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April 30, 2004
Fowler's 21!
Well, the tests that I had earlier this week went fairly well I think. I was most relieved at the E&M test. We haven't gotten it back yet, but I think I have legitimate hope for something in the mid-B to low-A range. That'd be absolutely fantastic, especially after my last test in that class. But let's not think of such unpleasantries.
Yesterday we played back-to-back IM frisbee games, but this time we had a bunch of people show up, thanks to a threatening email that Cory sent out. We still lost both games, but we were able to play and compete much better than normal, because we were all able to have some breaks during the game. I wasn't even dead tired after playing two games, like I was after just one game on Tuesday when I had to play the entire game. :-)
And then last night Carl & I worked on our Wind Energy project's PowerPoint presentation from 7pm-2am, for the Sigma Xi scientific research symposium that took place this afternoon. We put a lot of work into it so that it would look really good, and it paid off. We gave our presentation this afternoon in front of a pretty good audience, somewhere around 30 people. Even Jim Peterson, the President of Gustavus, showed up for our talk, which was pretty exciting. We think it went really well, and hopefully President Peterson is even more convinced now of the value of actively pursuing wind power here at Gustavus. Chuck doesn't have it up yet, but our presentation from today will eventually be put on the Gustavus Wind Energy website (there's a lot of other information about the wind energy project on there currently). I'll mention this site again in my blog when Chuck posts it.
This evening a bunch of us went to the county park at Seven Mile Creek to have a birthday picnic to celebrate Dave Fowler's 21st birthday (which is actually tomorrow). We grilled a bunch of hot dogs and played an awful lot of frisbee, it was a great time. I don't know if I'll be around at midnight when Dave and a bunch of people head down to Patrick's. It'd be cool to be there for Dave's first drinks ever, but I'm so amazingly tired I don't know if I'll make it until then. So we'll see. Happy Birthday Dave!
In other news it would appear that even the axis of evil isn't immune to the UFO craze. Apparently there have been droves of UFO sightings in Iran in the last two weeks. How does the Iranian government explain all these strange sightings? Venus. That's right, apparently Venus has the ability to drop in and out of the clouds, and shine rays of green, blue, red and purple light. Uhhh, okay. At least they didn't use the cliche weather balloon explanation.
And, at long last, the Timberwolves have finally made it out of the first round of the NBA playoffs! Mere seconds ago they eliminated the Denver Nuggets by a score of 102-91. Finally the Wolves got that monkey off their back. Bring on the Kings! Go Timberwolves!
Posted by Jared at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2004
But, Where's the Rum?
Okay, I'm getting kinda worried about my tests that are coming up in the next two days. I have a quiz in Visual Experience tomorrow, and then on Wednesday yet another vocab quiz, but what's worrying me most is the E&M test on Thursday. I haven't had a chance to study for it yet, although most of my classmates have already been studying for at least a couple of days. Well, at least I'll have all afternoon and evening tomorrow to cram.
Ever since I went and played frisbee this afternoon in one of our IM games, I've been just dead tired, and it's been hard for me to focus on anything. Hence, since I got back from Proclaim, I've been just sitting here in front of the TV watching the Timberwolves-Nuggets game and reading some articles online. I'd say I've gotten about two minutes of review/studying in for my art quiz tomorrow. At least I'll have an extra hour tomorrow morning to study for it, since the Mayday symposium is tomorrow at 10:30, which is pushing classes back an hour. Hey, whaddya know, Mayday is actually serving a purpose this year!
Anyways, one of the articles I stumbled upon tonight proved to be very interesting. What the mainstream media hasn't been reporting to any of us is that, in fact, a good deal of Saddam's WMD have been found. I strongly urge everyone to read this.
In other news, someone has taken the bottle of rum that was stored in Josh's closet (he's 21, so it's okay). He discovered it missing tonight, and we're all at a loss as to who it could be. You should also check out Josh's blog to find out about rumors of a potential lawsuit brewing involving him. In my opinion, any potential lawsuit wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
And I've also noticed that I've been in a bit of a drought lately for comments. Nobody's posted a comment to any of my entires in two or three weeks. How sad. Anyway, back to the Timberwolves game, it's close in the 4th quarter and I'm pretty nervous.
Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2004
Super-Busy Weekend
Okay, so this weekend was super-busy. Yesterday I worked at Admissions for the Spring Open House from 8:45am-1pm, giving huge group tours and getting people to their academic interest sessions (I was directing traffic to the physics & math sessions). Basically, I walked all over the place, around campus probably three times. But this day really reaffirmed how much I prefer giving tours to just one or two families at a time, instead of huge groups of 20-30 people. Because with that many people, it just takes forever to get anywhere, and it's tough to navigate in the buildings, especially the res halls. Oh well. At least Jill had Panera bagels for us for breakfast when we got there. That's why we all love having Jill as a supervisor!
