Jared's One Blog

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April 29, 2007

Stupid Seg Faults

I really loathe segmentation faults. My "AugmentSingleMember" program that I started writing on Wednesday was riddled with them, and I couldn't figure out why. Then on Friday morning it dawned on me what the matter was, which put me in a really good mood because I didn't need to have anybody else look at it. So I (mostly) fixed it, but then outsmarted myself in my fixes, and managed to make my program regress and get more seg faults. Argh! So I was pretty frustrated all during trivia and everything on Friday night, and all day Saturday too, until I finally discovered the root of the problem at about 9pm (yes, I was debugging code on a Saturday night...). While I was glad to get my code working 100% correctly at long last, it was annoying that I had backtracked on Friday afternoon after having been on the right track Friday morning. Oh well. But getting this code finished was huge, I'm pretty sure it's the last piece of software that needed to be developed for me to be able to do the rest of my analysis. I think I should be able to get almost all of that done this week, which would be fantastic. And necessary since I have only four weeks to go until my thesis has to be finished.

On Saturday morning a group of us from PSCG made the trek over to Waffle Shop, one of the best eateries in State College (or anywhere, actually), for a farewell brunch for Stephanie, who's heading back home to South Africa on Sunday. Oddly enough it was only the second time I'd ever been to Waffle Shop, and I definitely splurged on blueberry pancakes. And sausage. And probably five cups of coffee. I think that had to be more coffee than I'd ever had before, it was enough to keep me wide awake and not in a food coma the rest of the day. :-) But this semester's gone by so quickly, that's for sure. We'll be sad to see Stephanie go, but hopefully she'll decide to come back here to do her Ph.D.!

Did anyone else yesterday who was watching the NFL Draft take some sort of satisfaction from Brady Quinn not being drafted in the top 3 like he was projected by all the "experts," and instead falling all the way to #22? Brady-face has been tremendously overrated by the media the last couple years just because he's the "golden boy" QB from Notre Dame. He's good, don't get me wrong, but he's just not a top-ten pick in my opinion. I think it was a good move for the Browns to trade up and get him where they did, though. And I was thrilled with how the Vikings drafted, picking stud RB Adrian Peterson from Oklahoma in the 1st round (a dynamite pick, that guy is an amazing talent), and then 6'6" WR Sidney Rice in the 2nd round. It's been years since the Vikings have had a grade-A draft from top to bottom, their brass really had it together this year. It's the most encouraged I've been by the Minnesota Vikings organization in quite some time, that's for sure.

Posted by Jared at 11:50 PM | Comments (2)

April 27, 2007

Sure Signs of Spring

Sure sign of spring #1: Opening practice for church league softball! On Monday evening we got to get back out on the diamond for the first time this season, taking some batting practice and fielding practice. I was a bit rusty in the field for sure, but I was starting to feel pretty good with the bat, driving a couple balls to deep center. Basically everything else was dead-pull, so I need to work on poking the ball to the opposite field at least occasionally. We have one more practice coming up on Monday, and then the Monday after that is the season opener!

Sure sign of spring #2: Only two lectures left in both of my classes! I'm especially excited to be nearly done with the math class.

Sure sign of spring #3?: Maybe this doesn't quite fit, but on Tuesday we had an intramural dodgeball tournament! Walter & Moyer got a team put together, with Steve, Nat, Yorks, Luna, Amber O. & I filling out the roster. We were pumped for the 45-minute, 8-game tournament, but that didn't exactly translate into success on the court. We lost our first seven games before finally winning the last one to avoid going oh-fer. I think at least one team practice beforehand would've been helpful, to work on a couple strategies and break people of the habit of trying to catch anything that was within reach, because that's not the best plan in dodgeball unless you have glue on your hands. I only knocked a couple people out, so I definitely need to improve on that next time we play. And we'll definitely play again next time there's an IM tourney!

Sure sign of spring #4: Walker Building is once again exhibiting why it's the worst climate-controlled building on campus. Especially on Monday when it was 81 degrees outside, it was absolutely stifling inside the building. Stupid OPP still has the heat on. The A/C probably won't get turned on until sometime in May. Argh. This happens every spring and absolutely ruins productivity, because everyone's so miserable.

As for what else is going on, last weekend I was elected President of Penn State Christian Grads for the coming year. Apparently there wasn't an organized write-in campaign to topple me, haha. It'll be an interesting year for sure, and once my thesis is done I'll have more time to devote to that.

This Sunday I'm playing piano again for both the 9:00 and 10:30am services at State College Evangelical Free Church. It's also Katrina Sunday, so I'll be showing my slideshow from our spring break trip in the 10:30 service probably, while Katie's will be shown in the 9:00 service. It's also the last Sunday for Pastor Tober before he goes on his three-month sabbatical.

