needs done at that second. I also just applied for a job putting groceries on shelves at grocery store. I could go into all the details of why you don't want any of these jobs, but there is no sense in complaining when complaininw changes nothing unless you get the complaints to the right person or persons. Here is the worst part about all of the above jobs, none of them pay enough to put anything back. Hopefully if I get this night job, I will not have any time to spend money and I will be making 8.50 per hour after shift diff due to it being a night job. Anyway, it has been an interesting learning experience. I have no clue how people live off of 6.00 an hour and still support a family. Makes me want to hurry and finish my degree. I can barely keep my truck going down the raod at that pay. ANYWAY, not much else has been really happening. I might tell you more IF you catch me. Later. I must get some sleep. Bye.

happenings

2005-07-02T19:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I have not been online much this summer. I have been working about 34+ hours a week at Subway, then Working for Nexicore, and if dad notices that I have some time off, he puts me to work doing things for his company. If you are wondering if it is all worth it, yes it is, but at some point I need to make enough money to actually put some back. Right now, I am just barely breaking even due to driving expenses. At the beginign of the summer, I spent tons of time on the Yahoo chat rooms at all hours of the day and night, but yahoo has decided to close down the user rooms, so now I don't even try to get online when I have the "extra" time. Anyway, I spent alot of money today. I bought a dvd rw (for $58.99? before taxes) and a 200gig hard drive (for $48.88 before taxes). I don't know why I spent my money like that, but then I will need some of it for school. It is time to go to bed. Goonight all.

Posts

2005-06-12T02:55:00.000-05:00

Sorry that I have not psoted sooner. I am working for a Subway in Tyler and I am still working for Nexicore. Between the 2, I have not been at home much. Which is good and bad. I am putting in about 34 to 37 hours a week at Subway and running an average of 5 calls a week for Nexicore. I have played with some interesting computers while working for them. I have also gotten to meet some new people while working with Subway. It is scary at times to find out what is really going through people's heads (just a random thought that I believe needs to be shared). Lets see. What else do I need to share with everyone? I found a new toy, BartPE. Highly recomended for people attempting to fix windows machines. I bought 2 new toys that I should not have bought with my jobs. I bought a gps device and a webcam. The gps I have been playing with it to find out just how fast and far I travel each day. I intend on using it for my job with Nexicore so that I can track mileage for tax purposes. It will also be useful in locating people's houses. I want broad band internet so bad I can almost taste it. My dad said he would pay for it if I could find some one that would come out here. So far, my searches have been in vain. I have been playing around with online dating services. The girls my age in Tyler are hard to find. I can not seem to find any of them that are available to hang out with. I did find someone online, but she is in louisiana. She wants to meet me, but I don't have the cash to drive there any more (just bought several above mentioned gadgets). I guess that if I am going to start looking for a friend that is a girl, I will have to spend my money a lot more frugally. Any way, that is about all. I am going to bed. Goodnight and I hope to write more later.

Summer, so far

2005-05-13T00:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I missed getting to see MaHoyt. That was the first thing I wanted to do this summer, but I missed it. Oh well. I have been very, very busy since I got home. I have been running around putting in job applications and running service calls for the part time computer warranty job I have. I finally got a job at the corner of 31 and the loop in Tyler. I am wondering what way to go next, but I guess I will just take it one step at a time. I want more hours because that means more money, but I would also like a little freedom this summer. I am currently broke. I would like to do Repos on a regular basis just for the cash, but those are hard to find and I need to get more insurance. Anyways, I am off to see if I can get some sleep. There are tons more I would like to write about, but not right now. later

Finals Week

2005-05-04T03:21:00.000-05:00

It is finals week. The week where you study all night to take tests that decide if you are going to pass a class or not. Lets describe theses tests. The tests often include the hardest most complicated problems that the book manufactures would not even consider putting in a text book. For instance, for the first page of my circuit final, the answer to every problem on the first page was zero. I don't know about you, but wouldn't that strike you as a little odd? The bad part about it is that if you stayed up all night the night before, you would not have seen why that was the correct answer.

anyway, enough about finals. Here is a list of things for you to remember if you do or intend to attend this university:
1. The teachers are not going to give you a grade, the numbers you recieve on your
assignments is waht you are going to get.
2. Never ever take a Hummel class, enough said.
3. The IT department stinks, you can not even talk on your cell phone because it
violates their wireless policy, but then again how are they going to find out?
4. There is no wireless intenet unless you provide yourself with a wireless internet
, which is illegal by the above stated policy
5. Bring your own cleaner. There is not any cleaner to clean your dorm room bathrooms
and the such. (The stench will run you out about halfway through the semester)
(don't ask)
6. Hotplates do hurt mirrors. Do not leave one pluged in near a mirror.
7. Ponding are great......if your birthday is in the summer.
8. Dating on campus is not a good choice. You are here to go to school. If you want
a date, go somewhere else. (if you find that somewhere else, let me know)
9. If you have a dorm room, get a fridge.
10. If you get the fridge, buy cases of rootbeer and monster. Keep the fridge stocked
The rootbeer sales great at $.50 and the Monster sales ok at $1.50. Candy
doesn't generally sale very well.
11. Laptops are great. (remeber to buy a wireless router that has a real good signal)
12. Laptops are not good if you have wireless access in class and can not control
yourself.
13. Bring a good microwaveable mug. (good for ramen, hot chocolate, and taking coffee
to classes)
14. bring a good bowel (good for ramen and many, many other things in a dorm room)
15. Bring walkie talkies (don't ask, just do it (yes, it does violate rules))
16. Refrigerant jug boxes make good trash cans. Good conversational pieces.
17. DVD burners and blank DVDs are nice to have for storing media, but highly
unrecomended if you want to keep out of trouble.
18. If you get a chance, watch anime. If you understand it and get hooked, good. If
not, I am sorry.
19. Bring alot of backed up music on your hard drive. Leave all your cds at home.
They will be "borrowed" otherwise and rarely make it back.
20. Vehicles. They are nice to have, but make sure that you bring an old cluncker to
school. That way if you do not want to drive, they you can say it "won't start".

I have many more to put up, but I have to get started on studying for my calcIII test tomorrow. Later people.

Thoughts of a college student late at night.

2005-04-28T05:41:00.000-05:00

I splurged today(I should probably say tonight) and watched a movie called "Ghost in the Shell". This it the second movie. In order to really understand everything happening in it, you would have had to watch the first movie and the first series. If have not already guest, it is anime. Certain series of anime I find intruigueing. This series is one of them. In the second movie, the main subject is "what is the purpose of life?" Well, this particular person has a twisted view. The movie is pretty hard to follow. I will probably have to see it again to find out more details. One of the biggest issues in this series is if the soul is part of the body, mind, or something more that we can not see (or that is how I interperated the movie). I know the answer, but I did not have to look far. I know about the Bible. I think that alot of people know what the Bible has to say and either twist it to make it sound like they want it or ignore it because they don't like what it says.

I have been thinking alot about Ecclesiastes. In Sunday School, our assistant pastor is going over this book in the Bible. This is one of the books that every time I read it, something new jumps out at me and/or I just really understand what is happening. I keep reading it and realizing that I am doing just like Solomon, except that I am not as smart as he is and get caught up in my sins. He keeps repeating "under the sun." I believe that when Solomon says this, he is talking about doing everything unde the hot burning sun and not under God. It is so easy to do things under the sun. Money, video games, and all sorts of things are so easy to become addicted to. Yes, I am addicted to computers at times. I hate to break off this train of thought, but I can no longer form complete sentences. Time to go to sleep. Goodnight.