Right after I got done with Admissions it was time to head up to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts with John and Liz Ory. Prof. Freiert had this big packet telling us exactly where to go to see these specific pieces, and then she wanted us to comment on them, with stuff like, "is this piece classical or hellenistic, and why?" We spent just over 2 hours there, before the museum closed. The downside is that we still had probably 2 hours of stuff to do, so we're gonna try to get Pat to let us out of doing the rest, because we're all super-busy the rest of the year. Sigh. We thought we were gonna have enough time to get pretty much everything done, because Pat had said she thought everything could be done in just two and a half to three hours. Silly Pat, she's not a good time estimator.
After a delicious stop at Arby's on the way home, we got back just in time to go to the Gustavus Jazz Ensembles concert. I went with a few friends, Liz, Carl, Seth, Dave & Cory, and the concert was pretty good. I do enjoy good big band jazz quite a bit.
Then Carl came over to 202, and we started working on our big Sigma Xi presentation for the wind energy project that's coming up on Friday. We started working on it in Keynote (a Mac alternative to PowerPoint), because Josh was adamant that we do so. Well, partway in when we tried to save it, there was an error, which corrupted the file and prevented us from being able to open it or save it or do anything. So, we ended up losing over an hour of work, and now have to start over. This time, we're not fooling around, and just doing it in PowerPoint, which has much more features than Keynote anyway. But that was a major downer to end the night on last night.
So this morning I had to take my 120GB hard drive out of my desktop PC and get it put into my Firewire case, as my parents stopped by today to pick it up. We also went to the study abroad orientation session to hear about all sorts of insurance and money things. There's another session tomorrow night that I have to attend too.
Alas, it wasn't until after my parents left late this afternoon that I was able to begin all my homework. Stupid E&M and Math Methods. Le sigh. I have most of it done, now I just have to study for the Japanese verb form quiz tomorrow. So many verb forms that are so hazy...
Posted by Jared at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2004
Happy 21st John!
Wow, yet another week has gone by the books this semester, it's really hard to believe. Not a whole lot has been going on the last few days that I've neglected to post, other than me being practically unable to focus on any facet of homework very well for more than just a couple of minutes. Let's see, what have I been up to in an effort to procrastinate?
Well, on Wednesday I went down to Mankato in the afternoon to pick some stuff up from Wal-Mart (as much as I hate going to that store, they have good prices on things like notebooks, soap and the like, but that's the extent of what I ever buy there) and JCPenney, where I bought a couple pairs of pants and shorts for when I go to Australia. It's amazing, whenever I go to JCPenney, they always happen to have a huge sale on just the things that I want (like shorts the other day -- buy 1, get the second for just $1!). I don't check the ads beforehand either, which makes it all the more amazing. Then that evening I proceeded to be very unproductive while cheering on my Timberwolves to a 2-0 lead in their series against the Nuggets.
Thursday was a pretty good day. Of course, any day's a good day when you go to Pizza Ranch for lunch! After a long drought, we physics majors finally got our act together and made the trek up to Le Seuer for the best lunch buffet this side of the Mason-Dixon Line. Just $4 for all you can eat pizza, chicken, salad, and pop! I ate a lot, I had four platefuls of food. Needless to say, I wasn't very hungry when suppertime rolled around, hehe. I think we should definitely try to make a run to Pizza Ranch at least once a week for the rest of the semester.
Thursday evening I hung out for awhile with Erin, who was super excited because tonight she got to go to a Ben Folds concert for FREE at Luther College with Javen. After that it was time for Prepare, and it was an interesting talk yet again. I'm glad that I'm finding/taking the time to go regularly to both Proclaim and Prepare basically every week, it was a goal that I set for myself back in J-Term to get more involved in Christian activities here on campus.
Today was exciting of course because it's a Friday, and also because S&S dismissed the parking ticket they'd issued me back in March, yay! This evening I played soccer with the physics club, which is always fun. Our team lost pretty badly, though. Most of the game I was goalie (I did alright, nothing to write home about), but I did manage to score two "garbage" goals, and just miss on two other golden opportunities. I also managed to kinda destroy the big toenail on my kicking foot during the game. That's gonna be fun to deal with in the days to come.
Tonight I've been spending most of my time finally getting my files transferred from my desktop to my laptop. I'd been putting it off, but it was getting a bit urgent because tomorrow's gonna be horribly busy for me, and my parents are taking the desktop back home with them on Sunday afternoon.