Only a month to go until my thesis has to be basically finished. Now it's really time to start getting nervous about that!

Posted by Jared at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2007

Blue-White Weekend

What an absolutely gorgeous weekend this was! After getting some snowflakes last weekend, we had quite the gem for Blue-White Weekend: three consecutive days of bright, sunny skies and low-mid 70s -- I can't remember the last time we had a weekend this nice in State College! And I doubt we'll have another weekend quite this nice for a long time. The odds just aren't with us, sorry to say.

Saturday was definitely *the* day to get outside and enjoy the beautiful weather. First order of business? Blue-White Game tailgating, of course! Kristin & Elisa got a tailgate together for some of the Penn State Christian Grads and for some of their fellow sociology grad students. I actually didn't get there till pretty late (if I would've known I'd wind up sitting in traffic on University Drive for half an hour, I would've just walked all the way from my place), but at least I was just in time to get a little food before they put everything away. I hadn't expected that so many people would be out tailgating for a college football intra-squad scrimmage, but we are Penn State, after all, and it was a fantastic day outside. We went to the game, and it wasn't all that exciting since it was just a glorified practice and all (the White team beat the Blue team 30-6, for what it's worth), but it was still fun to sit outside and enjoy some football in the warm weather. Since it was just a practice, pretty much all of us left at the end of the 3rd quarter. There were 71,000 people at the game, an all-time record for the Blue-White Game. I'd say that about half of the fans at the game were wearing orange & maroon in support of Virginia Tech, too, which was quite heartening to see. And instead of the blue & white "S" Zone that's typically seen in the student section, for this year's Blue-White Game there was an orange & maroon "VT" Zone, which was very well done. The Blue Band also had on orange t-shirts, and the cheerleaders wore maroon shirts, in addition to the thousands and thousands of other students and fans that were showing their support for the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. The outpouring of support from the Penn State community has really been amazing. On Thursday afternoon I bought a bright orange long-sleeve Virginia Tech t-shirt from the Clothesline downtown. They sold 2,000 maroon, orange or white VT shirts on Thursday, and ordered another 10,000 VT or orange/maroon PSU shirts for Friday. And then there were other stores selling Va Tech shirts too, with all the proceeds from all the sales going to various charities associated with Virginia Tech and the families. Every time people wear these shirts, it'll serve as a reminder to them and to everyone who sees them that we shouldn't forget about the people down at VT, they'll need our prayers for quite some time.

After the Blue-White Game, it was time to head to Dr Markowski's house for a long-promised cookout from last semester in his Advanced Synoptic class. You see, we had some group projects to do toward the end of the semester last fall, and he promised that he'd invite the "winning" group over for dinner. He apparently had a tough time deciding which group did the best job, so he said he'd invite the entire class over. He had first scheduled the cookout for two Saturdays ago, but nixed it when the forecast called for snow. Having a cookout in the 30s is really unpleasant, but having one in the 70s is awesome, so he picked the right weekend to reschedule it. It was a really fun time too!

The fun didn't stop there though, as then it was time to head over to Meaghan's place for a party. They even had some fun games with prizes, including "Pin the Photon on Eugene" (they had printed a picture of Dr Clothiaux, our Radiative Transfer prof), and a "Joe Paterno" pinata that they had me hold out while Luna was taking swings at it with a broom handle. Perhaps not the smartest idea, but hey, by not being a stationary "tree" I didn't get whacked!

Today was another spectacular day, but I had to do some research work. So I made it as tolerable as possible, by watching several episodes of the "Planet Earth" marathon on Discovery Channel while working. I absolutely love that miniseries, the cinematography is positively stunning and breathtaking. The shows are totally fascinating too, I've learned heaps about animals and ecosystems that I never knew existed before. Gaining new insights into just how beautiful, intricate and incredibly complex our planet and the life on it is puts me in even greater awe of how great a God we serve, who could create such a world!

And congratulations to my friends Joel & Rosey down in Australia, who got engaged the week before last! I'd been expecting this to happen for quite some time, so I'm glad it finally did, hehe. They haven't set a date just yet, but I'm really hoping it can fit into the time next summer when my cousin Jonathan & I are planning to go down there. That'd be pretty sweet!

