Rough Night

Last night turned out to be a pretty rough night to the point all I keep thinking is "did anyone catch the number on that bus?" It started out when I decided to play some Call of Duty 4 on the PS3. I have no idea why, but I was not on my game last night. There were a decent number of games where my team completely dominated, but I was fighting for my life in everything else. In case you do not know how I play that game, such struggles are usually rare. This was the first night I really got to play with the old crew I played with so much last summer. The result was me playing from approximately 9pm to 3am. I was already tired from not getting a whole lot of sleep during the week and putting in a full round of golf yesterday afternoon. That round of golf included two hours in the rain.

To make matters worse, my sleep was not amazing either. At some point in the night, I managed to rollover in such a way that I face-planted into my bed's headboard. I recommend not doing that. It hurts. I had a dream that I went to Turkey with my sister's family. We had a few guys hassling us, and once I got that resolved, I found out my girlfriend had hid herself in my backpack to come with us. How she fit and I did not notice a backpack that has suddenly gained the weight of a person, I have no idea. The unfortunate part about this was the need to figure out how to get her back into the United States. Her lack of a passport and the scan of luggage which shows up human bones were the prime source of conflict.

About at that point, I woke up only to find out I am extremely dehydrated. I decided not to open the window last night thinking it would be warm outside before I would want to wake up. I thought the cool apartment would be able to hold out despite having Ellinore running. The result of this was my apartment being very dry in the morning and a little warm. So yeah, fun night...

Alone in the Dark

This morning I woke up with some lines from Tristan & Isolde in my head for no known reason. Here is my thought process:

1. Tristan is a pretty cool name.
2. However, Alexander might be one of the coolest names of all time.
3. That being said, I would also like a kid to have the name Kyle.
4. If I name a kid Alexander Kyle Sparks, his initials would be AKS!
5. If he sins, he would embody the three-way handshake!
6. SYN, SYN + ACK, ACK!

This is one more testament to why I should never be left alone in an apartment by myself for an entire three-day weekend.

Rise or Fall

I turned twenty-two today. My Ancient Near East professor jokingly asked our class what we had done with our lives when talking about Alexander the Great. The man was twenty years old when his father, King Philip II, was assassinated, most likely in a plot formed by Alexander himself. By the age of twenty-two, he was invading the Persian Empire and Asia. People always talk about turning over the reins of control to the next generation. I am seven months out from my collegiate graduation. I watch the fate of today on the news. I think about the fate of tomorrow when I go to bed. I have spent the last 17 years of my life studying in school for the day when I will look down and see the fate of the world in the palms of my hands. You can call me arrogant for thinking I will have such importance when that day comes. I will call you ignorant for not realizing the weight which rests on your shoulders. It is not about you or me. It is about us. The choices we make as individuals affect us on a whole. Whether we like it or not, we are in this together. Remember those classes in school when you were assigned a group to complete a project? It is time to pull those skills down off the shelf and dust them off. You are on this planet with the rest of us and we have to find a way to make it work. You can stand in the corner uncertain of what to do. If you do, I will climb up on the table and start to direct you. We might do everything wrong. Maybe we will do everything right. I am guessing we will make some mistakes along the way, but we will also get a lot of things right. However, in the end, rise or fall, I am determined to make it one hell of a story. Regardless, get involved. I do not care where or with what, but do your share to make a difference.

My Experience with Death

For my Perspectives on Death & Dying class, I had to write a paper on an experience with death. Here is my paper:

It was midday one Saturday in February of my junior year of high school. I was hanging out with a group of friends playing some games. It was the usual routine when we were not off on some school activity. My buddy, Chris, got a call. One of our friends had been shot in a hunting accident. It all seemed a bit surreal. Surely, he was going to be alright. We continued playing games as if things were not too shaken up, but phone calls kept coming. As the day progressed, the story changed. Our friend had committed suicide.