The majorly fun thing about today is that it's John's 21st birthday! The downside is that I haven't seen him at all today since shortly after lunch. Josh had been planning on taking him out to Patrick's at 10:30 to buy him a drink or two, but John hasn't come back yet from playing vampire tag, so we're all kinda waiting around for him. Zach & I probably weren't gonna go with them to Patrick's, since technically speaking nobody under 21 is allowed in there after 10pm. If he's much longer I may wind up just going to bed or falling asleep before I can give him his card on his birthday, because I've been sooooo tired all week, and I'm just totally worn out tonight (it also doesn't help that I have to work tomorrow morning at 8:45am, blah). But in any case, Happy Birthday John!
Posted by Jared at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2004
Dreary Tuesday
I was sooo tired this morning during classes, even though I got an hour more sleep last night than usual. I'm gonna blame it on the dreary, cold, rainy weather we had all day today. It kinda sucked. I mean, even our frisbee game this afternoon had to be postponed.
There was a guest lecture tonight in Olin by Eileen Friel that was pretty cool, it was sponsored by NSF. It was about where elements come from, from all stages of star formation, development and death/explosion. It was pretty interesting even though it was of course heavily permeated with cosmic evolutionary views. Paul was threatening to dock us points on our upcoming E&M test next week if we didnt show up, so our class was quite well represented at the talk tonight. :-)
Proclaim tonight was pretty cool. Jack Niemi from the Office of Church Relations came to speak, and he gave communion too, which was nice. I haven't missed a single Tuesday of going to Proclaim since I first went back in early January, and I really enjoy going to it every week. It's nice having some time set aside for worship set aside in the middle of the week. And I'm making some new friends there too, so that's always cool.
Chuck let Carl & I know this afternoon that he'd like us to give a Sigma Xi talk for Honors Weekend about the Wind Energy Research Project. That'd be April 30, and our abstract would have to be in by this Friday, so it was kinda late notice, but we should be able to scramble something together in time. The rest of the semester is gonna be sooo busy... Just four weeks of class to go. It's scary how fast the year is going by.
On the subject of energy, I'm sure that many of you have heard stories in the media about John Kerry and the Democrats accusing the Bush Administration of a "sweetheart deal" with the Saudis. They claimed that Bob Woodward, in his recently-released book that's been making headlines lately, said that the Saudis were gonna keep prices down before the upcoming presidential election, and they were all hopping mad at the supposed sneaky, underhanded, backroom deal that Bush had made. Well, as it turns out, the Saudis always do that for incumbent presidents, because stability in the American economy is good for them and for the world. They did it even for Jimmy Carter back when he was stuck in his malaise in 1979, and Bill Clinton in 1996. The Saudi Crown Prince Bandar came out on Larry King and Bob Woodward on 60 Minutes to set the record straight, that there was no oil conspiracy here, that it was just standard practice from the last 25 years. Quite a far cry from the picture that Kerry and the other Dems were trying to paint.
In other news, an Australian woman discovered that doctors left a 6 1/4" scissors in her abdomen for over a year after she had colon surgery. Needless to say, she's going to sue. That would've majorly sucked. And it appears that the doctors didn't know what was causing her intense pain after the surgery, until she badgered them into taking an x-ray. Yay for Australian health care.
Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2004
Cool Thunderstorms
This morning I finally got around to making the photo album for the photos I took of campus on Friday. I have a link to the album on my Photos page.
Today definitely felt like summer. It got up to 88 today here in St Peter, with a hot wind of 30+mph throughout the day. It felt pretty sultry out there. But while it was near 90 degrees here in southern Minnesota, it was in the 30s in northern Minnesota. That made for a really powerful line of thunderstorms that rolled through this evening, the first of the season. It was pretty ominous -- it was pitch black outside at 7:30, even though the sun didn't set until around 8. Needless to say, I was pretty excited about the weather and couldn't really concentrate on my homework while the storm was approaching, hehe. There were some tornado warnings in some counties west of us, but none here in Nicollet County. But it was nice to finally get some rain, it was getting pretty dry around here. But with the powerful cold front having moved through, it's only going to be around 60 for a high tomorrow. Quite a change.
Go Timberwolves! They took out the Nuggets tonight 106-92, behind 40 points from Cassell, and 30 from KG. Maybe this is the year that they'll finally get out of the first round. One can only hope. The lame thing is that Game 2 isn't until Wednesday, and Game 3 not until Saturday again. I hate it when the TV networks have such heavy influence on the scheduling of games.