Posted by Jared at 01:35 AM | Comments (3)

April 18, 2007

Praying for Hokie Nation

I know I'm not alone in expressing my deepest sympathies to all the friends and families of the victims of Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech University. I first found out about the shootings at around 2 o'clock when I happened to check a news website (yes, I was doing real work all day to that point... well, except for lunch, but you get the idea), and was absolutely shocked to hear about what had happened down in Blacksburg. My heart goes out to all those people who have been affected and who have had their lives shattered by this evil act. I felt called on Monday night to send a note of support to one of the Christian student groups down at Va Tech, so my google searching led me to the website of Graduate Christian Fellowship at Virginia Tech. I emailed one of the leaders of the group, Dustin, and told him that all of us up here at Penn State Christian Grads were praying for them, and that the entire Christian community on campus at VT and in and around Blacksburg would be able to be a powerful light in this time of darkness. He replied shortly thereafter, thanking me for the encouragement, and letting me know that everyone in their group was safe. In the course of other correspondence that PSCG members have had with him, he gave us the names of several GCF members to pray for, who were connected in some way to the victims and/or the shooter. Along with another PSCG member named David, who knew a Penn State alum who was killed in the shooting, I helped start a group on Facebook yesterday afternoon called "Christians Supporting Virginia Tech," to help show our support for them. Currently there are about a hundred people from around the country who have joined so far, and there are more joining all the time.

The Virginia Tech massacre really struck a chord with a lot of people at Penn State, because PSU/State College and VT/Blacksburg are really not all that different -- large, public universities in small, friendly and safe Appalachian cities -- and there's really nothing that's preventing a similar situation from happening here. (Again, rather. Back in 1996 here at Penn State, a female ROTC student dressed in camo gear and facepaint, hid in the bushes along Pattee Mall, and shot four people, killing one, before another student saw what was happening and tackled the shooter, but not without suffering some knife cuts from her on his arm.) There is a rapidly-growing movement amongst Penn State students to wear orange & maroon this weekend for the Blue-White Game, Penn State football's annual spring scrimmage, and another group of 800 students will be forming a huge blue & white human "VT" amidst the sea of orange and maroon, instead of the traditional "S" that is visible in the student section at home football games. Tomorrow at Pasquerilla Spiritual Center there will be time for prayer and meditation from 10am-5pm, along with a memorial service at noon for the victims at Virginia Tech. There'll be a banner there and at the HUB that people can sign too, which will then be sent to VT. I can tell the outpouring of support from all across the nation, including here at Penn State, is tremendous. It's moving to see it all, and I don't even have a direct connection to Virginia Tech at all. Right now, everybody's a Hokie.

I know the knee-jerk reaction by many has been to call for more gun control, but I would tend to argue that the situation might not have gotten as far as it did had there not been as much gun control -- someone carrying a weapon might potentially have been able to stop the shooter, but there's no way of knowing that for sure. In a world that's fallen and corrupted by sin, there's really nothing that can be done to prevent something like this from happening just about anywhere, at least not without turning campuses or communities into veritable prisons, which I vehemently oppose. There are also many who have been calling for the ouster of the President of Virginia Tech and the campus chief of police, but I think that's ridiculous. Unless I'm given solid evidence to believe otherwise, I believe the school administrators and the police when they say they were acting on the best information they had, when they chose not to lock down the entire campus after the first shooting at the residence hall. Seriously, they had no reason to think the incident was going to go any further than the apparent domestic violence dispute, even though two people were shot to death during it. Unfortunately, they couldn't have been more wrong. While there were perhaps mistakes made along the way, from how the school handled the shooter's mental health situation and the criminal complaints against him, I don't think that there's any need to blame anyone in this incident except for the shooter. He's the one who committed this atrocity. He's the one who had been planning it for weeks. He's the one who chose to taunt the world from the grave by sending his "multi-media manifesto" to NBC, knowing that they would of course dutifully air it. He's the one who has/is/will be held accountable for this by God at the judgement seat of Heaven. Instead of trying to find a scapegoat, people should be focusing on the many heroes in this situation, remembering the fallen and praying for those who knew them.

In happier news, my friend Ryan Hall was on "Jeopardy!" on Monday night. Kerrie, Ben, Julian & I went over to Ryan & Sarah's place to have some pizza and watch the show. The categories were absolutely brutal, though. They were seriously some of the hardest categories/questions ("answers") that I've seen in some time on that show. I mean, usually there's at least one insane category every episode, but there were a bunch this time. Anyway, Ryan did well considering they just weren't his categories, but he finished in 3rd place. It was awesome seeing him on the show, though! And at least he got the Chesapeake Bay question, since he's originally from Virginia and everything. :-) It's too bad he won't ever be able to be on the show again, as they don't ever let you come back unless they invite you for the Tournament of Champions or something. But at least the third place prize is significantly better than what it used to be (the Jeopardy board game), hehe.