The End is near

2005-04-22T12:13:00.000-05:00

I can't wait. School is almost out. I get to change gears from nothing but school work to a job and goof off mode. It is going to be fun when I can finally say that it is the end of the semester. I will have to confesss, I have not been spending as much time on hw as I should. My hw grades are still okay, but I have been having fun going to chat rooms. I will have to warn you, there are tons of things called "bots" that do nothing but give you links to unpleasant web pages. There is hope though, if you block all of the names that they use, eventually they will not be able to send you messages. I have over 2000 blocked at the moment. I can't wait to get a job again. I might actually have *gasps* money in my pocket. It will be a nice thing. I can't wait. Well, I am off. It is a,most time for chapel. Later

Happenings

2005-04-11T10:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I have been doing homework. That is about it. No new projects. No new jobs. My dad is selling the old Ford 9N. I like that tractor. It works for the moment, but we had to get another tractor in orfer to have a bucket to pick stuff up. We painted the old tractor and now dad has it on ebay. The link is: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=71367&item=7506852902&rd=1
There are some good pictures of the tractor and it has my house in the back ground. I am going to try to get the origional pictures in a few, but till then I will have to just tell you to go to ebay to see the pics and bid.

Writing

2005-04-01T02:19:00.000-06:00

As you probably guessed in my last post, I read alot before I graduated High School. I was also able to talk better and able to write better. Now that I have stopped reading except for required things, I have noticed a HUGE change. I studder, loose words, and all sorts of things of that sort. I really did not notice this happening till I started writing my exegesis paper. Even in Junior college, I could write a 5 page paper in a 3 hours, and that was with 3 to 4 sources. I could always put all sorts of filler. BUT I have mooved on to "better" things. I am an engineer. I study math and science. I am suposed to understand how and why things work. For the last 2 years that has been my focus. Believe it or not, I thought about being an english major before being an engineer, but I have lost my touch. Now I am sitting here with a critique. It is due tomorrow at 2:30. I have a blank sheet of paper. I remember writting mini critiques at my Junior College that only had to be a few sentances on what we thought. It was not really graded. What do I need to do to get back in that mind frame? It is really hurting my grade in Historical Books. Well, I need to write this thing. I need to come up with something more positve too. Later.

AR Books

2005-03-22T10:34:00.000-06:00

When I was in Middle School and High School, there was a program called Accelerated Reader Program where everyone read books and then took a test to see if you read the book. Every book was worth a certain amount of points. The amount of points a book was given was determined by its reading level and how long it was. There are probably more reasons, but that is the easiest way to say it. I looked for the lists that I had at home to see if I could find them so that I could post some of the titles to the books that I had read. I only found a list that I had read in the 10th grade. This list was generated about halfway throught the semester. I am putting the books that I remember liking here (or books that I think people might want to read).
The Deerslayer
The Pool of fire
Mutiny on the Bounty
Rifles for Watie
To Kill a Mockingbird
Daddy Long Legs
All Quiet on the Western Front
Two Years Before the Mast
Cold Mountain
The Runner
The Island
The Warrior's Path
The Daybreakers
A Little Bit Dead
The Haymeadow
The Machine Gunners
THe Tall Stranger
The Sky-Liners
Majave Crossing
Mustang Man
To Tame a Land
Ride the Dark Trail
Treasure Mountain
Last of the Breed
Most of the last half were louis Lamour books. For some reason I ran out of "big" books early. I remember reading "Walden" in the 9th grade. I took alot of what he said to be humor, but I could have been wrong. I wish that I had more of the list of books that I have read. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, but remeber that I read these books listed above about 7 years ago.

Spring Break

2005-03-21T12:15:00.000-06:00

Lets see, what all did I do? I had so much fun canoeing that it is hard to remember what all I did before canoeing. Tuesday, I took a neighbor to work and spent a few hours in Lindale getting bolst and chatting with a few old friends before going home. When I got home, dad and Zach were sanding down my canoe. I took over and finishe sanding my canoe. Dad found some sort of mat type stuff and we put it on the canoe with alot of fiberglass resin. The mat stuff did not go on the canoe like it was suposed to, but it made the canoe alot more stable and fixed some of the cracks that were starting to form. The resin still is a little sticky, it never set up for some reason. Wed set up a heater so that maybe the resin would dry and then I ran all over town looking for a 7/16" fiberglass tent pole for my tent so that we could use my easy to set up 3 room dome tent verse the old cabin tent that uses what seems like 100 tent pegs. Never found the tent pole, but I did go buy a wooden rod out of th ecraft section at walmart that was the correct size and cut it to length. We packed all the supplies wed, set up all the tents, cleaned all the cleanable coolers, and loaded the canoes. Thursday morning, we lookied at the diffrent river gages and the weather reports and decided that it would be to our best interest to go down to the Hill Country here in Texas. We found a camping spot on the Lower Guatalupe river and then jumped in the truck and headed out. We got to the camping spot around 4 ( don't really remember, don't wear a watch or watch the time on the radio when on vacation), set up the tent, and unloaded everything to start dinner. We had a spot rivht on the river. It was nice to have the river right beside the camp during the middle of the summer, but since the Lower Guatalupe is fed from the bottom of Canyon Lake, that brought the temp down about 15 more degrees than everywhere else. Thursday night everyone but dad and I froze. On Friday, we talked around and decided that the Upper and Lower Guatalupe had too much water in them and that we should probably just run the San Marcos river. We put in at the city park and canoed down to Spincers Canoe rental. We had a blast. I turned over once, but it was a welcome turn over because I was starting to get warm. Uncle Tommy bailed out on us because he was afraid that it might be cold again that night, so Sat we did not have anyone to shuttle us. Saturday morning, we slept late and then packed up. On the way back, we went to my cusin Mike's house and stayed there till around 9:30pm when I finally pryed dad out of the house so that I could make it back to school on time Sunday. We madeit back to my house with me as the driver about 3am or so. Everyone but me slept well on the way back. I did not sleep so well, but I guess that is a good thing. More later. I have to go to chapel now. Later.

Spring Break

2005-03-21T09:37:00.000-06:00

Extended hours

2005-03-09T01:47:00.000-06:00

I now know how Joey does it. He stays up over 24 hours all the time, but I never have done it before this weekend. It was fun and I will have to do it more often. I stayed up working on an exegesis paper. I woke up Sunday morning to go to chuch and went to bed shortly after dinner monday. Next time I will have to see just how long I can stay up, but with less caffinee. Monster drinks are great, but they get expensive at $1.99 plus tax a piece. I did come closer to sleep during classes monday, but I did not snore, that I know of. I am watchin Nurato at the moment. It is good stuff, highly recomended. It is about a boy whom is a stupid little brat on his journey to become someone of worth. Good stuff. Off to bed, have to catch up somewhere before Calc class.

Thoughts

2005-03-02T02:56:00.000-06:00

Origionally I was going to write something about gun control, but I ran out of stuff real quick. I did find a more interesting topic though. I was talking to someone and they asked why I do not baby sit kids. That was real fun. It finally came down to discipline. I would not mind baby sitting someone from churc, because I could always threaten to tell their parents because I know and the child knows that mom and dad will do something about it. Where I come from, parents will actuall *gasp* spank their child. I had a disagreement with someone today about this subject. She believed that kids should never ever be spanked for any reason. After being in a house full of foster kids, I will have to disagree. I know that you should not spank the child for everything and that there should be other forms of discipline to accompany spankings.

I could argue about all sorts of stuff, but it all comes down to one thing: "What do you base your life on?" The correct answer, but not always happening at the moment (the whole sin thing), is the Bible. Technically everything you do should be based on a Biblical World View. Being a Christian should not only effect the way you act on Sundays, it should effect the way you do things and think every day of the week. I know that I personally don't always do this, but I try to, and alot of the times it is me trying and not God.

Well, it is sleep time. Goodnight all.