I have a thousand stories I could tell regarding that day and the week following. The Sunday morning church service was awful because he was not there. Sunday night, I was at Pizza Hut with people I had not hung out with in years. Monday night was a special church service which had more in attendance than I have ever seen in twenty one years. The wake resulted in a line of people stretching out the front door and down the sidewalk. There was a school gathering. A group of my friends walked out the front doors of the school in the middle of the day on Monday. We skipped the second half of Wednesday too. There were no repercussions. They still held class on the day of the funeral, but it was pointless. The cemetery was packed. There was an empty chair at graduation the following year.

Out of all of this, perhaps one of the most important thing I learned is suicide is not simply about the individual. I watched a town of 2,500 people come to a screeching halt in a single weekend. When the topic of suicide comes up in any sort of conversation, my mind starts looking at all the people around me who would be affected. Let me just say it is a long list that stretches across the continent. Not because I am important. Just because that is the effect it has on every single person we know. When I go home on holidays, I still have a few momentos sitting in my bedroom. When Chris and I hang out, I see our friend's baseball glove sitting on his desk just below a picture of them. When I was home for Christmas, another high schooler had committed suicide. Everyone at church was expressing their sympathies. Turns out I knew his brother. Did I mention my friend committed suicide on his mother's birthday?

The other major lesson I learned was how quickly it all happens. The expression “one minute they are there, the next they are gone” is not something to be taken lightly. I remember one night in junior high when a game of hide-and-go-seek had broken out on a city block. My friend and I hid out behind Chris's house just talking about life because the game was not all that exacting. I remember baseball games, making silly videos, and the hours spent playing Golden Eye on the N64. Never even thought about the idea we would not graduate together. Quite honestly, up until that point, I had never thought about anything like that. I was too busy pushing through high school to get into a good college, build a career for myself, and setup the rest of my life. I guess you could say I learned to “stop and smell the roses.” It became alright if I was not playing my best during a tennis match. Taking time to get away from school work and play a few hours of videogames during a stressful week was not blasphemous. I still find myself buying a new videogame during finals week. I put off writing this paper on Monday night because my girlfriend and I had a carton of ice cream in the freezer.

I guess what I am trying to say is take a moment to look around you. When you find something you like, take the time to enjoy it. It will not be there forever.

Stumbling in the Dark

I frequently have to write journal entries about things I have read for my Perspectives on Death & Dying class. This week we read Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - A Pocket Guide by Elizabeth Harper Neeld. I have not written anything new in a while so here is my journal entry for this week:

“If anything, this time of Stumbling in the Dark feels worse than the original crisis-, the news of the loss itself.” (Neeld 2003 12) I thought the name for this phase was perfect. I remember the week following my friend's suicide in high school. I could not describe it any better. It really was worse than the original day. The first day was not too terribly shaken up simply because I could not comprehend the news. The following days found me completely clueless about how to handle myself. The first day back to school was ridiculous. It all seemed pointless. It was as if I was just putting on an act. I really did not care to be there, but at the same time, I preferred to be there over sitting at home staring at my wall. My nights were filled with as many distractions as possible. Not one moment was dedicated to homework because that would have meant sitting down by myself. There was Pizza Hut, ping pong, movies, videogames, pool, and so on. A group of us took a couple half days off from school to just run around town. Many of these things we had never done before and would never do again.

Neeld mentions an “increase in accidents” as being normal. (Neeld 2003 12) There was a special church service one night that week. On the way there I was involved in a minor fender bender with a couple other classmates. It was not my fault, but I do not doubt for an instance that I would have been able to prevent it if I were more focused. We did not bother even stopping to deal with the accident. Everyone of us knew where the others were going. Once we got to the parking lot, we glanced at our bumpers, had a minor discussion, and left it for our parents to deal with.

It was the same night as the church service that I got into a fight with my girlfriend. She thought I should seek consolation and comfort from her because she was my girlfriend. I essentially stiff armed her in an effort to stand on my own. It does not surprise me since that is a normal reaction for me in my high school years. However, at the time, I was just stumbling in the dark.