Last night Kerrie, Stephanie, Caleb, John, Ruth & I went over to Tracy's place to celebrate her birthday with a game night. And what better way to celebrate a birthday than to play a couple games of Bible Trivia (and a couple rounds of Taboo)! The "easy/children's" questions really were ridiculously easy (for us, anyway), we didn't miss a single one. So then we moved up to the "difficult/adult" questions, and those were a definite step up for the most part (going from questions like "Who baptized Jesus?" and "Spell Matthew" to "Who was the wife of governor Felix?", "Who was the first woman raped in the Bible?" and "Who cured Namaan of leprosy?" The Bible really has a ton of information to draw on for trivia, hehe. Anyway, it was a really fun evening!

I finally got the "verobs" code working today that's been vexing me for over a week. And, like most debugging problems, it was something ridiculously simple. Sigh. But at least it works now. And now I must continue to make progress on chapter 2 of my thesis, while running that code and other ensuing codes to plot all these crazy statistics.

Continue to pray for Virginia Tech. We are all Hokies.

Posted by Jared at 11:14 PM | Comments (2)

April 16, 2007

Spring Cleaning

I had planned to get a lot of work done on my thesis and research this weekend. Like most well-laid plans, that didn't really come to fruition. Partly because AJ's code to compare MM5 runs to observations keeps crapping out on me for some reason, to my great frustration. Getting this code to work is the first key step that I need to happen in order for the rest of my research to get finished. But the main reason I didn't get heaps of research/thesis stuff done was because I got in the cleaning mode. Yesterday I finally got fed up with all the piles of junk atop my desk, dresser, little table and TV, and so I took a couple hours to sort through it all, into piles of things to keep, things to throw away, and things to shred. The piles got pretty big, considering I hadn't done such a cleaning since last fall! And then today I dusted everything in my room, something that I hadn't done since I moved in last August! Needless to say there was a lot of that too. I did also manage to start chapter 2 of my thesis today a little bit, but even though I didn't get tons done with that, I at least don't feel like I accomplished nothing.

Congratulations to Kerrie for passing her thesis defense on Friday!

On Friday at noon there was a memorial service in the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center for all 22 Penn State students that had passed away since last April, including Levenia. Several faculty members and grad students from the Meteorology Department, including myself, went to the service to show support for her and her family. Since PSU is a public university, it was an interfaith service, and so had readings from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish & Muslim writings. They all talked about death, but I couldn't help but notice that the Christian reading from Romans 8 was the only one that was truly hopeful (and for good reason!). Anyway, I thought the service was nice overall, though rather impersonal, partly from the generic nature of it.

So yeah, this nor'easter... I mentioned in my last post on Thursday that the models were looking a bit like weather porn, predicting a big snowfall here in central PA. By Friday all the models really started backing off of that, though that didn't stop Zack from "honking" up the storm a ton at the special forecast discussion he called for Friday afternoon. Everything was indicating at that point that it'd be probably a mostly rain event, and once the sun came out for a little bit Saturday morning, warming things up a few degrees, that sealed the deal that we'd get all rain today. If it had been cloudy, we may have gotten snow during the day today. Overall the storm has been a bit disappointing though, it definitely didn't live up to its billing, at least not around State College. It might switch over to some flurries tonight and tomorrow for a bit, but this should be the last gasp of winter (I know I've said this several times already this winter/spring): low 60s are in the forecast by the weekend, so the weather should be nice for the Blue-White game for a change!

I hosted Bible study tonight at my place, and it was pretty packed. I think 18 showed up, so we're continuing to have strong, healthy turnouts for everything, even as we get late into the spring semester, which is very encouraging. The elections for next year's officers for Penn State Christian Grads will also be taking place this coming weekend. This past year I've been the Communications officer (in charge of the website, the email listserv and the weekly announcements), but I've accepted a nomination to run for President for next year. Nobody else accepted a nomination for President, so I'll be running unopposed. It'll definitely be a different challenge to be in charge of the group, instead of just being on the leadership team.

The Geelong Cats of the AFL have roared back after losing their week 1 match, last week thrashing a very good Carlton Blues side 162-84 (I had to give my friend James a bit of a hard time on messenger about that, hehe), and this week dominating the Melbourne Demons 109-57. Now they're in 2nd place in the ladder, and really showing some of why they were expected to be one of the premiership contenders this year. Of course, the Cats started out in similar fashion last year, having a couple blowout victories early, only to have a major midseason slump take them out of finals contention. In any case, it's looking like a fun year to follow the Cats!