Fun day with AAA

2005-02-23T01:06:00.000-06:00

This semester is really light so I had today pretty much compeletely off from school. I went to Tyler today to see what it was going to take to go to UT@Tyler to do some of the killer engineering courses like Statics, Dynamis, and possibly Thermodynamis. Fun Stuff. Well, my trip there was non helpful because the person that I needed to talk to was out for the day. Rats, oh well. So I went down the road to my church and chatted with our asistant pastor. We talked for a long time. Then I went to Red Springs and visited my friend http://joeyseverydaylife.blogspot.com/ We chatted for an hour or so, then I went home and ate lunch around 1:30 or so. I chatted with mom for a bit, then went to Lindale. I chatted with many old friends in Lindale, ate dinner and left Lindale around 6pm.

Now for the whole reason I decided to post

On the way home, about 6:45 I stopped to help a poor guy with Canada plates on his mini van. He had been there for about 40 min or so trying to flag someone down. No problem, I let him use my cell phone and he called AAA. Huge mistake. Don't ever, ever, ever call AAA if you want help within less than 3 hours. Okay, I exaggerated , it was only 2 hours. He called AAA and when they asked for directions to give to a tow truck driver, I told them the mile marker that I was at (which was not 40 feet from where we were), the closest exit (Barber Road), and that we were on the east bound side of I20. Simple enough no? I decided to stick around because I had a gut feeling that not all was dandy. After an hour, I got him to call back. They could not find where we were. I was then given the phone again, and she told me the directions. She said that we had said that we were 10 miles from Winona. So, I repeated the directions to here again. She repeated them to me. 10 min later I get a phone call from the wrecker service asking for directions. I repeated the directions again to him and he wanted to know why I did not tell AAA those directions to begin with. Apparentally, AAA ignored my directions and gave them the stupid ones that had them looking on the Tyler side of Winona instead of the Longview side of Winona. Grr.

So here is the correct way to get road side assistance. (outside of East Texas)
1. Call up someone that you know has internet access.
2. Google roadside assitance for the closest town pased
3. Call first tow truck or assistance provider to see what your options are

It is that simple, or if you are in close to LETU or Tyler call my cell phone number. I leave it on my away messssage enough that you can write it down for future refrence. BUT, NEVER EVER call AAAA unless you are despirate, but 911 would probably be quicker and safer. (In the Texas driver's handbook thing that you are suposed to read, it actually says to call 911 in its newest edition.)

Anyway, in all it was a fun day that I was able to get 2 job leads that might be of some use if I turn in applications. Anyway, calc, circuits, and physics need to be done. Later

Snow

2005-02-19T04:01:00.000-06:00

The picture that my Uncle took was the last time it snowed and really stuck to the ground. The pines in the picture were ruined. Most of them were missing their tops and the ones that were not, ended up crooked. My grandfather went out there asap and straighted up most of the trees on the 98 acere tree farm. It would not have been so bad had we of had a wetter spring and summer so that the trees could have been a bit stronger, but hey, due to my grandfather's unwillingness to give up hope for them, they will be ready for harvest in about 8 to 10 years depending on what they look like. IM me if you are really board and want to know what I know about tree farming, which I will warn is very little.

2005-02-19T03:53:00.000-06:00

Taken by Tommy Martin. See, it does snow every once in a while in Texas. I want to say this happened in Winter of 2000 or 2001. This picture can not be COPIED or REPUBLISHED WITHOUT my uncle's permission.

Lumber

2005-02-19T03:51:00.000-06:00

The picture below has a little story behind it. Luckly I was not fined for it, yet. As you can tell, we were cutting up logs for lumber and there had been a recent logging in the bottom where we were cutting up the loggs. Well the loggers had let several of the marked trees get damaged by unmarked trees resulting in the loss of the tops of several marked trees. So, I noticed that there were several of these and proceeded to cut them down. I was having chain saw problems and the wind went the wrong direction at the wrong moment, and the what was left of one of the tops just touched the power lines. The lines touched each other causing 2 fuses to blow. That is why you see the power company truck in the back ground. Fun stuff. The tractor is dad's new toy. That is what he got for Christmas, santa was nice this year. Even gave dad the payment book to go with it. I was hooking up the trailer to the tractor because the trailer was just about full and we were ready to call it a day on the cutting so that I could take the lumber home and stack it.

Picture that my Grandmother took.

2005-02-19T03:33:00.000-06:00

This is a picture of the saw mill, a few logs, the trailer, and myself on the tractor

Another Test

2005-02-16T03:16:00.000-06:00

So I did not go to sleep and I have yet to study, but here is something that I did. I am not sure if it is good or bad, but here we go:

Congratulations, Daniel!
Your IQ score is 126

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Facts Curator. This means you are highly intelligent and have picked up an impressive and unique collection of facts and figures over the years. You've got a remarkable vocabulary and exceptional math skills — which puts you in the same class as brainiacs like Bill Gates. And that's just some of what we know about you from your test results.

This is a little test that I took. I did everything in my head. I could have done better if I had used a piece of scratch papaer. Later

People and my reactions to them

2005-02-16T02:29:00.000-06:00

I know that most of you will not care about this, but this is why at times I may seem a little distant.

I have come to the conclusion that the people are hard to understand, and talking to them over instant messanger makes it even more interesting. See, I bring many, many assumtions and understandings to my conversations. I have learned of how much I have come to rely on facial expressions to try to understand what people are thinking or what I think that they are thinking. The fun thing is when the "girl" or "female" factor. You see, it is hard to comprehend their reaction to what you are going to say when talking person to person, and even harder when talking over an instant message or letter. That is why I don't ever send letters. I hate them. I don't like them becasue anything can be written inbetween the lines, even if you did not mean it that way. That is also another reason that I do not like to talk on the phone for extended periods of time. I can try to picture what they are thinking, but there are no guarantees. Most people don't know exactly what I am thinking at any given moment because ..... I really don't know. I guess it is because I am afraid that I will offend them. On some subjects I am willing to make myself the fool just to make sure that someone halfway understands my point a view, but for the most part, I try to keep my mouth shut because I know that I am not very good at phrasing things and that I will make a fool of myself or that I will offend someone.

Well, I have classes tomorrow (in a few hours) and a "wonderful" circuits test. I hope that I did not "complain" too much. Anyway, later.

Tests

2005-02-14T01:31:00.000-06:00

Well, my roommate found this and I took it and figuired that I would share.

You Have A Type B+ Personality

B+

You're a pro at going with the flow
You love to kick back and take in everything life has to offer
A total joy to be around, people crave your stability.

While you're totally laid back, you can have bouts of hyperactivity.
Get into a project you love, and you won't stop until it's done
You're passionate - just selective about your passions

Do You Have a Type A Personality?

Your Dominant Intelligence is Interpersonal Intelligence

You shine in your ability to realate to and understand others.
Good at seeing others' points of view, you get how people think and feel.
You have an uncanny ability to sense true feelings, intentions, and motivations.
A natural born leader, you are great at teaching and mediating conflict.

You would make a good counselor, salesperson, politician, or business person.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

I semi sorta agree with everything stated, but the polititions stuff has to go. Being lumped into the politian group is pretty much an insult. More later, I have an abstract that I have not really started so I have to run.