And right now, John and his brother John are dyeing their hair. John's dyeing his purple (sigh), and Mike's making his tips blond. John's parents had been pleading with Josh and I all year to keep John away from the hair dye, but I failed because I didn't know John was planning on doing that until Mike showed up. John looks so much better with his natural dark blond hair than with strangely colored hair. But how about the rest of you out there in cyberspace? I'm too lazy to actually make a poll here on my webpage, but we can still have a quasi-poll in the comments section to this post. So if you have any feelings on the subject either way, just leave a comment. The plus side about him dyeing his hair is that we'll be able to spot our table in the caf quite easily once again, just as we were when he dyed his hair bright pink and then green last year. I guess John wanted to make sure he looked distinctive (perhaps like his favorite anime character??) for his 21st birthday, which is on Friday.
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2004
Sick of Homework
Ahh, it felt so good to finally be able to sleep in a bit this morning. It's so much nicer not having to wake up to an alarm for a change. I finally got my Firewire case ordered this morning. I'm planning on using it to hold the 120GB hard drive that's currently in my desktop machine, so that I'll have some extra portable storage to go with my laptop. But the case is big enough so that it could even have an optical drive of some sort, such as a DVD burner, should I choose to get one at some date in the future. It'd be nice if that would get here by Friday, since my parents are probably gonna be taking my desktop machine back with them when they come down to visit next weekend, but I'm not holding my breath.
Today was really nice out yet again. But what did I spend my day doing? Something outside, taking advantage of the beautiful weather? No, of course not. I was in Olin all afternoon doing E&M homework. The lame part is that I didn't even make it through two problems. Blah. Hopefully tomorrow goes better in the homework department, because I have a lot to do.
After supper tonight, Dave, Cory, Andy, Nate, Johan and I played some tackle football on the actual football field for an hour or two. Now that was fun! There was a lot of room to run (and hence not a whole lot of tackling going on) since it was just a 3-on-3 game (although we shortened the field to just 50 yards), and so Nate scored practically every time he touched the ball. He had a true football day though, as he wound up with a pretty good scratch on his back, grass stains on his shorts and shirt, a torn shirt, and a chipped tooth (which he chipped when he slid and his forehead slammed into my leg). All in all it was pretty awesome, and a good changeup from frisbee all the time. Hopefully we'll get some of the other physics folk to join us in playing that somewhat frequently as well this spring.
Then tonight I watched "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" with some people out in the section. Man, that movie starts out so strong in the first 15-20 minutes, but then just fizzles into mostly lameness, but it's still of course a classic. Did you know that moose bites can be pretti nasti? :-)
Posted by Jared at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2004
"Kill Bill, Vol. 2" Rocks!
Man, today was such a nice day out yet again. We've had quite a stretch of marvelous weather the past few days. This afternoon I went around campus and took pictures of some of the trees that are in bloom, and also some of the first flowers that are now poking their foliage above ground. I was intending on getting the photo album put online tonight, but I ended up doing other stuff instead. Oh well, I'll get around to it eventually.
This afternoon I played frisbee with the physics club. There was a pretty good turnout, and it was fun playing a game in which both teams were of comparable skills (as opposed to all of our intramural games, in which we're horribly overmatched). I wound up catching or throwing probably 75-80% of the scores for the team I was on, so that was pretty cool. But man alive, I'm gettin really sore from three days in a row of frisbee, after several days of relative inactivity. My body's not used to this punishment anymore like it used to be in high school when I was in track and cross country. Ahh, those were the days.
Tonight Carl & I went down to Mankato with a few other people (Christian, Josh, Brian, and a few other non-physics people) to see "Kill Bill, Vol. 2." I really enjoyed the first film, even with all the over-the-top violence and gore, but the second movie is better than the first one by far. Where the first one tends to rely on action to carry it along, the second film relies on great (and often funny) dialogue and character development. I really recommend seeing this film, although if you haven't seen the first one yet, it's advisable to do so. You'd just appreciate the differences the second movie offers a lot more. Also, there's a humorous outtake after the end of all the credits (which are rather interminable, as Quentin Tarantino seemed to list everyone even remotely involved with the film, including the caterers).
On a side note, most of my sectionmates went to see the movie at 4 this afternoon (I went at 7). Anyway, when Carl & I got to the theater we noticed that all of them were huddled around Josh's car with the hood up. We asked what was wrong, but they didn't seem to know (they'd already tried jumping it, but to no avail apparently). It was only a couple minutes before our showing of the movie started, so we just went into the theater, since there wasn't anything we could help with anyway. Well, apparently then they called a tow truck and waited about 20-30 minutes for him to show up. When the tow truck guy finally got there, he went into Josh's car, put it into 'park,' and proceeded to start the car right up! Silly Josh, you can't start a car with an automatic transmission if it isn't in park, hehe.