I came across a really interesting article today, about a possible connection between cell phones and disappearing bees. Entire hives of bees are going missing worldwide, and it's really becoming an alarming problem. Nobody knows how or why it's happening for sure, but some researchers are suggesting it could be caused by radiation from cell phones causing the bees to become so disoriented that they can't find their way back to their hive and die. It'll be interesting to see how this story develops, and if the disappearing bee problem continues to worsen worldwide.

One more thing: Everybody should watch Jeopardy tomorrow (Monday), because my friend Ryan is a contestant on the episode!

Posted by Jared at 12:53 AM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2007

Seminar Bingo

Several of us kept ourselves entertained during today's department colloquium (which was pretty interesting on its own, anyway) by playing "Seminar Bingo." Ever since last week when it appeared in a PhD Comics strip online, we knew what we had to do. :-) Below the comic there's a link to a randomized version of the Seminar Bingo, so we printed off several of those so that nobody would have the same exact board. I don't think anyone got a bingo, there were only 5 non-free spaces that we were able to check off (use of powerpoint template with blue background, speaker forgets to thank collaborators, speaker bashes previous work, "... et al.", there's a grad student wearing same clothes as yesterday). The free space is the only given at seminars: speaker runs out of time. There's at least one more colloquium this semester to try to get a bingo with the PhD Comics bingo sheets, and then we're considering coming up with our own PSU Meteo-customized version of Seminar Bingo for the upcoming Hussey Lecture in May. At least bingo ensures that people aren't drifting off to near-sleep as much, haha.

I got the first draft of my thesis chapter 1 back from Sue yesterday, and it came back with far less red ink than I was fearing, hooray! Now if only I could get some of these codes working that I need in order to finish some key parts of my research, sigh. Oh, and for various reasons (which include vacationing advisors), now it seems like I'll be defending my thesis sometime around June 9th or 12th, probably, which is about two weeks earlier than I'd been thinking it'd be. I should still be able to get everything done, but it's that much less time to finish it all.

It appears that there's gonna be a big storm affecting the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast this weekend. Everyone's starting to get excited because the forecast models are indicating that a powerful nor'easter is going to develop for Sunday into Monday. Initially when the models started indicating this massive storm, and that we had the definite potential to get dumped on with snow (over a foot?), we dismissed it as what some of us like to call "weather porn." But more of the models are starting to come into agreement about the track and intensity of the storm, and they're continuing to predict it run after run ... for now. The rain-snow line looks like it's gonna be pretty close to State College, so instead of a big snowstorm (bigger than the Valentine's Day storm two months ago??), we might just as easily get 1-2 inches of rain. In any case, it's looking like a mess of precip around here, with potentially hurricane-force winds at some spots along the coast. The snow geese are definitely honking again, and old man winter just does not want to give up this year!

Posted by Jared at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2007

Alleluia, Christ Arose!

I don't believe I've ever had to clear snow off of my car on an Easter morning before, certainly not in April anyway. That's exactly what I had to do this year, there was a good 4-5 inches of extremely fluffy snow that kind of came out of nowhere overnight. I think we got anti-State College Effect-ed on that one. Add in the flurries we got earlier today, and we've now had at least a trace of snow for 7 consecutive days, which has got to be close to an all-time record for April here in State College. With this being one of the coldest Aprils on record across much of the USA, the global warming alarmists have had to tone it down a bit, thankfully.

Church was really good on Resurrection Sunday. The 10:30 service was totally packed (it's usually full, but more so than usual this week), and it was awesome hearing everyone sing so loudly and joyously, celebrating Christ's resurrection from the dead. He Is Risen!

Following church I went over to Tracy's place for an Easter dinner with a few people from Penn State Christian Grads - Tracy (obviously), Stephanie, Kerrie, Ruth, Ruth's roommate (forgot her name, doh), Caleb, Alita & Daniel. It was really nice and relaxed, and everyone brought such good food, I was stuffed by the end. And there was heaps of candy as well, I think I ate almost two months' worth of sweets on Sunday. For the meal I decided to make some meatballs in my crock pot, so that's what I spent a chunk of time doing on Saturday. I'd never made meatballs before, but I think they turned out okay... And then after the PSCG Easter lunch it was time to head up to Houserville for an Easter dinner with some of the meteo grads at Jeff, Vic & Bob's house. More food, including very tasty ham. :-)

After getting stuffed for a second time then we had PSCG Bible study over at Anna's. I was leading this week, but since it was Resurrection Sunday, I had the group deviate from whatever would originally have been planned. Instead of reading a short passage and discussing it for a long time like we usually do, I thought it'd be good to just read straight through the accounts of the Holy Week events (triumphal entry, last supper, Jesus' arrest, crucifixion & resurrection) in all four gospels. I think we all found it quite instructive to see how similar they all are, yet how each writer chose to place more or less emphasis on certain events, enough to make them all clearly unique. It took a bit longer than I'd expected, though, so the additional stuff I'd also planned to get to (passages from Acts, 1 Corinthians & 1 Peter about the resurrection) we'll just do this coming week instead. It certainly doesn't hurt to think of Christ's resurrection on more than just Easter!