What I Need

There's a new game running around the web. It is called "What I Need." To play, all you have to do is search on Google for " Needs". So, in my case, I searched for "Shawn Needs". Then just take the top 10 listings and voila! Anways, here is what I got:

1. Shawn needs to decide who he wants to spend the rest of his life with
2. Shawn needs to pee
3. Shawn needs a project
   
4. Shawn needs ecological research
5. Shawn needs a car
6. Shawn needs a car (These are officially two different url's as you can see. Apparently, I just really need a car)
   
7. Shawn needs a mommy
8. Shawn needs a makeover
9. Shawn needs to clean his car
10. Shawn needs this t-shirt

After looking the list over, I find it a bit disturbing how true it really is. I do need to pee. I have been destined to buy a new car as soon as I can afford one. Every day that goes by, I like my current car less and less. My car also could desperately use a cleaning. It is no where nearly as bad as many college students' vehicles, but it is way worse than what I prefer. As for the t-shirt, I love Monty Python! I already own an "I'm not dead yet!" t-shirt. This would go nicely with the collection. I suppose you could count the makeover one too if that includes a haircut. I have been busy enough and at the same time too lazy to care that I am beginning to return to my 'fro days from high school. The shaving occasionally gets neglected too. The project one could be interpreted too. I have way too many projects going on the way it is, but I do definitely need to finish a project. I just do not need a new one. I am not sure what to make of the ecological research one, however. I will leave it with the others for my readers to speculate on since I know they will have a few things to say about them.

Busy Bee

Sorry about the recent lack of blogs. Things have been extremely busy and I have not had the time to put anything together. I still have some ideas I would like to work on from the Cyber-Defense Competition I competed in back in February. Otherwise, I was busy with a Resistance 2 tournament hosted by Gamebattles, Insomniac Games, and SCEA. My team managed to break into the top 64, but was knocked out in the first round by the #3 seed. We collected $450 total ($112.50 per individual) in prize money. The tail end of the tournament found me lying on a couch most of my days due to coming down with mono. I only started to recover from that in the last two weeks, almost all of which has been spent catching up with school work and studying for tests. I am on spring break currently, but I have been kept busy celebrating family birthdays, spending time with Jess, doing homework, and looking for an apartment in Des Moines for the summer. I will probably spend the rest of it doing homework and watching the NCAA tournament on tv. One bit of good news is I acquired another computer to play with. It is an ancient machine from home that is no longer being used. It has been nicknamed "The Beast" despite its meager 233MHz processor. I bought a few pieces of networking hardware off of Newegg which will allow me to really start tinkering with The Beast. Now I am off to eat some Wheat Thins, watch some UFC fights, and relax a little bit before heading to bed early for a good night's sleep.

Living on the Edge

In a web of blogs relating to each other via the topic of failure, I came across this quote from here:

"I’ve come to understand that if I’m not making mistakes it means I’m not trying hard enough, and I’m not pushing myself far enough."

It reminded me of my efforts to learn to snowboard a few years ago. I grew up skiing and cannot remember anything about the process of learning to ski. As far as my memory is concerned, it has always been a natural process. However, through high school, an urge to snowboard grew up in me. I finally decided to give it a shot the winter of my freshman year of college. The first time was when AJ, my roommate, and I went by ourselves on a Friday night. It was a complete struggle the entire night and I learned very little about how to snowboard. Due to my epic failure on the smallest slope, I never attempted to advance beyond it to any of the more difficult slopes.

Then came spring break. I went with a group out to Colorado for four solid days of snowboarding at Copper Mountain. I was still determined to learn how to snowboard because as I've stated, I do not give up easily. It turns out Colorado does not have very many flat slopes for beginners to learn on. It also turns out that snowboarding is easier with a mediocre decline than a minimal decline. The process of skiing makes it easier to go straight down the hill than to turn or go across it. Snowboarding is the exact opposite. The slopes in Colorado forced me to go beyond my comfort zone, pick up a little speed, and just go for it. I most certainly fell my fair share of times and I had some impressive wipeouts including one Superman launch down the hill in which I even managed to get snow in my goggles. However, by the time the trip was over, I was halfway decent at snowboarding. I even went down a black diamond before I left.

