Contacts....

Not the kind for your eyes... I've somehow managed to get in touch with a few old friends from here and there over the past couple of days. It is cool and a bit sad at the same time. I am happy that they all seem to be doing well, but sad that now I realize that miss them all in various ways. So It has been a bittersweet experience, but I am glad It has happened anyway. And it did just "happen", I had no plan for finding people or anything, but things just kinda worked out this way.

On another note, I came to a kind of realization last night. I was thinking of something I had read by C.S. Lewis, where he said that because we and God communicate via prayer, and that God is timeless, prayer also has a timeless quality to it. The way he said it, the prayers we pray now may help us now, but also in the past and in the future... Reading that stretched my mind, (and made me think of the series finale of Star Trek, the Next Generation) If I pray for things in the 'now' there is a direct answer 'now' and also in the future and the past. What really warps my brain is that it helps me in the past too. I had read this a while ago, and what clicked for me last night was that by actively remembering things that had happened in the past and praying for myself then in the now, I was able to let go of some of the bad memories and feelings that had troubled me about those times past.

It is a different experience, but in our current temporal nature, we don't see the past as 'active'. We seem to be passive observers of things done and remembered, but feel we can't change them. Realizing an eternal existence and the timelessness of both our prayers and God's Love and ourselves, we can pray for things past, for strength, for God to ease the pain and through those prayers, God will ease those past sufferings. These prayers for grace extend to the future and blanket eternity, with God's blessings on us.

I've heard the somewhat cliche, "Just give it up to God." Meaning give all your trouble and worries for God to deal with, and forgetting about them. It's hard to do when you're not sure how... Oh I understand what's supposed to happen and I thought I had done that, but it wasn't until last night and saying a quiet prayer for myself in the past, did I get relief in the present. It was an acknowledgment on my part that God had saved me then, and would save me now and in the future.

Seeing how God (is/was/will) take care of me, gave me peace about things that had been troubling me. This isn't just "giving it up to God", it's realizing that he has already taken care of things, and I can move on, knowing that he prectected and is protecting me in the past as well as now as well in the future.

The timeless nature of God isn't easy to wrap your head around. Prayers now are effective through all time, so if you have trouble in the past remember it and pray for God to give you relief, in doing that you are acknowledging that God was in control then (and now, and in future) and it makes it easier for you to see God's power then. Don't forget to pray for others though, I can see it would be an easy trap to only pray for yourself, so don't forget that other people need help too!

I imagine that doing this often enough would make it so that things things of the past distant memories and that soon the "past" would be the present and the future would be the present and you would be living in the timelessness that we truly exist in. All in (and through) prayer to the Lord God Most High!

More web crap...

More web programming at work. Makes me hate Internet Explorer even more. Use Firefox if you can. It's a much better web browser the IE, in my personal opinion.

Patti was over last night again. It wouldn't be too bad except she sits at my desk taking up my space. I needed veg time and with the house( still )

...Ok I just did something totally cool with my computer in moving a window around and did it totally by accident, but now I can't figure out how to repeat it! Darn!!! Back to normal posting...

all confused with books and shelves everywhere, it's hard to find a comfortable place to relax. I have been putting the new library room to good use though by chilling out there after work. It's nice, but the tv in the other room can be kinda loud. I guess that isn't much of a problem in the real world. lol.

Going back to work now...

no PHP_AUTH_USER, well crap!

Just a little programming problem I'm dealing with at work. It involves statefulness in the HTTP server and trying to script it in PHP. Sucks. but fixable.

I was kinda down yesterday afternoon, I needed a little down time and didn't get it. To many people just hanging out around the house. I'm reserving Thursday night as a family night. Just us, hanging out watching TV or whatever. I'm looking forward to it.

I started reading St. Augustine's Confessions last night. I had tried to get into it before and I remember now why I had stopped. He writes (or at least the translation from Latin) in big flowery sentences that are never complete sentences but long series' of rhetorical questions or even statements. It seems very stream-of-concisousness and it loses me at times, but or the most part I am getting it. It is better than my usual brain-candy (Conan, Sci-Fi, or Fantasy books) and I'm enjoying the challenge.

So took a break to do a little work. I haven't done many renderings recently, mainly haven't had the time, between tutoring, guitar, warcraft, and around the house chores, I've had no time. It's kinda sucked. It really sucks when I can't even get to my own desk because of it all. I'm tired of moving crap and eager for it all to be done!

Speaking of moving Helen & I helped Shawn with more moving on Sat. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun at the same time. We were cutting up and just having a good time while lugging tons of furniture (ok not tons, but a good amount) down stairs and into and out of cars trucks and vehicles. It was fun but on Sunday we were both too exhausted to really do anything more. I tried more household re-arranging but I was too low on energy to do much.