This is the season of thesis defenses, with pretty much everyone who's graduating in the spring defending either last week or this week (Addison, Ben, Margaret, Daniel & Amy have already gone, with Amber, Kerrie & Jonathan due up). I've been trying to make as many of them as I can too, to support all my friends. Daniel's defense was yesterday, and he did really well at it, it was a fantastic and easy-to-understand presentation. Congratulations, Daniel! Last night I threw a lasagna in the oven for Daniel, Katie, Jon, Steph & Kerrie, to celebrate Daniel passing his defense, and of course to watch another episode of the Jack Bauer Hour. Because my Aussie friends that read this are probably still 3-4 episodes behind the US, I won't spoil anything that happens, but this week's episode of 24 was absolutely fantastic! I think my head's still spinning from all the twists and turns!

I've spent a good chunk of this evening uploading a bunch of videos to my Movies page, at long last. Believe it or not, I was even further behind on those (2 years) than I am on my Photos (1 year). After church on Sunday I downloaded Kim & Max's pictures from their camera onto my computer, so now I have everyone's photos from last month's Katrina relief trip. The week after I got back from Louisiana I made a slideshow/movie about the trip from everyone's photos, so yesterday I updated the slideshow/movie with some of their pictures. I've put that online now too, in the Penn State section. I've shown the older version to a few of you, but not the newer version yet, so feel free to check it out! The music I set it to is "Yes and Amen" by Matt Redman.

Last night I also finally got around to watching "The Great Global Warming Swindle," a movie/documentary aired in Britain on BBC 4 last month (duration 1 hour, 15 minutes). It's an absolute must-see film, setting the record straight about climate change and what's really the most likely culprit causing the bulk of it. The science seemed pretty sound for the most part too. There were a couple little oversimplifications I caught early on, but overall I thought it was quite well done. Hopefully this film will be looked back on someday as a turning point in the whole global warming/climate change debate, because it absolutely destroys the anthropogenic warming alarmism that's so rampant nowadays. I downloaded it the other day just fine, but different sites are springing up offering it for download as Google goes around shutting them down, so any URL I'd link to would certainly be inactive within days at best. If you want to see it, just do a Google search for "Great Global Warming Swindle" and something'll certainly come up. Or I can burn you a CD if you wish. Just let me know if you're interested. I'd love to watch it again anyway!

Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

April 06, 2007

Jesus Paid It All

I just got back from a Good Friday service over at the State College Alliance Church, a joint service with the E Free & CMA congregations. There were plenty of good hymns and Scripture readings, and they also invited everybody to write a single sin of theirs on a piece of paper, and pin it up on the wooden cross at the front of the church. I thought that was a really cool idea. It was also a powerful visual to see just one sin from all the people in merely two congregations in an out of the way town called State College more than cover every last bit of the cross. Just think how much sin each one of us has in us, and how many crosses that would cover in the same manner! And just think how Jesus Christ, the Creator of the universe, took the sins of not just you and me, but the entire world, upon Him when He let Himself be crucified! By offering His own Son as a pure and perfect sacrifice on our behalf, saving us from what would be certain eternal torment if we had to stand in judgment before His throne on our own merits, God has given us a gift beyond price. God's goodness, demonstrated through Jesus on the cross, is why it's called Good Friday, after all.

Last night the two churches got together at my church to watch "The Passion of the Christ," but I didn't go to that, as I saw it twice in the theater when it came out a couple years ago. Instead, I had a few people from PSCG (Stephanie, Kerrie, Tracy, Mike F. from church, Steve & John) over to watch "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ." It's one of my all-time favorite movies, and I think it's a wonderful film to watch during Holy Week; I wish ABC would show "Ben-Hur" instead of "The Ten Commandments" every year on Easter Sunday, but oh well. Mike & I were talking for a bit afterwards, and he made the extremely valid point that while movies like "Ben-Hur" or "The Passion" might be able give us a glimpse into the immense physical pain that our Creator went through in the scourging and the crucifixion, they can't even begin to describe the whole spiritual side of the pain that Jesus must have experienced. Imagine for a moment that our finite, fallen minds could even begin to imagine being in perfect communion with God, and then having Him forsake you for a time. All the physical pain Jesus endured must have paled in comparison to that. Yet He loved us so much that He was willing to suffer infinitely on our behalf, and pay all our sins! What an amazing God He is! Jesus paid it all, and for that we can be joyful!