Happenings and anime

2005-02-12T17:32:00.000-06:00

Well, this weekend is Heratiage weekend and there are all sorts of parents and previewers here. The wierd, but good non the less, thing that they did last night was to have steak at SAGA. Now don't get me wrong, it was goos stuff by SAGA standards, but the previewers and most of the parents ate at a diffrent loaction. All the same, I have been doping okay. I am loking at my hw stack and not looking foward to completing it. I have been watching anime a bit this semseter. I found a series called "The Scrapped Princess." So far it is a pretty good series. It is one a the few series that I would not mind showing to my parents. The problem with most anime is that the Japanese culture is alot diffrent than Americans, and especially those of the Bible Belt. Japanese tend to include many things about sex and relationships. Most characters do not wear much clothing and somethimes if they wear clothing it is not for long. I try to stay away from the types of anime that I just described. There are many series of "good" anime that have interesitng plots and interesting meanings. One of my favorite examples that makes anime interging is Evangelion Neon Genises. I will try to describe it with out giving everythig away, but it is a good example. The series has alot of moral debating on the inside about everythig from religion to cloning. There are all sorts of things that can be read in between the lines, but there are all sorts of things that they come out and say. Then there are sereis like Witch Hunter Robin. This series is of course about witches and it is a little along the boarder line on what is being taught. I would not recomend it to someone whom can not discern fact from fiction because they talk alot near the end of the series about the devil and stuff of that sort, but it does teach about treating people equaling, even if you do not understand them. Well, I would like to tell you more about the diffrent series that I have watched, but my hw is calling and I am going home for the weekend. Later.

Desicions

2005-02-07T03:45:00.000-06:00

Well, I have till Friday at noon to make a huge set of desicions. I am considering signing up for the RA position on 41 next semester. If I go with this route, I will have to go to LETU next semster (obioviously). My grades here are not as good as they need to be. I am bringing them up, but that is still not good enough because I still have 3 of the hardest classes left to go: Statics, Dynamics, and then Thermodynamics. After those three classes, mechanical engineering classes are suposed to be easier. Any way I look at it, I have 2 years left. I have been considering changing majors, but I would not like doing that due to the pay loss in the real world. That brings up an interesting point though, am I doing this for the money? I don't think I am, but after spending so much money, I might have to find a way to pay it back when I graduate. I know how to live off of no money. I can do work on the side. 80 hour weeks are not foreign to me, I did that working at the grocery store and road service. Ah, those were the days. Wish I could go back to them. Things were alot easier back then. I worked, changed clothes, bought gatorade, went back to work doing all sorts of stuff. When the phone stopped ringing around 4am, go to bed and wake up around 6am and return to the grocery store( of course this was during the summer). On days off, it was not uncommon for me to have several thousand in the bank and atleast 400 in my pocket. Wow, collge and vehicles eat up money. So, back on subject, what should I do? I need to decide. I also consided going to UT Tyler to finish my degree, but the more I look at their stuff, the more that I see that they are not where I need to be. There are many engineering colleges out there, but I like LETU, even if it is harder, requires more, and doesn't have any PCA church (not a requirement, but would be nice to have friends with closer to the same beliefs) attending students to my knowledge. Anyway, it is way later than I intended to stay up, so I must go to sleep. Later.

Free time.

2005-01-27T02:13:00.000-06:00

This semester I am taking it easy with only 4 classes, so naturally I have tons of free time for the next 3 weeks then all the projects and tests will hit. So, what I am I doing with all this free time? I am having fun. One of my favorite topics is alternative fuels and/or EVs (electric vehicles). I started the week looking at EVs and have come to the conclusion that it will take close to $6000 to convert a regular car that has already been aquired to be all electric with all new components. Being a Martin and a person that is not rich, there is a good posibility that I could cut that price down to $3500 by purchasing used parts and other discounted items. To tell you the truth, most EVs only get around 40 miles on a charge. I go more miles on Sundays when I go to church. If I were to have an fuel saving vehicle, I would have to have a electric deisel hybrid that had an batteries powering it most of the time with a diesel generator that would keep the batteries atleast half way charged while I am up and about. Hybrids are very, very expensive creatures. to convert a regulare compact car I would be looking at spending around $9000 if I were to buy everything outright and not buy any discounted stuff. I have seen plenty of kits to build EVs, but no Hybird kits, and definatly no hint of diesel hybryd kits. The reason I am for deisel is because on average, deisel motors last 10 times as long as gasoline engines if properly taken care of. A properly tuned diesel that has a constant load can be adjusted to run very very well at that rpm and load and get better fuel economy than a diesel that has a varied load and rpm, plus the unvaried rpm and load motor will last longer than the motor that is not constant. So, you may ask why is all this so expensive? I will tell you. It is because the oil industry owns many of the key patents to produce key items to make EVs and Hybrids work, or atleast that is what I have read on 3 diffrent websites. It is not that the components are not out there, alot of the parts are already installed and used of fork lifts and electric pallet jacks. RG Le Tourneau used Hybrid like equipment. The way that most of his heavy equipmet worked was by a huge diesel engine ran and powered huge electric motors that were built into the hubs and rims of the equipment. Fun Stuff. If you get a chance to read all about this hybrid stuff, I say go for it althought the stuff will more than you could probably afford. More Later. I am going to bed so that I might get some hw done tomorrow.

What would happen, what would I do?

2005-01-19T17:53:00.000-06:00

I was set on playing with my cell phone and maybe going to Tyler to have fun with a few friends. I read an email this morning about a guy on the floor whom I knew was in trouble, but for some reason did not think much of. Why not? I realy do not know. I came up on the floor talking to the friend fro Tyler, texas (not the dorm thankgoodnes) and after hanging up after he had to go, I saw an email posted on the bulleton board. I read it. It was abot the guy on the floor that was hurt. What had happened is that on his way back from Christmas vacation a semi pushed him off the road in some form or fashion and into the ditch. I still do not know the entire story, but I did read the email all the same. the email was composed by his dad. There was much emotion in the email. The guy that was hurt could not talk, he was on a resporator, and was paralized form the neck down. They are suposed to put a halo on him the 17th or 18th after they evaluated how well he could breath on his own. I know what a halo is. I can only imagine haveing one on, but even then my imagination can not grasp how much it hurt. The Lord has provided his family with all sorts of things. He has given the family a car to use, funds, several local church families as suport, and much much more while they are several states away from home. I nor his father have any idea why this happened. After reading the email I knew I had to post something. I have too many questions. What would I do in that situation? What would my parents do? Would I be able to handle it as well as he could? Could my parents and friends be able to handle it? If something of that sort did happen, all I can do is pray that I would remember that everything that happens will happen for the glory of the Lord, even if I can not see it because more often than I would like things happen like this to friends and other believers in Christ that I do not see the end to. It is a sobering email. If you have a chance, sit down and pray for Steak, not only for his recovery, but for his family and all the people that the Lord has provided for his family.

This semester

2005-01-18T12:50:00.000-06:00

This semester is promising to be an "easy" one. I am only taking 12 hours and all but one class is retakes. It is suposed to be easier the second time around? So far it has been okay, but I am trying to keep out of the thought process that I have seen this stuff before therefore I do not need to relearn it. Well, I do need to relearn it. Any way, I decided to try something that I have not done in a while, I went down to the gym. While down there I listened to the news because the other 3 tvs had nothing worth watching. It was interesting, they were going over the budget stuff. Of course the Democrats pulled out a chart that said that the US was not in the hole finacially when Clinton was in office and now there is a huge debt that Bush created. I will say that Bush did create a little debt, but not all the debt that they were talking about. I still do not see where they got the idea of a surplus when Clinton was in office. THERE WAS NO SURPLUS. If I understand correctly, the surplus they were talking about was a budget surplus that Clinton created by make a budget that no one could ever spend and would bring the nation into a greater debt, but I could be wrong. That is one of the things that I do not understand, why do you want to be a socialist? I like the idea that if the Lord wants me to that I can go out and work my way to the top and become a millionare. The democrats think that all "rich" people are bad and that the rich people's money should be taken away and given to those whom do not want to work for a living. That is something that I do not like or understand. I must go, homework is calling and I have spent too much time on the net this morning. Later.