Just last month, I went skiing with my girlfriend, Jess. She had never gone skiing before so I had to actually think about what I do when I ski so I could relay the information on to her. It helped that the resort was out of snowboard rentals which forced me to go skiing as well. It turns out I still have my skills by the way. I only wiped out a few times and it came from me really pushing myself by trying stupid things. Back to the point, Jess learned some of the basics pretty easily, but kept having problems learning to stop mid-slope. This is an important skill to prevent one's self from running over somebody who wipes out in front of them. However, after a couple more hours on the bunny slope and she still was not getting it. Finally, I told her she was coming with my friend and I on the larger, more difficult slopes. The idea was essentially to push her to the edge where she started to lose control. Essentially, it was to scare her enough to really start trying. It worked amazingly well. Within a few runs, she was starting to turn far better than she had been.

Sometimes, we just need to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone. When someone is in water deeper than them, their effort to keep their head above water greatly increases. If you are not challenging yourself, then you probably are not learning anything new. The purpose of school is to guide people along into new situations. However, when we are not in school, the responsibility falls on ourselves. So stop holding yourself back and start living on the edge!

The Ol' College Try

I am twenty-one years old and a senior in college. I am 10 months and 10 days away from graduating with a bachelor of science in computer science and a bachelor of arts in history. I have spent my entire life preparing to go out into the "real world". You know how it feels the week of the first football game each season or the opening night of play when you have put weeks of practice for this one moment? That is the kind of feeling that is starting to well up in me. Sixteen years of schooling filled with sports, clubs, organizations, and relationships are all surmounting to this. So what about it?

This last week I have had several moments where my conscience has pulled away from what I was doing to take a look at the broader picture. My friends and I are at the pinnacle of our lives where all the preparation is ready to demonstrate its worth. We do not have all the talent or skills we will need, but that does not stop us from feeling all the confidence in the world. The reason is we are realizing there is little more for us to be taught before we have experience to compound it with.

I have decided against grad school because I feel it is time to go make an impact on the world. I will add that I do fully believe I can do anything. We were all raised on the idea. Remember when you were in high school and starting to think about what you might want to do with the rest of your life? Remember when you were a kid on the playground playing out your dreams? Remember when you were in middle school sports and your coaches told you that you could be professional athlete if you only dedicated yourself to it? I grew up watching Michael Jordan. I own Space Jam to this day. Its soundtrack has the song "I Believe I Can Fly". It pretty much sums up the whole idea.

Obama's "Yes, We Can" campaign is occurring at the perfect time in my life. The idea gives me a charge, an inspiration. However, it is not simply about the fact that we can do anything. I want to be able to look back and say, "Yeah, we did." If there is one thing I want to accomplish in my life, it is to leave the world a better place than I found it. Before you think I am some hippie, that is not it at all. I want to make an impact that results in a better quality of life. That can come simply from making the people around me more respectful or whether it is a technological revolution in the way we live our lives. Ideally, it would be both. I guess now it is just reaching the time to go give life "the ol' college try."

Pushing Through

Eugene Wallingford just recently wrote this blog about embracing failure. The topic is one I often think about because it is an area I feel I tend to excel in above others. Thus, I thought I would provide my own opinion on the matter.

First off, when Wallingford says, "what other people call failure is learning to fly," he is wrong. According the analogy he is running with, failure is hitting the ground after jumping off a cliff. Taking the chance at hitting the ground in an effort to learn to fly is the same as risking failure in an effort to succeed. Just thought I'd throw that out there at the start.