Ponder with me the words of the classic hymn, "Jesus Paid it All":

I hear the Savior say,
"Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me thine all in all."

Jesus paid it all
All to Him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy power and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.

Jesus paid it all
All to Him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow

And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete,
"Jesus died my soul to save"
My lips shall still repeat

Jesus paid it all
All to Him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow

O Praise the One who paid my debt
And raised this life up from the dead!
O Praise the One who paid my debt
And raised this life up from the dead!

O Praise the One who paid my debt
And raised this life up from the dead!
O Praise the One who paid my debt
And raised this life up from the dead!

JESUS!

Posted by Jared at 09:12 PM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2007

Happy April Fools' Day (Observed)!

It was a pretty fun morning in Walker today. I walked into my office, set my backpack down on one of the chairs, and was somewhat startled when I turned around and saw a whole lot of tinfoil. Covering my desk. My computer. My monitor. My keyboard. My mouse. My books. My scissors. My tape dispenser. My kleenex box. My headphones. My ethernet cable. My chair. My waste basket. My notebooks/binders. Lots of assorted papers. A small bag of chips. A water bottle. A pop can. A couple empty powerade bottles. A couple mugs. An empty soft drink cup from Friday's lunch (straw, too). A couple old paper plates. Some CDs. My weather calendar. A rubber band. The divider/wall behind my desk that I pin pictures and other things onto. My daikon (the stuffed giant Japanese radish which Josh sent me last fall). My box of pushpins. My post-it notes. Some coins (including an individually wrapped penny). When I say everything was covered and wrapped in foil, I do mean everything. I wasn't immediately sure who did it, though I did know that Walter had to have been the one to supply a key to let them into the office. I started taking some pictures, and then saw a tinfoil "post-it" on my monitor with a note from the culprits - Caren & Amber. Talk about a great April Fools' prank! I went to find the two pranksters and congratulate them on a job well done, and spent basically the next two hours going around Walker to find a whole bunch of the other grad students and a few professors, so they could come down to my office and admire Caren & Amber's handiwork. (Even the meteo secretaries all came down with the departmental camera.) They said it took them an hour and a half or two hours yesterday and almost two rolls of tinfoil. Since it was raining out, anytime anybody came walking down the hall their shoes would squeak, so they got panicked quite a few times thinking I was approaching and would catch them in the act, haha. Eventually I had to unwrap everything, though, because, after all, I did have to try to get some work done. It took me half an hour to take the tinfoil off all my things, and I made the foil into a whole bunch of snowball-sized globs. Jacob & I grabbed a bunch, walked over to Caren's office and unleashed a barrage of foil-balls while she sat at her desk. And then we went back to grab some more and do the same to Amber in her office. :-) Then it was time for lunch, haha. What a morning! I've had some good pranks pulled on me by my roommates back at Gustavus (including newspapering my door the night before they left for China, covering my old Windows computer and monitor in condoms for "virus protection," and hiding 50-some condoms in all my stuff spring semester of senior year -- including another one I found just three or four weeks ago, making three that I've found since I moved to Penn State -- that's the prank that just keeps on giving, haha), but this one's right up there. I don't know how to rank those pranks!

I was already excited for the MLB season opener, but then I found out this afternoon that the Twins-Orioles game was gonna be on ESPN2! We really don't get to see many Twins games out here in PA, so I wasn't gonna pass up that opportunity (at least until 24 came on, when the Jack Bauer Hour took priority on my TV). It was an exciting game too, with Justin Morneau and Torii Hunter hitting solo home runs on back-to-back pitches in the 2nd inning, leading the way to a 7-4 victory. Twins win! Twins win! I know it's only one game out of 162, but it's always nice to win the season opener. :-)

Posted by Jared at 10:35 PM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2007

Palm Sunday Purloining

I was not very happy when I went to my apartment's parking lot this morning. When I rounded the corner of the building, my eyes went straight to my car -- and noticed that my rear license plate was no longer there. Someone apparently stole it overnight, maybe as an April Fools' Prank, who knows. (They didn't steal the front plate, though.) At any rate, I was on my way to the church to get a little more piano practicing in before the pre-service rehearsal with the rest of the worship team, so I decided I'd just deal with it after I got back from church. So earlier this afternoon I called the State College Police, and an officer came out to take a look and write down my information and whatnot. The cop said they haven't had a report of a stolen license plate, but that they usually come in spurts, most likely the result of some stupid frat prank where they're supposed to collect plates from as many states as possible. He said he's report my plates to the NCIC (Nat'l Crime Information Center) as being stolen, meaning my tags are now "dead" and I have to get new plates, either from Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. The officer said I could still drive my car around as-is though and that it'd be fine, just that I should probably try to get new plates on it within a month or so.