A good Evening

I got home from work early yesterday. Helen and Patti were there working on their things, so I went ahead and zoned out playing warcraft and began working on some rendering things. Maggie got home and the girls began working on making chinese dumplings, and then Marlon (a kid from our neighborhood who I pay to mow the lawn) came over bringing homework he needed help on. So we had all five of us sitting around the table, the girls working together in like and assembly line to make dumplings and me helping Marlon with his algebra. It was fun and exhausting all at the same time. We stayed like that for a while moving through dinner and then Maggie working on her homework too. The girls eventually went off to wal-mart and Marlon and I finished up.

I was able to get to re-stringing my guitar after that. It was fun and a little stressful because I was worried about breaking the new string too. After a lot of tuning I finally got it right (and figured out more about the little electric tuner I borrowed from Maggie (I was having trouble reading the screen)) and was playing again. It's cool. I really like the new string I can't tell if it's just expectation or there really is a difference, but the new string sounds "nicer" than the old one. Maybe b/c it's not just the cheap string that came with the guitar but a really nice one. I had fun with it once I got it together and it gave me a cool sense of accomplishment. It's old hat to any long time guitar player, but this is the first time I'd ever had to replace a string. It gave me a cool sense of having moved ahead of where I was.

I finished up the night with practice at the kitchen table with Maggie slogging through American History. I don't know how history books manage to make history boring, but they do. I stayed up a little late to play some more warcraft and help a guy get a special sword he wanted. Fun and a little mindless.

Another Day...

Well more time spent rendering. It's amazing how much work it is to pose an image on a computer fix up their clothes, hair, legs, arms, joints, fingers, head, neck and eyes before you get something presentable. It takes more work than I thought. I also want each figure somewhat unique and different, so taking standard character maps and modifying them, or doing post processing is also taking longer than I thought.

Last night I made a dud. It may go into the calendar, but if not that's ok... What calendar you may ask? I had the keen idea of trying my hand at doing a pin-up girl calendar. I had started one of family photos but I never finished it (80% done, but several of the images got corrupted and so I'll have to redo them.) I wanted to do this as a challenge for myself to make something and seems like a pin-up calendar would be kinda cool. If this comes out ok, I may do a sci-fi/fantasy one next.






If you get a chance check out the blog of CellBlock36. This post especially is quite good.

New View

We've almost finished re-arranging everything in the new office area. This is my new view...

New Render up....

I did a new render this evening, I am pleased with it. It is over at my comic site. I must warn you though it is not safe for work, it contains mild nudity.

Bang! Whack!

I broke a guitar string last night. The high E string popped while I was tightening it and whacked me hard across the back of my hand. It only stung for a little bit, I was more distressed about loosing a string. A good excuse to go buy stuff at the music store though!! I practiced more just doing the chords I had strings for. It wasn't hard to do, but I can tell losing just one string makes the entire guitar sound different.

350, woot down a pound. I attribute it mainly to two days of hard labor under the house, sweating buckets.

More renderings done, I'm putting them up on my fotms site. I'm back to enjoying it more and I've come up with another story I want to tell. More on that Soon...

The projects we started last weekend are slowly taking form. The new computer room is slowly taking shape, mainly b/c it will be 3 times a pain in the ass because of all the computer equipment that needs to be moved. I also want to try to rewire the outlets so the we can move the DSL router into the back room as well. We also need more (working) phone jacks anyway. That, moving a small tree and fixing the drainage in the second bathroom are my main projects going into this weekend. Maybe I'll try to move my tree tonight.

Because of the burning heat recently it's died back. It needs more watery soil and a place with a little more shade. I am going to put it by the drain for the air conditioner sinc ethe soil there is very wet. I've had that tree since I lived in my 2nd house in Gainesville, so It's kinda of a momento.

Fingertips...

Ouch. I've been thinking about what I want to do with my life (or just my spare time) and so I decided to work on playing guitar again. I relax a lot while playing and just enjoy strumming on it. I wouldn't mind playing with a group of people but I want to learn for myself, at least for now.

So I grabbed a book of chords and my guitar, I tuned it. I had too, Maggie complained it hurt her ears. So taking care of that I played a little over the weekend (when not under the house) and played about an hour last night.

Part of the process of playing guitar is building up the callouses on your hands. It hurts to learn for the short term because your finger tips get cut on the strings while trying to hold them down. It hurts quite a bit, but I am not too worried about it.

I visited a bunch of guitar tab sites too. Guitar tab is a shorthand way of representing how to play a guitar in a specific way. It makes it easy for people learning to play guitar to play songs they may have heard. I grabbed a bunch last night to learn.

Hopefully soon, I'll be good enough to really play something.

Hot, Wet and Tight....