My personal thoughts are it is not about embracing failure. Instead, it is about pushing through the failure until I finally reach success. That's why I did not title this "embracing failure" as Wallingford did. When I am struggling with a programming problem, I always define it to my friends as "beating my head against the wall." Please note that only occasionally am I actually beating my head against the wall. It is a fight. When I come up with a solution that does not work, it frustrates me further. If I never figured out a working solution, I would be left in a state of extreme frustration. This is one reason I rarely finish a programming problem unfinished for another day. It will irritate me and distract me from everything I do until I finish it. There is no embracing the problem. There is only beating it into submission.

What drives me to continue endure such aggravations? In some respects, it is about the struggle itself, but I intend to devote a full post to this idea someday so I will skip it for now. Ultimately, it is the euphoria after achieving success which keeps me going. The more frustrating problems are the most rewarding to conquer. I have been known to take off running down the hallway in my dorm yelling in excitement after discovering a working solution. It is because of this that I claim it is not about embracing the failure, but rather pushing through it.

My determination to excel is not only evident in programming. In high school, it was not uncommon for me to spend a couple hours out in 100 degree heat hitting a shopping cart full of tennis balls by myself just to work on a few shots. When I was in late elementary and early middle school, I would be out in my driveway shooting hoops quite literally until it was so dark I could not see the basket anymore. When I run or bike, particularly with long distances, I always end up going faster as I progress. It is not that I start off too slow, but rather that I become charged with the idea of reaching the finish line. In my Personal Wellness class just week, we had to jog a half-mile. I found myself almost sprinting by the last 200m. While playing videogames, I will repeat a particular task over and over again until I can finally beat it. Last year, it took me ten hours to be the final bonus mission on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the hardest difficulty. The mission was a maximum of 60 seconds long. You do the math.

Perhaps the best way to summarise my thoughts on the matter is with this well-known phrase:

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."

Out Cold...

Well so much for writing a lot of new posts over break. It turns out that ultimately when I go on break, I resort to my baser instincts. These most notably include lots of videogames. I think I played approximately sixty hours of videogames last week alone. The first week of break was consumed in going back home to deal with Christmas stuff. I am not a big fan of Christmas, but I do not mind getting caught up in the family traditions. These included making gingerbread cookies as well as waking up at 6am on Christmas morning to open presents. I honestly do not remember the last time I woke up that early in the morning for anything unless it was last year's Christmas.

The next week of break consisted of Christmas wrap-up before returning to Cedar Falls. Once in Cedar Falls, I spent a couple days working on hammering out a few minor issues with my server. New Year's was a quiet party at our place with a handful of friends who were in the area. Forutnately, Jess lives close enough she was able to come spend a couple days here to run a workout, celebrate New Year's, feed her fish, and see me! I probably should not neglect the hours spent watching college football. Afterall, it was bowl season and they went rather well for me. Iowa won in dominating fashion while Texas won close with Colt McCoy showing why he is one of the most amazing college athletes. To top it off, Tim Tebow showed what he is made of in a Florida victory over Oklahoma in the National Championship. Each matched my hopes as well as expectations almost beautifully.

Then came last week. During the fall semester, I had hardly played any first-person shooter (FPS) videogames. Since I bought my PS3 back in February 2007, these have been one of my primary hobbies. It also turned out that a tournament for Resistance 2 (R2) was starting with over $50,000 in prizes. The exciting part about this tournament was the lack of an entry fee. So KOR put together two teams. The four most experienced in R2 were put on the first team while we rounded up what was left for the second team. We found ourselves a bit short-handed due to eligibility requirements restricting the tournament to U.S. residents of 17 years or older in age. I was appointed to head up this second team. This resulted in the need for me to get some familiarity with the game. After the ridiculous hours of gameplay, I managed to work off the FPS rust as well as learn R2. That pretty much sums up my break.

Christmas Letter

I wrote this originally right at the end of Finals week. I did not quite finish it up and then forgot about it. So I wrote the last few sentences and decided to publish it now. Enjoy!