So now I've been spending some time since then checking out what sort of rates I could get on auto insurance, if I do indeed decide to switch my registration to PA. That'd also mean I'd have to get a new driver's license, and have my car inspected (and no, we don't have mandatory annual auto inspections in either Minnesota or Wisconsin, unlike Pennsylvania and most of the rest of the eastern states). I probably should take it somewhere to find out if it'd pass, before I go through that whole process. If I elect to stick with Wisconsin, I still have to pay for replacement plates to be sent to me. I wasn't exactly wanting to deal with any of this hassle right now, but whatever.

I managed to get the first draft of my first chapter (intro/background/lit review) of my thesis done on Friday afternoon! I didn't think I'd make it by my self-imposed goal. Now onto the next step of my research or writing, while steeling myself in preparation for the sea of red ink that will no doubt grace my draft when Joel & Sue give it back to me.

Did anyone else catch part of the American Gladiators marathon yesterday afternoon on ESPN Classic? I let my brain rot for an hour or so watching it, it was awesome to be taken back to Saturday mornings when was 8 or 10 years old. Such cheesy 80s music and cheesy names (Lace, Malibu, Zap, etc.) of the steroid-enhanced gladiators, as well as cheesy bright-colored spandex, it's great! Oh, the memories...

I'm in a 12-person fantasy baseball league with a couple people from church ("The Sid Bream Fan Club"), and our draft was yesterday afternoon. I picked 6th in the first round, and surprised some people by taking Justin Morneau (Johan Santana got picked 2nd overall, drats), and then following it up in the second round with Joe Mauer (I think that gave it away that I'm a Twins fan, haha). I'd say the M&M boys are a pretty solid foundation to build a real or fantasy team on. :-) I only took two other Twins though, Luis Castillo for a third middle infielder in the middle rounds, and Boof Bonser with my 23rd and final pick, to round out my 9-arm pitching staff. I had to wince when I picked up Jermaine Dye (OF, White Sux) and Mike Mussina (P, Yankees), though. I really didn't want to be forced to cheer for anyone on my two least favorite teams, but they were probably the best players available at the time, sigh. And as long as they're doing it against teams not from Minnesota, Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya (P, Tiggers) better rack up strikeouts with their 100+ mph filthy stuff (Zumaya should also probably avoid playing Guitar Hero at all this season...). I can't wait for baseball to start, MLB's opening pitch is tonight!

The AFL (Australian Football League) also got their season underway this weekend. Unfortunately my team is 0-1-0, after the Western Bulldogs defeated the Geelong Cats 113-93. Bummer. But not as much of a bummer as not being able to watch any footy on the telly (curse you ESPN for no longer carrying the sport that made your network successful initially!). I really should look into buying DVDs of the 2005 and 2006 Grand Finals, I've been meaning to do that for awhile. I miss Australia...

The music for church this week had me a bit nervous. First, as I mentioned in my last post all six (not five) songs were new to me on the piano, and unlike other weeks, the music just wasn't clicking with me this time; I was having a difficult time trying to learn it. Second, at rehearsal last night they gave me a seventh song which they hadn't had the sheet music for previously (also hadn't ever played that one before). Third, rehearsal last night really did not go well for me (partly from unfamiliarity with the music, partly from some of the songs going much faster than I'd practiced), I was irritated at myself that I was playing poorly. We were meeting at 8am this morning for another rehearsal before the first service, so I decided to get up early and get into church around 7am (I made it at 7:15, close enough, haha) to practice a bit more by myself. I still made plenty of mistakes during both services this morning and was kind of unhappy with my playing, but at least it was a bit better than last night... And thanks to those of you that visited my church to hear me this morning, I always appreciate it! Sorry y'all were disappointed with a distinct lack of palm fronds, though. Oh well.

With this being Holy Week, here's some suggested reading each day (trust me, it's not much), to help illustrate what the real point of the Easter season is (it's not eggs, bunnies or candy!):

Palm Sunday: John 12-13
Monday: John 14-15
Tuesday: John 16
Wednesday: John 17
Maundy Thursday: John 18
Good Friday: John 19
Resurrection Sunday: John 20

Happy Palm Sunday, everyone! Hosanna to the King of kings and the Lord of lords!

Posted by Jared at 04:15 PM | Comments (1)