That was my weekend, spent under the house, in a tight, muddy and hot crawl-space. It started as a project to re-arragne the computer room. It ended up as a way to move the computer room entirely, move the TV Room and moving the library. So movign the TV room meant running at least one new cable tv line run. At first we tried doing it through the ceiling. That was a no-go, and I ended up breathing in fiber glass insulation and dust and sitting in a pool of my own sweat for an hour.

I was dripping water after that and because of the way the house was made we decided it would be easier to come up through the floor.

So Saturday I went under the house...



It was muddy apparently a large part of the yard drains under the house. It was hot, no breeze and stifling heat. We had put out rat poison earlier in the week, and I found Sven, dead. A Norwegian wharf rat that succumbed to the poison. He hadn't been dead long though since he was still pretty stiff. Helen poked some bags to me through a vent on the side of the house and I drug Sven back out side where I had Helen hose the dirt off of me.

We got cable tv crimpers and some coaxial cable and som ends and Sunday Morning I went back under. I used a long 3/8" drill to poke holes in the floor. It worked well and I spent about an hour running cable and trying to keep it from knotting up while dragging it around in the mud and dirt. Underneath Maggy's room I pushed up the first cable, it sucked because there were spider webs everywhere and they got all in my hair.

Attaching the cables to a three way splitter was hard as the third cable didn't want to go on, I spent about 20 mins fighting with it. I had no flexibility in moving the cables around much and doing in laying sideways in the mud and spiders just got me frustrated. Finally I drug the last of the cable over to where I had put the hole for the living room... And thanked God that I hadn't drilled an inch lower where I would have put a hole in and electrical wire!

I crawled back out, tools in tow. Helen hosed me off again and I went inside to shower again and crimp on the ends.

The new cable runs work great and the living room looks nice too. One out of three rooms isn't too bad. I figure we'll get the rest done through the week. I was totally drained by Sunday afternoon, I wanted to keep working and moving things around, but I was so tired I couldn't move. I just sat and mindlessly watched tv...

351

Suckage, up by one.

On a more positive note, I did 1/2 a mile on the treadmill walking, now I just need to be consistent about it.

Maggie got her drivers license, so she's cruising around now... and bringing all her friends home with her. I'm not thrilled about that, but I'm glad she's happy with her new found freedom.

....

So I started this post yesterday, but thanks to saved draft copies, I can finish today.

Cut paragraph about parenting, it's not for the public

Taking a day off tomorrow to go to the beach, It will be a nice family day to get away before school starts in the fall. We're all looking forward to it.

Up at 1, Down at 3

I woke with a start. I was dozing off, but sometimes, when I'm falling asleep I'll have the beginnings of a dream and jump or trip or get surprised and I'll wake up trying to jump or catch myself or run away. So I was scared out of sleep, I don't know by what but I know it was scary.

When I'm woken up this way I check the house. Check the doors to see if they are locked, and check the rooms to see who or what is in them and check on the cats to see if they've gotten into trouble. I was stumbling through the house, awake and asleep, and I looked out the back window.

The yard was a pale grey. Quiet, nothing moving and silent. I dropped into a chair, I reclined back and slept. I woke up sore, my neck wasn't in the perfect position and chairs while you can sleep in them aren't the most comfortable. I got up and looked out the back window again.

The yard was lit up by the bright silver glow of the full moon. There was a shadow cast by the house, but the light was so bright every exposed part of the yard glowed in the spectral light. I was amazed, in two hours the full moon had come out and I was alone in it's quiet presence. If I had been more awake I would have wandered outside to bask in the moon light. Moon lit nights are nice, the world is quiet. Out of a seeming respect for the moon and her monthly chance to shine. The sun comes everyday, but the moon only for a few days gives light to the world.

I grabbed the blue blanket, more accurately it's my 'safety blanket'. I had one similar to it when I was a child and It gives me fond memories of working with the youth at church. It was left behind by a teenager running off to do teenager things and so I inherited it, something left over in the van.

I went back to my real bed, but seeing the silver light of the moon, feeling secure in my blanket, that put me to sleep.

350

A scary number on the scale. So Helen and I started walking last night. Getting into the habit and keeping it will be hard, but we can do it.

We're back to church hunting again. I like the one close by, but it's a little too overly-friendly for my Episcopalian background. Episcopalians have a habit of being stand-offish and somewhat stuck-up, so it's hard to come into a very touchy-feely church for me. I'm not sure why Pooks doesn't like it. Either way we are off into church shopping land again. I'm ready to settle into someplace though.

I have been commissioned for some more 3D renders! That is very cool news and of course something I enjoy anyway. It's hard to go back to GIS programming instead of just working on the renderings. It's also hard to resist the urge to buy up every 3D model I can. Unfortunately my bank account is holding me back too.