My sister, Suzanne, asked me to proofread her Christmas letter the other night, and it got me thinking maybe I should write something like that. I, however, do not write letters for which to mail to people. I barely even know how to mail a letter to someone. So what do I do instead? I throw it on my blog for everyone to read!

The year started out pretty calm for me. My spring semester consisted of five major courses of which my two computer science classes were projects. Needless to say, I did not do much other than hide in my room reading or working with a team in a computer lab. When I did have a little free time, I found myself playing Call of Duty 4 on the PS3. I managed to get a 4.0 gpa for the semester which was the first time since I had lost my 4.0 overall the year before.

The summer was spent living in an apartment in downtown Des Moines with Chris Tuvera, a lifelong friend of mine. He was working an internship as a programmer at the Casey's headquarters in Ankeny while I worked an internship with Principal Financial Group. I was still in Information Services just as the year before, but I was on the Web Infrastructure team this time. My cubicle was about three rows down from my one the summer before. The job turned out to be an absolute blast. My team was really laid back and liked to have fun. I spent most of the summer writing small Perl scripts to help administrate and manage the environment Principal's static content web developers work in. Congratulations to those who actually understood what that last sentence meant. As of this point in time, it is looking like I will spend next summer working with the same team. My time outside of work was spent playing more Call of Duty 4, going to Iowa Cubs baseball games, or hanging out at my sister, Sheri's house. I also finally invested in a pair of left-handed golf clubs so I could get in on that action. I had a lot of fun playing on a team in the annual Principal IS golf outing.

As the summer drew to an end, I went on vacation back to good ol' Okoboji, Iowa with my mother and Sheri's family. Jamie, Sheri's husband, and I got in a solid eighteen holes of golf where I managed to get my first par on a 280 yard par 4. Let me just say it was pretty. Jamie and I took Jake, my 2 year old nephew, mini-golfing several times at the resort. By the end of the week, he was actually starting to get the hang of it. I still remain the family mini-golf champion. We spent an eventful day fixing bike tires so we could go on a bike ride. Jamie and I also introduced Sierra, my 10-month or so old niece, and Jake to the Star Wars Trilogy. The kids loved it to the point Jake requested on his own to go as Yoda for Halloween. I suspect I am forgetting something that was highly exciting, but the latest school semester makes it easy to forget things.

After vacation, I settled into my new apartment in Cedar Falls for the fall semester. My roommates consisted of AJ, Bobby, and Jared. AJ has been my roommate since we were randomly placed together our freshman year of college. Bobby is another vocal education music major who was good friends with AJ. Jared was our fourth when we needed four people for the apartment. He had lived on the same floor as AJ and I in the dorms for a year as well as being a music major for part of the time. We all get along well even if Jared tends to hide in his room more than hangout in the living room with the rest of us.

We have had a couple parties, but most of our time has been spent with friends playing Rock Band on the PS3. Our goal is to have completely beat the multiplayer band tour by the end of finals week. Then I will buy Rock Band 2 for next semester. I also went to as many UNI home football games as I could when Sierra and Jake were not throwing killer birthday parties. The season was topped off with a semi-final playoff game versus the Richmond Spiders in the UNI-Dome which was televised by ESPN. Curt, Jessa, and I made signs and waited the couple hours it takes to get front row seats for the game. I assume everyone knows it ended in a 20-21 lost for the Panthers. I have yet to watch my entire recording of the game, but I know I was on television once in the third quarter as well as the very end. Apparently, ESPN decided I was the person to zoom in on after the game to symbolize as the disappointed face of the UNI Panthers. Perhaps topping off the fun for the semester were two rock concerts I attended. The first was a Nine Inch Nails concert in Cedar Rapids which Jame and I drove down for. We got some amazing seats in the third row, directly straight out from the stage. By not being on the floor, I got to enjoy all the AMAZING special effects without having to make sure the old man, Jamie, was not killed by the mosh pit. A couple weeks later, a group of my friends and I went to a concert in Waterloo which had appearances by State of Shock, Papa Roach, Seether, and Staind. See the link for details on it. The best part of all the last two weeks is that Jessa and I are now officially dating. It turns out that if you can find a girl willing to run around until 3am every night, you can wear her out enough to get a date with her!