Then after Carl & I got back from "Kill Bill," we sat around and watched "Star Trek: First Contact." All in all it was a pretty good day, although I didn't get quite as much done with my computer as I was planning to. :-) Sigh, how much homework should I do tomorrow? I don't want to do any, but I know that I should. Oh well. Time to get to bed so that I can enjoy sleeping in for the first time in many days. Mmmm, glorious sleep...
Posted by Jared at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2004
Frisbee Fun
Okay, I'm really enjoying having my new PowerBook. I'm basically taking it everywhere I go, it's nice being able to check things on the fly in the physics office or in the caf or wherever. That said, it's also really easy to let it become a distraction when I'm supposedly "doing homework" in the physics office, hehe. This'll probably be good for me in the long run anyway, in that it'll teach me some self-control when it comes to things like instant messenger. :-)
This afternoon we had our first intramural frisbee game of the season. We ended up losing 13-3. It's not at all surprising that we lost (the other four teams in the intramural league are made up of players from the actual GAC Ultimate Frisbee team, so we're at a slight disadvantage, being a bunch of non-athletic physics majors), but we were actually pleased to get 3 points. Typically in the past when we've played teams like that we've either gotten shutout or only 1 score or so. Anyway, I caught two of our scores this afternoon, and should've had a third that I simply dropped when I was wide open. Oh well. We've got a lot to work on before our next IM game on Tuesday. Dave was insistent on sticking with almost exclusively long passes, even though it was windy (which makes long passes tough to begin with) and most of the passes he threw (especially later in the game) weren't anywhere close to being completed. Somewhat frustrating, but we'll work on our game plan and make sure that some short-medium passes are incorporated regularly.
"Kill Bill Vol. 2" comes out tomorrow! I think some of us are planning to go see it tomorrow night in Mankato. We've been looking forward to seeing the sequel come out ever since seeing the kinda-cliffhanger ending of the first one. Well, goodnight all.
Posted by Jared at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2004
Best Day Ever at the PO's
Okay, so I'm a couple of days behind in my posting. So sue me, I'll catch up now. Anyways, on Easter Sunday we went down to Taylors Falls and had brunch at the Chisago House with both of our house churches, after which we went over to the bookstore and sung hymns for an hour. It was quite nice actually, and it was nice being able to see all of them again.
Sunday evening Nathan & Laura and kids came over to our house for supper, as did Mike. After that Mike & I went to his house to watch "Kill Bill Vol. 1" with Kevin, and a couple other people dropped by too. I think Kevin's thoughts on the film were, "I didn't think there was enough blood," hehe. It was fun getting to see them again too. And I got Mike's senior picture; now I'm only owed one by KG. Let's see if he remembers. :-)
Monday was overall a very good day. Before I left home I mailed in my order for my group flight to Melbourne, because that'll be a good $400 cheaper than anything the travel agent can find for me. I also decided against taking the J-term class in New Zealand, because it'd just be a little too much money for a class that I don't really need. I might arrange it so that I'm in Christchurch for a little bit while the class is going on anyway so that I can hang out with all those Gusties. :-)
The drive back was fairly uneventful, although I must profess how much I hate running into road construction. Anyways, when I got back to Gustavus I found that there were two things waiting for me at the post office -- my new 15" Macintosh PowerBook, and a $3500 scholarship from IFSA-Butler for studying abroad next semester!! Needless to say, yesterday's PO finds make up for countless days of EMS (empty mailbox syndrome) or all those days of Wal-Mart flyers. I forced myself to wait with opening the PowerBook until I got done with my E&M homework, because I knew that once I did, no more work was getting done, hehe. Anyway, Carl got some pictures of the momentous occasion, and I'll put them on my webpage when he gets them onto his computer one of these days.
This is the very first post that I've made from my PowerBook, and I'm currently sucking power from Zach's wireless out here in the section to do it, hehe. It's a long slow process, but I'm working on gradually getting programs installed on here that I need or want, but it'll probably be the weekend before I get any of my data transferred over from my desktop PC (which I'm selling to my parents in a week and a half) to my laptop. It's a very nice machine, and will be even nicer once I get everything set up the way I want to and figure out how to use everything. And what a joy it is to be able to use it in the physics office, taking advantage of the wireless coverage in Olin, and also in the cafeteria. I can tell right now that I'm gonna really enjoy having a laptop. All my sectionmates are excited also, not only because they're also Mac people, but because now I can "be social" and be on my computer out here, instead of "hiding in my room" on my computer all the time. The jury's still out on that though. :-) Oh, and I'm not the only one getting a PowerBook. Josh and Carl's new 12" PowerBooks should be getting shipped in the next couple of days, so that's pretty exciting.