Cell Phones and other thoughts

2005-01-03T22:09:00.000-06:00

Well, I amde the jump, I went down today and switched to Verizon. I got tired of nobody hearing that they did not know or that I could not do that, so I went to verizon. I was very satisfied with how I was treated (it helped that the guy behind the counter wanted to sell a phone today, not tomorrow or the next day, but today). He told me everything I wanted to know, plus some things that I had only heard rumors on. He was well informed. That was the main selling point for me. There were some added bonuses like the cell phone itself was cheap and that he said I had a 15 day grace period that I could return for a full refund if I was not happy. So far, I have been really happy. Then phone works at my house, and not only in te house, but in the tin covered barn too. Tommorrow I will have to take it up to the big testing site, Holly Lake Ranch. Holly Lake Ranch is where my dad does alot of his buisness and normally cell phones don't work there with out being ontop of a hill and plugged into an external car antenna. We will see.

Well, due to the fact that I was in town and waiting for trafic today, I was able to listen to about 2 hours of Rush Limbaugh's show. This is very good. As usual I am alawys suprised at how stupid people are. The main topic today was compairing the War in Iraq and the tsunami that hit the Cheerleaders of the 911 insident. (I know that I can not spell, but I am in a hurry to get off and got to bed.) Okay, the Democrats think that we should help the tsunami victims, but not the people being killed in Iraq and other mid eastern nations. Why is that? I also do not understand why we shoud be the people that are the main rebuilders and funders for the cheerleaders. Why can't the UN squeeze money out of France or one of the oil countries? They have better governments than we do or they would switch to capitalism too right? Unfortunatly I have to run. I would like to post more, but I am out of time. Later.

Wireless Phones.

2005-01-02T21:11:00.000-06:00

I have been researching wireless phones because my 2 year contract is out and everyone is trying to switch over to GSM. Plus, I do not use my cell phone as much as I did before I went to LETU ( have schoolwork and little things of that ort keeping me form having time to use it). For your information, GSM is the newest thing in the US when it comes to wireless signals for cell phones. It allows you to got to webpages, download songs to your phone and all sorts of other expensive stuff. This is still kid stuff. To give you an idea of how far behind we are, in Japan they are installing GSM3 which lets you do more stuff for cheaper. I want to stay with TDMA, also known as digital, because right now it is the most widely used type signal available in the US. Even then, it still has holes larger than 20 miles wide in East Texas where you can not get any sort of signal. If you did not already know, Cingular bought out AT&T. Cingular has decided that they do not want to sell digital phones or wireless plans, so I am pretty much stuck with what I have. I would get rid of the phone all together, but year around if some one needs or wants to get in touch with me, the cell phone is the only way. Between running service calls for dad and doing odd jobs, I hardly come home to sleep much less recive phone messages (providing someone writes them down). I think that I am just going to stay with what I have for now, but if you want to know more about cell phones in East Texas, let me know and I will be glad to share more of my findings. Later.

Christmas Break so far.

2005-01-01T00:26:00.000-06:00

It has been fun. For Christams, we did the usual, ate too much and got to talk with family and friends, can't get much better. From 10 minutes after I got home till Christmas day, and since the day after Christams, I have been running around with and for my dad. Mainly, I helped his A/C buisness by running service calls and dad has some lumber cut, so I had to do some of the stuff related to that. For those that have never had lumber cut, here is what you do, cut down about a dozen straight trees, cut them to the longest lenght possible in increments of 23', 19', 17', 15', and so on till about 9'. Basically you are cutting these trees 1' longer than what you actually need out of them. Then you drag the loggs to an open, level are that is easily accessible by a 24' trailer and pickup. the 24' trailer is a saw mill on wheels. The guy that we use cuts the logs up for lumber for about 22 cents per board foot (a board foot is a board that is 1" thick X 12' wide X 12' long). You tell the guy what you need or want. In dad's case, dad wanted the best cut for the log, in other words, what the lumber guy thought was best. After the guy leaves, you stack up the lumber with "stickers" inbetween the boards (Stickers are scrap pieces of boards that are roughly 1" wide X 5/8" thick X the width of your stack of lumber). The Stacking is the most important because with out the stickers and being almost perfectly straight, the boards warp and become hard to work with. My brother and I stacked these boards about 6 feet tall and about 24" wide. Then after the stacking, you have to cover the boards otherwise they will grow mold. We have had problems in the past of people stealing cedar and other boards, so we put 20' freezer panels on top of the lumber. These pannels are what large grocery stores and warehouses use, they only weigh about 100 pounds or so (they were water logged, but dry on the lumber side, fun stuff). Today, I actually had a day off with some friends. We played a little with Half-Life 2. As I dorve my truck around Tyler, my friend had fun scaring people at stop lights while wearing a gas mask (all sorts of fun, DON'T DO TO OLDER LADIES, might run across a few complications). Well, I must go, I have to restart my computer, I finished dowloading a few updates that will "help" my Windows partition, later.

The weekend.

2004-12-06T01:21:00.000-06:00

Well, I did have a half a page of stuff writtenhere, but it all was erased some how. This weekend was rather interesting. I did not get any hw done hardly, but my cusin turned 19 Sunday and I got to hang around with an older guy at my church. I would put more info here about our chat, but I don't want to talk about here anything without his approval. I looked at the car that was dropped off at my house during thanksgiving weekend for a few minutes. It is going to need a few repairs. I noticed that the oil was pitch black. It was blacker than my computer, but I did not see any water in it or anything that said that there was something worng with the oil other than it needs to be changed. So, I looked at what I call the "burp keg". Most people refer to this as the antifreeze over flow or something of that sort, but I like my describtion better. It was empty. There was not any antifreeze or water in it, so I looked in the radiator, I did not see anything there either. This is bad. I called up the mom and she did say that it steamed whenever the heater was used last winter and that they have been trying to keep water in it. With this new info, I looked in the car and saw that they was a little bit of water on the flor board below the heat exchanger. Just for your information, an heat exchanger gets the hot antifreeze form the engine and allows air to blow through it so that you are warm durnig the winter. Sometimes these things leak after a few years. So, I have officially found the first thing that is going to cost money to fix. So, the list of stuff to do now on the car has gromw to: change the oil, replace the heat exchanger, flush the coolant, and check out the car some more. I need to check the spark plugs,the spark plug wires, the distributor cap, the coil, driver train, and much much more. The car is a Buick LeSaber. I think it looks like an '86 model. Well, more on that subject later. I am sure that most people here are really not into mechanic work, so I will not go on any longer today. Well, I have things to do and places to be. Later

Update before review week.

2004-12-03T19:40:00.000-06:00

Well, nothing came about last weekend when I looked at a friend's car, she was so scared, she got her mom to bring the car out to my parents' house. Oh well. I was not expecting too much. So, does any one actuall read blogs any more? It has been a while since anyone has posted, and even longer since anyone has posted comments. I wander if anyone actually reads my blog anymore? I will have to say that I am guilty of not reading blogs. I have been playing in the Yahoo Chat rooms, aminly in Dtudy Group 1. I have been meeting all sorts of interesting people. I have run accross an interesting thing that looks like a scam. I am going to have to look into it to make sure that I don't get in trouble. Here is how the story goes. First it says that it is a he and needs help on a hw. That goes okay and everything. A few days later (if I did not log my ims I would not know the person form any onther) claims that it is a she and that she would like to chat. So you chat with them about 10 minutes or so, enough that they start to run out of things to say then they ask for your email, some times it is less than 8 minutes. They send you a pic of some cover girl model that is actually clothed. Then for 2 or 3 days longer, they periodically instant message you an may email you. Then just when you think that you might want to keep on chatting as a pin pall or something, it nails you with a request for a your home address to send you some money form some relative here in the US to send to them (assuming that they are in nigeria, Africa, or some eastern country) via western union or something of the sort. That is rather interesting, why can't the relative send it? If you ask that question, it disappears for a day or two and asks you again. I am going to keep callining he,she, it, or what ever it is "it" due lack of a better name. Well, due to how late it is and how much I have written I am goiing to log out. Maybe some one else has seen this scam or what ever it is? Well, let me know, you have no reason you can't, I have left my yahoo nickname in my profile and there is a comments section here too. Later all.