My classes this semester have not been terrible. I am taking Databases, Networking, Programming Languages and Paradigms (otherwise known as PLP), English History to 1688, and Exploring the West: History Seminar. All the classes have taught some pretty cool stuff except perhaps databases which I knew going into it. PLP was probably the most rewarding. Not only did I learn a lot about programming languages, but I have gotten along really well with the professor, Dr. Wallingford. It is turning out my undergraduate research may fall along the lines of this class with the professor acting as my advisor. I managed to get A's in everything except English History in which I got a B. It was pretty much what I expected. All in all, 2008 turned out to be a pretty awesome year.

On Fire!

So in case you have yet to notice, I have been writing a lot more blogs recently. One reason is because the semester is finally winding down for me. I have a couple more tests next week that I will really need to study for, but other than that, I expect easy A's. So now that I have extra time and have yet to figure out how to spend an hour here or there, I find myself writing blogs. I suspect I will continue to do so over Christmas break, but the time spent playing videogames and working on geek projects will definitely pick up.
The other reason I think I am writing a few more blogs than usual this week is because Jessa just started her own blog. There is a mild competition between us about who is the better blogger. I will admit the judging is kind of hard at this point since she has only just started. However, her first couple blogs are pretty good. She claims I have better flow in my blogs. I suppose that is possible, but I still am not happy with it. It is getting better, though, I feel. Meanwhile, I like her blog because it seems to be on a much more personal level than mine. The only time my writing really gets at something about me is when I am either overly excited or in a pretty bad mood. She writes about her everyday running and manages to turn it into a partial life story. That is impressive. Anyways, all I am saying is go read her blog. Peace!

Rocking Weekend

My weekend pretty much rocked. It started out Friday afternoon with people slowly gathering at my apartment. We played Rock Band as we passed the time. Eventually, seven of us went out to Pancheros for food before heading off to a rock concert in Waterloo. The concert showcased Papa Roach, Seether, and Staind in that order with State of Shock as the opener. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we were shocked (pun intended) by the quality of the opener. They were just as good as the other bands. I will say though they are a lot better live than recorded. I still like their recordings, but they need to play their music a little harder in the studio. They're awesome live though. Seether turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, but Papa Roach and Staind rocked. I had a little problem by the time Staind came out just because I was so exhausted from the mosh pit by then. It turned out to be about a 4.5 hour show by the time all was said and done. I think I have to tip my hat to Staind though as the best band there. Afterall, how can you top "Silence Gets Us Nowhere"??

After the concert, we went back and played a few more hours of Rock Band for absolutely no good reason. Well, okay, I sat there and watched because I couldn't sing due to losing my voice at the concert and I was letting the new people get their opportunity on the instruments. They were finally starting to get the hang of it by 3am.

Saturday came and with it UNI's FCS Quarterfinal Playoff Game vs. New Hampshire. I believe the largest lead of the game was 9 points with a combined total of 9 turnovers, 1 blocked punt, 1 blocked extra point attempt, and 1 safety off of the blocked punt. It was ridiculous. Fortunatley, UNI won 36-34. My boy, D. Law, did not have a great game due simply to our gameplan which did not get him ball much. We had front row seats again and got a few new people to join us. It sounds like one is willing to come back with us this week to the semifinal game. The cool thing about the semifinal is it will be on ESPN at 3pm on Saturday. We are making signs and intend to get front row seats again.