Well, this post has gotten extremely long, and all this laptop excitement is a bit tiring. :-) Hasta manana!
Posted by Jared at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2004
He Is Risen!
Yesterday was another lazy day, until the evening when I went over to Nathan & Laura's to play a game of "Rail Baron" with them and Mark. Man that's a great game! I like it more every time I play it! Unfortunately, I managed yet again to own the fewest railroads (that always seems to happen), and lost yet again due to my crappy dice rolls throughout almost the entire game. Sigh. It was still really fun though. Laura had a good week with games, as she won Settlers on Monday night, and then won Rail Baron last night.
This morning my parents woke me up bright 'n early (6:45am, ugh) to go to the Cities. We visited my Grandma Siesennop in the nursing home in Bloomington for a little while, and then had lunch with some of their pastor friends, Orrel & Gini and Bruce & Joan. Bruce & Joan are from Australia, and they have a daughter and son-in-law who live less than half an hour from Monash University in suburban Melbourne, and they're looking forward to showing me around and letting me know all the ins and outs of Melbourne. Bruce & Joan are gonna be going back to Australia in August (they live a couple hours from Mel), so they'll be able to show my parents around when they go down there in late November. Depending on how well I get along with Bruce & Joan's family, and who else from down there that I may get to know, I might just end up staying down there until just after New Year's, instead of just until Dec 5 or Dec 20. :-) That way I'd get to see the awesome New Year's celebration in Sydney, with the spectacular fireworks off the Harbour Bridge. That'd be so sweet!
So instead of doing much homework during my spare time the last couple of days, what have I been doing? You got it. Starting to watch the anime series "Full Metal Panic!" I'm so pathetic. Luckily tomorrow night Mike's gonna come over to rescue me from this madness. :-)
I think this link falls under the what were they thinking?!? category. Apparently a church in Pennsylvania got the brilliant idea of illustrating Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection in a passion play this week by whipping and scourging the Easter bunny in front of an audience of horrified children and parents. I'm sorry, but whoever's the pastor or youth group leader at that church, or whoever came up with this horrible idea should resign. Having the Easter bunny play the role of Jesus Christ? What were they thinking?!?
But so that I don't end on that note, since most of you will be reading this tomorrow on Resurrection Sunday... He Is Risen! He Is Risen Indeed!
"On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, 'Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: "The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again." ' Then they remembered his words."
-- Luke 24:1-8
Posted by Jared at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2004
Condi Rocks!
Did you catch Condoleezza Rice's testimony this morning before the 9-11 commission? She was absolutely awesome! She made mincemeat out of Richard Clarke and all the partisan liberals on the panel that were being very rude and condescending towards her (I'm thinking particurlarly of Richard Ben-Veniste and Sen. Bob Kerrey), by refuting their arguments and assertions one by one. She was very articulate, assertive and thorough. Go Condi! Finally, someone in the Bush administration had the cajones to stand up to these people. Click here to see a full transcript of Dr Rice's testimony under oath before the commission this morning. I hope that Condi runs for president in '08. She'd have my vote.
Well, after that rousing start to the morning, I went over to Rice Lake to take the silly employement test at Marketplace again. I was getting tired of answering all sorts of questions like, "Do you ever have thoughts about stealing merchandise? " or "Do you ever feel like hitting another person?" But at least that formality is over with now. Now everything should be all set for me to start work on May 26, the day after finals end. And then I was also able to talk some to Arnie and Bigner, my two bosses at the radio station, and they also said they'd schedule me for the month that I'm home this summer. It'll be a busy month, but every penny that I can make counts.
Other than that it was sort of a lazy day yet again. This evening I finally dusted off them ivories and practiced the piano for the first time in months. I'm a bit rusty, no mistake. After that I watched "A Beautiful Mind" on my computer, it was the first time I'd ever seen it. Such a good movie. I can definitely see why Russell Crowe won best actor for it, and why it won best picture, although I still think that whichever LOTR movie came out that year should've beaten it. :-) I think I'll always be a bit partial to Tolkien.
I just got email notification minutes ago that my PowerBook has been shipped! That means I still have hopes of getting it by next weekend! Let the countdown begin. :-)
In case any of you have been following the case involving the Palm Beach District Attorney's illegal seizure of Rush Limbaugh's medical records, here's an update that you should all read. It's worth reading even if you haven't been keeping up with the case, in fact.
Alas, what should I do now? Read a bit, or watch an episode or two of anime? Or perhaps start snoozing away?
Posted by Jared at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2004
Job App
Ahh, another relaxing day of reading. You've gotta love Spring Break! Unfortunately, one of these days I'm gonna have to start doing some reading for class. Blah.