Random stuff

2004-11-23T02:10:00.000-06:00

I am a little scatter brained right now, but I needed to post, so here is what I am thinking about :

I cleaned up my desk today to find it. I now have proof of where this semester has run off to, I filled 2 notebooks full of hw, quizes, and tests. It is amazing how much I have done. I knew that I had spent many hours doing it, but I did not know that I had that much done.
I am sorry that I have not posted much lately. I have been preoccupied with hw and tests. I can't wait till this weekend, I get a break. I get to work around the house and look for a job, does that sound like fun?

Here is something that I have been plagued with lately. About a month ago, a friend wierded out and thought that I was after her as a girlfriend, but to tell you the truth, I had put of the thought of chasing girls and girlfriends in general due to the fact that I did not think that schoolwork and girls could coexist while mataining grades. Never the less, she brought the thought back to existance, but I was able to push it back for a few. Then another friend of mine (an older guy(68ish) that I was helping move due to his disabilities) started in on me about not have a girlfriend or atleast chasing after a particular girl in general that is a member of my church. That pushed the limits. Then mom and dad heard him bugging me about it and started in on it. I did not think parents were suposed to suport dating, but aparently mine want me to atleast go out with this girl. I will have to say she is a nice girl. The Lord has blessed her with many talents, but should I or should I not go after her. I have been toying with this for several weeks, but have not come to a decision. The interesting part about it is that her parents are for it too, and because of this, the poor girl is afraid to hold a conversation with me. THis makes it hard fo rme to figure her out without actually asking her on a date and starting a ruckus at church. We both were "born" in the church, but she did not attend Sunday school classes because she wanted to be in her sister's classes because she is sy to begin with. Our parents have something cooking, but I have yet to figure it all out. I do know that this weekend that she is going to bring her car out for me and my dad to look at (she will be going to SFA and needs to know if the car will make it several trips). For the moment, I am going to sit back and see what happens. I have prayed about it. I thought about it, but have not come up with anything closer to the solution. I think I have said too much here, but I figured I would give someone somthing to laugh at.
What is everyone's take on DC++? I like the file shareing program. I get Linux stuff and Anime from prople on campus. This is a win-win situation for eveeryone. The things that I am downloading with it are legal to download. Linux distros are huge. It would take me days to download. I, of course, would use a multi threading downloading program so that I would be able to download it faster and use up more bandwidth. This would make others unhappy. So, if I use DC++ I am downloading from some one that has already goen through the process of spending hours and hours of downloading therefore helping others that are using the schools internet connection. Of course there are things that are shared that are illegal, but it is like rifles, just because the user shoots someone does not mean that the next person that wants to go hunting should have to suffer because someone else did something that was wrong. Use your head, no matter what you do, people will find ways around things if you try to limit what they want to do, especially at a school full of engineers.
Well, I must sleep. I have a quiz in statics that I have yet to really understand the material for, so I must run. Later.

News

2004-11-09T23:02:00.000-06:00

Sorry it has been a while since I posted. I have been all over and done all sorts of stuff. Of course I voted for Bush. Who in their right mind wouldn't? I have decided that I am going to hang on till the very end of all my classes this semsester and then I am going to see which class to drop. I am not doing particularly good in any of the classes this semester. I don't know what has happened the this semseter. I have worked my hardest, but it just seems like non of it has really sunk in enough to pass any quizzes, although I have done pretty well on the hw. I am not sure if I should blame my problems on my hyperactive brain, not enough effort, or just on the fact that I am not suposed to graduate as an Mechanical Engineer. On the list of more recient events, IT has decided that students don't need the internet and have randomly turned off numerous ports in student's rooms. Unfortunatly, mine was one of them. I have been trying to find out what it is going to take to get my connection turned back on, but have failed thus far. Luckly I have found a way to hack into the school's wireless network and am able to check email(the only form of communication that IT responds to, when they decide that they want to). This will be an interesting battle mainly because nobody down there actually knows what the other person is doing or why they are doing it. What am I suposed to do? I thought about breaking into the IT closet on my floor and exchanging a few wires, but there is a good possiblity that the wires that I am changing are turned off too. I found out that a friend of mine now has a boyfriend. Why did she not tell me? I don't know, it just baffels me. I knew something of the sort was probably it, but had to hear it 4th hand. Am I really the kind of person that nobay can confide in? I also found out about another friend from his mom that the reason that his cell phone does not work is because he did not pay the bill, but the reasons that he did not pay the bill had better not be discussed here. He could have asked me for a loan. I am sure he knew that. That is one thing that I try to make sure that I can do, I try to have enough rescourses to not only provide for myself, but make other's lives easier. I try my best to keep extra time and money for friends and others that are in need. Even if i don't have any extra, I give what I have any way. I always have. It makes my mom mad when she asks what happened to all my money, I have to tell her the truth. She has a diffrent mindset than I do. I could easily live on what she calls not enough. I see all these people around me, but since returning here, it has been harder and harder to do the above. I try to help when possible. I try to get things done early or late to make sure that I have time when everyone else does so that I can accomplish the above. Well, I need to run. It is time to do circuits. Later.

Recent Happenings

2004-11-04T02:36:00.000-06:00

Well, it seems like forever since I last posted. Last weekend I went to a wedding. One of my best friends got hitched. The rehersal was on friday night, with the wedding on Sat. I was not in the wedding, but I did attempt to help a little bit. Saturday evening the groom's family had a holloween hay ride that was suposed to scare the riders. I went around the first time to get the idea of what was happening from the point of view on the trailer. Then I had fun scaring people. Unfortunaltly the tractor had good headlights. The headlights caused the surounding ground to be well lit. I was able to hide suficiently to scare a few people though, but not all of them. Did you know that it is easier to scare the older kids(16 on up) than it is to scare the kids that are younger than 13? That was one of the best things about the weekend. Don't tell LETU, but I went to a bar with the groom so that I could be the designated driver. Now that was interesting. They gave me an orange arm band and I was able to drink all the Dr Pepper I wanted for free. We left in about 2 hours or less when we decided that our money had been wasted on going to a location that had nobody in it but drunks and people after things that they should not have been after. I could have told them that before we even got close to going there, but nobody listens to me. I have a statics test in roughly 11.5 hours, so I must return to studying. More later when ever later comes.

Girls

2004-10-20T01:32:00.000-05:00

What should I say? They are creatures that are completely diffrent than us. I have yet to understand them. I know that I like being around them, but it seems that if you are not out to get a girlfriend, then they have almost nothing to do with you. I have yet to figure this out. Here is a good example. I will not say her name, but I dought anyone that will read this knows her. So, I get to talking to her, and from what I can tell, we are okay friends. This is during the wonderful freshmen activities that niether of us really wanted to participate in. For the first week of school we still talked, but as soon as she found out that I was not after a "girlfriend," she quickly disapeared and found someone that was(and she has yet to actually hold more than a 2 minut chat with me since). I guess she made a good choice, but that is none of my busness I guess. From what I have seen, most LETU girls are like that, they talk to everyone, but as soon as they can, they get a boyfriend and then disapear off the planet. They are no where to be found. This includes the ones that say that they don't want a boyfreind. That "type" finds a boy, claims that he is not their significant other, and latches on till someon notices. Then they back off for a short period of time, but soo latch back on for dear life. Yes I see it, like it or not this is the way that it is. Go ahead anmake it public, or atleast confess it to your self. Then there is another type of girl on campus that I have seen so far. This type latches on every thing that can be considered a boy then they walk all over him till the boy gets a brain and says no, or she finds one that she like more. So she then dumps him with rather unkind words (perferably in the form of a letter) and then finds the next unsuspecting boy. I am sorry if I left any types of girls on campus out. I have yet to find any others. I don't know if I am just not looking hard enough or if I am just not suposed to find anyone to chat with and get to know on campus. I don't know. Well, it has taken me entirely too long to write this and I have way too much hw to do. I am sorry if this offended you, but this is letu girls through my eyes. Hw is calling, until then, later.

School is no fun.

2004-10-18T15:52:00.000-05:00

I know it has been over a week since my last post, but there has not been alot happening other than failing classes, not sleeping due to hw, and making other people mad. I am trying to fix all the above, but sometimes there is nothing that you can do. I tried the busness of spending more time studying which lead to the lack of sleep. Now I can not catch up. I am still struggleing with what I want to do. Last semester I had it set in stone, with simple stuff like calc II, physics I, and cs1, if the classes never got harder, I could make it through school without breaking a sweat, but after the first week, I lost it this semester. Every corner I turn, I am having a hard time doing the work. I understand the concept, but when it comes to working the problems, the process that needs to be taken leaves me. Mainly on quizes in circuits one. It does not make it any easier knowing that sitting right beside me this semester there is a guy that does not know what a grade below an 98 looks like. Then on top of that, I have been making people mad. It is easy to do, especially if the person is already ticked and does not have the same values as you do, and it is even easier if you answer them when you are still perterbed at something that they have said or done. Well, I must go, I have over 8hours of hw tonight, so I had better get started. More later, whenever later comes.

Update

2004-10-05T17:24:00.000-05:00

What should I talk about? The last week has been packed full of stuff. Some of it fun and some of it not so. I came to the conclusion that there are way too many things to do and there is not near enough time to do half of the things that are expected of you. I went home this last weekend, spent time with family, friends, and did all kinds of stuff, exept hw. Oh well, I was given an espresso maker by my aunt and have made atleast 12 shots since returning to school Sunday night. Just a little tip, add chocholate syrup to espresso at 4 table spoons per shot and you will like it alot better. Next subject. Has any one been keeping up with politics? I have been attempting to. I generally only talk about politics when I have nothing else to talk about that might be of any interest to anyone whom is family, so you may tune out the rest of this post if you are a Democrat or you just do not like politics. I have found several funny articles. Here is an example:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6185094/site/newsweek/
Kerry is not the brightest person in the world. How do you keep a volcano from erupting? If you know, please tell me. I need to go to the patent office and register your idea and or device. He has also done some other interesting stuff that I am not sure is true or not, so I am not going to repeat it. Politics can be fun when you are discussing elections, but when it comes to the stupid rules that are made, you can count me out. There are better things to do with America's recources than pay some old fart to sit around and make rules that do nothing but make the average person a criminal. Well, I must return to school work. More later.

What has happened to the Church?

2004-09-30T18:01:00.000-05:00

Warning, this post will offend many people. Especially Democrats and gay people.

Well, I had a chance to watch a little tv today. I flipped through all 40 channels that we get in the lounge, and happened to come across cspan where they were covering the current happenings in Senate. See that there was nothig else on, I started to watch it. I watched a total of 10 min worth till I found out that they (Democrats) were trying once again to turn our government into a monarchy. What they wanted to do was to get a person "under" the president that the president appointed and this person would "report" to the president the happenings of the CIA, FBI, and alot of the other orginizations. I am not for this, espeseally after I thought that they might be gining him leadership over these. I do not like this idea of big government. Of course we as a nation have become to grow accustomed to such, but at one point in time, the Church was whom we relyed upon to get hings done, or maybe it was the leaders of the church. It was not that long ago that if you were sick, hurt, or juist in need, you expected a visit from someone form the church to come and check up on you. It was not that long ago the the churches were the ones whom started schools and lead our children to do great things. What has happened? Have we become so independen on the government that we do not need the church any more? Is church just a place to go and worship God and socialize on sunday mornings and then forget about for the rest of the week?
While watching the above debate, across the bottom of the screen, there was a posting about what was happening on the othere cspan channel. The other channel was covering the House of Representatives. I soon got very involved with this debate. You could tell without much effort what each person whom talked on this subject believed. I found out that the president is going to have a debate of the same subject this evening, I hope I do not miss it, but if I do, I will just read about it tomorrow. THe issue is Gay Marriage and should there be a Constitutional Amendment describing what marriage is. I am really upset at this debate. There were people argueing over all sorts of views. There were people that thought that yes, marriage is for man and wife, but there should not be any laws in the constitution, then there was the the gay people that did not want any constitution amendments of the sorts, then there were people arguing that if we do not put it in the constitution then we are going to loose the correct definition of marriage. Well, all these are viable arguments, but I do not think that any of them are the correct answer. In my opinion, the correcty answer is that there needs to be no man made laws about marriage because there is a perfectly good definition and a whole set of laws about marriage already in place. Just look in the Bible, God clearly defines marriage as the union between man and woman. What other explination do you need? He also clearly explains that being Gay or a Lesbian is completely wrong also. Well, now that I have clearly stated my views, please feel free to tell me your views, I have an email adress, instant messeger, and I have it set up so that you can leave comments. You have no excuse not to tell me. I probably left some stuff ut, but I have to go, hw is calling.

Bloggs.

2004-09-21T04:13:00.000-05:00

I am having a blast. I have spent the last hour (where does that time fly to?) surffing the diffrent blogs out there. Some of the people that I read about I am worried about. I see how good I really have it and how much God has blessed me and the people around me. I did find a few bloggs that I wish that I had never seen, but I guess that is just the way that society is going. I wish it wasn't, but I will do my part not to help it go down hill. What should I do. It is a little after 2am and I am still wired. I am tired of hw and I can no longer count. Yet I would like to read more bloggs and write comments that I would hope that helped out the person writting the blogg, but I also need the sleep. I have another long day today. This semester I have CircuitsI, PhysicsII, Calculus III, and Linear Algebra all on the same day (mon., wed., fri.), and I have Statics on tue. I understand linear algebra and calculus, but I am having trouble in circuits and statics at the time being. Physics is on the boarder. I understand it as the teacher talks about it, but I have litterally no luck when it comes to the hw or the quizzes. Any way, I am glad to be back. I am afraid to say it, but I am actually glad to be back again for the challenges. I was actually getting board toward the ned of summer. If you know me well, then you know that I was exeptionally busy all summer long putting no less than 200 miles a week on my truck and doing all kinds of projects, but none of it was challenging like school is. I am glad to be back, even though I am a little concerned with a few of my classes. I think I am going to go to bed. Sleep is calling. I did not make it to bed till 5am monday morning, and I had better not do that too many more times this week before I catch up. Until later, bye.

Time Flys.

2004-09-20T05:20:00.000-05:00

It is currently way past bed time. I just decided to give up on circuits and start calc III. then I really need to look over linear algebra. I have come ot the conclusion that I am ready for school to be over. I have looked at the course requirements of several different majors and have come t the conclusion that it would not help me to move ot another concentration. I considered moving to MET, but found out that would almost put me 2 semesters behind. that would be a bummer. I looked at several other courses of study, like diesel engineering technology, but decided that would be just the long way of saying diesel mechanic. I also looked at what it would take to transfer to another school, and decided although it would be cheaper, I would not have the people around that I think I need to grow in Christ. So, what should I do? I fianally decided that doing the rest of the hw that is due tomorrow, minus circuits, would have to do for tonight because it needs to be done. To tell you the truth what started all of this thought is the idea of living out on my own where instead of doing circuits hw or calc II hw, I would be out doing something so that I can afford to do my own laundry. Until reciently, I have not had any cash to do laundary so I have been returning home to do it. I like going home, but I also like being here and pretending to get hw done. It is a catch 22 situation. If I go home, I get clothes washed, I get a good meal, and I get to see friends and family, and if I saty here, I get to be with friends, do hw, get help for hw (for I passed everyone's help when I passed algebra at the junior colloge), and I don't sleep. What should I do? I don't know. Of course prayer is the only correct answer at this point in time, but my flesh wants an answer right now, not when He is ready to give me one. Well, I must study and do more Calc III. Until later.