I ordered my new 15" Macintosh PowerBook this afternoon! It should be shipped on or before Monday, which means that I could quite possibly have it in my hands by the end of next week!
This evening I went down to Taylors Falls with my parents for a Bible study with Searching Together Fellowship, one of the two house churches we're involved with. It's always enjoyable to go down there and see them again, and the teaching is almost always very solid too.
After I got back it was time to start working on my job application for Marketplace Foods in Rice Lake. Scott (my old boss there) has basically guaranteed me a job there to work full-time during June, so filling out the job app is just a formality. Tomorrow morning I have to go over there at 10am to take their employment test. This'll be the third time I've had to take that silly test, because for each of my soon-to-be three stints with Marketplace, it had been more than 6 months since I last worked there. So many hoops to jump through, I hate red tape. Hopefully after I get done at Marketplace my bosses at the radio station will be there so that I can talk to them too.
Is John Kerry inept or just ignorant? It seems that Kerry, the apparent Democrat presidential nominee, gave a speech back in December at MPAC, an extreme Islamic organization that is very publicly anti-Semitic and supportive of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Also, Kerry doesn't seem to quite understand what we're up against in this war against terrorism, because he said in an interview on NPR yesterday that "Hamas and Hezbollah [have] a sort of terrorist alignment." Sort of?!? Oh come on. This man can't give a firm stand on any issue, not even an easy one such as whether Hamas or Hezbollah are terrorist organizations! It would be a disaster for this country and the world (but not the terrorists) if he were elected president in November.
Posted by Jared at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2004
Scarface
Okay, so apparently I was kinda out of it and incoherent for a bit when my mom woke me up this morning for a phone call, because I was in the middle of a deep dream in which I was a falconer (I have no idea how that one came about, I've only seen falcons a handful of times in my life). I'm told it was mildly humorous, hehe. But apart from that, there might not be a better way to start out the day than going out for a 1.25 mile run before breakfast. :-) I've gotta try to add a little distance before the end of the week, either that or bike for a good long ways. Frisbee's comin up, and I've gotta get the stamina to be a good "daddy longlegs" so that our physics intramural frisbee team has a better chance of actually winning a game this year. :-)
After a dentist appointment in Rice Lake, I stopped by the travel agent's office for about an hour with more questions and fares for her to check out. Yikes this is getting complicated, but at least now we have some hard figures to work with. She probably hates us for all the contingencies we're having her check out for us, hehe.
Tonight I went over to Mike's to watch "Scarface" with him, Kevin and their friend Derrick. It was a pretty good movie, and believe it or not I hadn't ever seen it before tonight.
I'm sure you've all been hearing nothing but negative news coming out of Iraq for a long time now, so I really recommend that you read this article by an American soldier who's currently serving in Iraq. He paints a drastically different picture of what's going on over there than what the media is telling us. The media chooses to ignore all of the Iraqis who are ecstatic that we're there, and all the good work and progress that's being done, because that doesn't "sell" their newscasts or newspapers. This soldier's story needs to be heard and read.
Other than that not too much has been going on. Tomorrow I should hopefully be able to order my PowerBook! Happy day!
Posted by Jared at 04:06 AM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2004
Settlers
Yesterday after church my parents and I went to the travel agency in Rice Lake to start checking out some prices for flights on specific dates and whatnot. What's complicating matters is that we're not really sure what all we're gonna want to be seeing down in Australia and New Zealand, or when we'll be wanting to see it, so it's kind of difficult at this point to have specifics pinned down for the travel agent to check out. What's even further complicating matters is that I'm considering the possibility of taking the J-Term 2005 course Astronomy of the Southern Skies, being taught by Chuck at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. If Gustavus is willing to knock enough off of the price to take into consideration that I'd be purchasing my own airfare, I might possibly be convinced to just stay Down Under for that as well. I'd just hang out and tour around for December, and then meet up with the group of Gusties in January. An interesting prospect, even if it's not terribly likely. The more likely possibility that we're now considering is that I'd just stay down there until Dec 20 or so, a couple weeks past when my parents have to fly back to the States, so that I could have a little extra time to tour around and whatnot, but not spend all the extra money on a class that I really don't need. Hmm, decisions, decisions...
Last night I hung out with Mike for a bit at his house, but unfortunately the Gopher women lost to UConn in the Final Four. Oh well, it was a great run, and a fun one to watch too! But anyways, after the game got done, we just hung out and played some Madden. He beat me pretty badly, 38-7, but it was still fun. We're hoping to get together again tomorrow night to watch "Scarface" and "Kill Bill Vol. 1" on Thursday (with Kevin joining us both of those nights too of course), so I'm keepin my fingers crossed that that'll be able to happen.