Random Thoughts

2004-09-15T04:35:00.000-05:00

I have been day dreaming alot. I can not imagine why. I have been toying with all kinds of stuff. I had an interesting question come up today, Why did I come to LeTourneau? I have answered this question countless times with answers that were "correct". For instance, I have answered that I thought it was God's will for me to come here. I still believe that he wanted me to go here, but today when faced the question, all I could think of was because I wanted to be better than some of the others at my school. I know this is the wrong reason, but it has got me thinking about it. Another thought that keeps passing in front of me is the thought of switching majors. From what I understand (which I am finding out daily that I understand less and less), this semster is a light one. The main reason that I have considered changing majors is due to nights like this one that I am up till after 2:30 am and still need to do 2 subjects worth of homework, and I see guys and gals up all over the place that I never see doing homework that seem to pass and I see them out and about at all times of the day and night. Enough of the gripeing. I also had an interesting idea of making one of those flashlights that produce light when they are shalken up. So far, all I can think of is getting a flashlight and gutting it. then putting an piezo-electric switch at either end of the light and putting a weight in the center. Then finding a way to get the switches to charge a capacitor or small rechargable battery. The next part is the fun part, how do I regulate the amps going to the led. I need to put it together and do some tests and experiments to see how much of a charge I can build up in the supplies that I currently have. Well, I must run. I need to do calc, linear algebra, 2 physics problems, and some sleep before 9:20.

Homework.....................................................again

2004-09-13T01:08:00.000-05:00

Do you want any homework? If you do, I have plenty to share. I should be doing it right now, but I figured that I would post in my blog before requesting that everyone else post in thier blogs. I went home this weekend, and the best part was there was a potluck dinner at the church, so I got a good meal out of the deal. I also begged and pleaded and finally talked mom into paying my truck payment that is due the 13th. Yeah. Does any one know a Rodrigo Talauera? He keeps calling my cell phone at weird hours of the day. He has a Whitehouse, Tx phone number. He has called me in church and as early as 3am, or anywhere inbetween. Well, I must return to the hw. It is calling. I am almost done with calc, but there is no way that I am going to finish circuits at this rate. So until next time, bye.

Homework

2004-09-10T03:30:00.000-05:00

Why is it so easy sometimes to sit and do hw and other times it just can not be done? Like tonight for instance. I sat down at my desk with every intention of starting my hw at 2 pm. Then I renewed my effort sometime after dinner, I think it was around 6pm, and now I am here at 1:30 am and have not gotten but one problem accomplished. What am I going to do with myself. Anyway, other than motivation, I really do not have anything else to gripe about. I origionally wanted to make a blog and only use it as an insirational scource for others, but if those that have been reading have noticed, it has become my place to vent or talk about things that I like to gripe about. Anyway, I must make myself in some for or way do my hw. Until later, bye.

I am at it again.

2004-09-07T03:00:00.000-05:00

Okay. I have done this every sunday, tuesday, thursday night since school started, I stay up late doing hw. I knew when I signed up for theses classes that I would have a ton of hw, but I did not know that I would have this much trouble completing it. Here is an example, in class today there was an inclass problem that most of the class finished in 5 minutes, it took me all of the alotted time and I was still not finished when the teacher took away the paper. What is wrong with me? I am used to being the brightest and fastest working person in the class, but I do not know what has caused this slownes? I guess you could call it. Anyway, why do people always think the wrong thing? I have around a girl or say hello to one, and here at LETU, they automatically think that I am asking them out on a date or wanting to be a boyfriend. I do not mind being a boy and a friend, but not the same at once, or atleast not yet. At some point in high school I thought that it would be a good thing that I did not get a girl friend atleast till I graduated college and maybe even have a job. I know that it sounds kind of childish, but it is one way that I do not get myself into trouble with hw or with a girl. I think that if I am studying and applying myself to my studies like I should that I will not have enough time to spend with her, or atleast not the proper amount of time to spend with her. I could get a girlfriend for the summer, but that would be wrong for me to say "hey, schools about to begin, bye hope you will be my girlfriend next summer". I know that it would not happen that way, but I am afraid that is what she would think I was doing. Anyway, enough on that subject. Well, I am neck deep in hw and I am not working on it, so I must change that. Until later.

Why do I keep doing the stupid things?

2004-09-03T19:03:00.000-05:00

Last night I thoroughly enjoied myself. I got the privalige of playin Settlers of Cattan with several people. Of course I did not win, but I did not stop kicking till the game ended. After the game we went to visit some other people on campus. I was able to get back on my floor by 11:30pm. I started to do my hw, but got distracted by a visit to the lounge. There was a friend in there that does not come by often and he stayed and talked with several guys on the floor till 2am. I ended being one of the people that was there when he left. Then I went to my room, gathered up hw supplies and finished my hw in the lounge. I did not finish till 5am. I probably could have stayed up longer and done more, but I met all the requirements for the next day, so I retired for a short nap. Here is the bad part, I knew all along that I had this hw and that I could have left at any time to go and finish it, but I for some reason could not make myself do my hw while all these people where up and about. Well, I can not complain. I did rather well. I stayed awake, or about as awake as I normally am through all of my classes. THE WEEKEND IS HERE! Now I can do the rest of my hw and might get some sleep sometime in the schedule. As always, I must go and do something constructive. Later

Habbits

2004-09-02T12:07:00.000-05:00

I am going to have to watch out. last night I thought that I would turn on Windows Media Player and just listen to some music for background noise while attempting to do hw. Well, some where in the mix of things as I got board with reading things that I should already know but don't, I accedentally turned on some anime. At first I was okay and I was still getting the hw done, but somewhere in the mix of things I looked at the time and it was 2am and not 1/16 of the hw was done. Where did all that time go? This happend to me last year and I suffered greatly (grade wise) due to lack of getting hw done. Anyone have any sugestions? I tried turning the computer off, but I soon found that I need a little but of noise in the room to get something done. More later I must get ready to face teh day and the hw.

People of the female variety

2004-09-01T21:32:00.000-05:00

Sorry to any one whom reads this, but I am going to have to complain a little here today. I have come to the conclusion that I will never understand females. I would like to, but I think that it is physically and mentally imposible for any one, including females, to understand what goes through a female's mind. For instance, why would you get up set if some guys where playing a prank on another guy and asked you to be a part in it? Remember we asked before we acted and the asking got us in as much trouble as involving her without asking. Okay that is not a good example. Alright here is another example, diffrent girl. I am what I consider good friends with several people on campus. I thought I was a good friend, but I guess that I am just the person that shows up and can be talked to occasionally. Here is what I am talking about. I chatted all summer when ever I could to a friend of mine. She told me about all kinds of projects that she was doing all summer long. I get to campus and talk to her while she is talking to one of her friends and I see that one of her projects has been brought to school with her. I comment that her project looks good and that I was glad to finally able to see it at last. One of her other friends then asks me if I got to see any of the pictures of it before it was finished. Come to find out there were dozens of pictures being sent to all of her friends execpt me. Should I be mad, disapointed, or something? Well, I let the subject drop and returned to my hw. That is only one example. I could come up with more, but I would rather not share all of the happenings because I do not want to embarase this person or her friends. Is there any sensable girls out there? The only girl that I really like moved off and got married because of several circumstaces. She actually liked me, but did not like the idea of waiting till I was out of college to get married. I can only hope that I will one day find A girl that half way like me and that I can atleast pretend to understand. Well, more later I have more hw than I can possibly do in time to turn it in.