Nothing terribly eventful happened during the day today, I just sat around and read a lot, and then in the afternoon I watched a pretty good creation vs. evolution debate with my parents on a DVD they'd recently ordered.
This evening I went over to my brother Nathan & Laura's house in Rice Lake to hang out a bit. We played a game of "Settlers of Catan," which Laura won in startlingly quick fashion. We were playing that while watching the Twins season-opener vs the Indians on TV. That was a great game, with the Twins coming back from a 4-0 deficit in the 8th inning, to win on a 3-run walkoff homer by, who else, Shannon Stewart in the 11th inning! Hopefully this is a good omen of things to come this season for the Twins.
Posted by Jared at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2004
Rushing Water & Melting Snow
Well, today actually turned out to be fairly enjoyable after a fiasco in the morning involving Jake not being able to find his car keys. Fortunately they finally got found, because he wasn't a happy camper before that, no mistake. The rest of the day was fairly lazy. I got a haircut, and then read (and laughed) a bunch in "In A Sunburned Country." This afternoon I actually got up the motivation to go out and run 1.25 miles. I've gotta get in shape for frisbee season! :-)
And then after I got back from running I went out and took 27 photos of the area around the creek and pond. It was just so beautiful over there, with the running water, bordered by the last few bits of melting snow. I just made a photo album with all those picutres and put it on my Photos page. Tonight I've also finally gotten around to posting a couple other photo albums on my webpage, including one from President's Ball three weeks ago, and another with just some random March photos of the snowstorm and a few crazy Physics majors. Check it out!
Well, Daylight Savings Time officially comes overnight tonight, which means we all get one less hour of sleep. I was totally unaware that the time change was tonight, until the the news had a little blurb about it earlier tonight. The most obvious benefit of one more hour of daylight in the evenings is that there'll now be an extra hour of viable frisbee-playing time in the evenings when we all get back to Gustavus!
I wonder how Mike & Kevin did today down at State Forensics in Madison... I have four years of fond memories of State Forensics, that was always a great time down there. I'm hoping that I'll be able to hang out with them some tomorrow night, mostly to see them, and partly so that I can get a chance to watch the Gophers-UConn women's basketball Final Four game. You see, the game's on ESPN, and since we don't have cable I have to go *somewhere* to see the game, so where better than Mike's house? :-) Go Gophers!
Posted by Jared at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2004
April Fools Day
Spring Break is almost here!! I have just one lousy midterm standing in the way (Adv Math Methods at 8am) between me and my freedom. Well, I suppose to be completely truthful, I also have another three classes after the midterm and a couple house of work before I can head out, so it'll probably be around 5pm before I actually get going. Sigh.
I dunno, not a whole lot else has been going on around here. Oh, today I got an email from IFSA-Butler saying that the group flight to Monash arrives in Melbourne on July 6. This puzzles me greatly, since all the other info they'd sent out previously (including Monash's own website) has been advertising a July 12 start date for orientation. I'll probably wait for the letter to come through the mail at home early next week that will have much more detailed info about what's going on before I email Asha (my program coordinator at IFSA) with questions. See, it normally wouldn't be such a big deal, except that I was really looking forward to having some sort of July 4th shindig at my house again, and getting to see the fireworks before I left. I still might be able to do that, even with a July 6 start date to orientation, but it might make planning everything a bit tight and interesting. I'm sure everything will work out though.
Since today was April Fools' Day, in E&M we all turned our desks to face the "remedial board" (instead of the two chalkboards at the front of the room). Paul played along quite well, and filled up half of the single board with two equations, before he realized that we'd hidden all of the erasers as well. :-) Undaunted, he proceeded to sharpen his chalk in the pencil sharpener, and then started to write really small. It was pretty humorous. For the last part of class he let us watch a video that three or four of his students from his J-term Science Fiction Films class had put together. It was absolutely hilarious! Justin Delegard did a great job as the evil scientist 'Saul Paulnier' (our prof's name is Paul Saulnier), who was hatching a plot to take over the world by poisoning the world's water and beer supply with a mind-control drug, hehe. Hopefully I can get my hands on the video at some point, so that I can share it on the network. We're debating whether or not we should switch classrooms with the sophomores at 9am to further confuse Paul tomorrow. Hmm, decisions, decisions... :-)
Josh is planning on bringing the webserver back home to South Dakota with him, so seenoevil.org will be unavailable for a few hours tomorrow afternoon while he's heading home. Hopefully he'll be able to get it all set up tomorrow night without any problems, so that I can post and upload photos and all that good stuff. At any rate, have a good spring break everyone!
Posted by Jared at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)