After the game resulted in the traditional run to Pancheros before making our way over to Tracy's. There was a party for Jordan who recently got back from spending a semester in Australia. Once the party wound down, we mosied back to my place to watch Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill. This was still largely the same group from the whole weekend (Jess, Andrea, Matt, Curt, and me). This again went until 3-4 in the morning by the time I had picked up AJ from a Glee Club Christmas Concert Afterparty.

Sunday was supposed to be a day of reading for my paper I have due tomorrow. I tended to put most of it off because there were a number of good football games on. We also played a bit of Rock Band along with ordering Pizones from Pizza Hut. I spent the day trying not to talk since I destroyed my voice between the concert and the football game. Anyways, that was my phenomenal weekend. I may have to blog next week about this upcoming weekend. It sounds like it should be about just as busy!

Friday Rocked

Let's just say I had a pretty good day on Friday. The first good news that set the tone for the rest of the day came in my English History to 1688 class. We had taken a test in there the Monday before and it was a big test. It was worth 25% of my final grade. This is the class I have expected to be my worse grade this semester. If I get something above a B, I will be pretty happy. We got a study guide a week before and quickly realized this test was going to be tough. The study guide had four essay questions on it. The actual test had two of those. Of those two, we got to choose one to write about. The essay questions all required us to use the primary documents we had been reading for class to explain some general theme in English history. We had read 50+ documents by this point in the class already. We got no notes, and could not even use the book with the documents. In other words, we essentially had to memorize 3 essays to be truly prepared for this test. As for how long the essays were supposed to be, we were told to expect to write the entire 50 minutes that the class lasted (roughly 3 pages based on my typical hand-writing speed).

When we got the test, the two topics we got to choose from were church/state relations and political organization. These were probably my second and third best topics of the four on the study guide. As we started the test, I came up with a fairly unique idea. I chose to go with political organization, but wrapped up church/state relations by arguing they were a part of England's political organization. The whole controversy between the church and state was over the state attempting to control the church for its own political uses. By answering both topics in one essay I figured I was either writing one amazing essay or fighting for a 'B' which is about what I expected had I written for a single topic.

We got our tests back on Friday. The professor told me he thought I did "pretty good" when he handed me my test. As I looked at it, there were only two comments on it. The first was right beside my opening paragraph. It read, "Which topic are you choosing?" My opening paragraph was fairly confusing, but then again, I was technically answering both topics. The comment did not surprise too much to say the least. The second comment was at the very end. It read, "A really good essay." The word "really" was underlined twice. Just below the comment was a nice, big, red 'A'. Then Dr. Lees told the class he was a pretty hard grader, and if you got a 'B' or better, you should be pretty happy with your grade. I am just going to say I was ecstatic.

The next big highlight came later in the afternoon in a series of emails with my computer science department head, Dr. Wallingford. For a summary of that, just read this blog.

The rest of the day consisted of me just having a good time. I played some Resistance 2 (a new videogame) with a couple friends. We watched some football. We played some Rock Band. We sat around talking and joking about random things. All in all, it was just a fun time with very little effort involved. I think it will be one of the things I miss most about college. With so many friends my age around, I can have a lot of fun just hanging out with a couple friends. I do not have to go out or make any sort of plans. Just sitting around the apartment and doing whatever is fun enough every now and then. Anyways, that was my awesome Friday.

Being Politically Correct About Being Politically Correct

While it has finally started to taper off, the last five years saw a sharp increase in the amount of attention paid towards being "politically correct." It was all the hype. So what was being politically correct all about? It was about not saying or doing anything that could be interpreted as offensive to a particular group of people. An example might be making a joke about the quality of the French military in a French class. Anyways, I am sure nearly everyone reading this already knows what I am talking about.

Most of you who know me realize I have never been very concerned with being politically correct. If it is a good joke, I will tell it. If it is how I truly feel about an issue, I will not hide it. So why is it that I am not concerned with the matter? Originally, it was because I was strongly opinionated in that I should not attempt to disguise, mask, or dilute who I was just because someone might get offended. I was going to be blunt because it was not worth the effort for me to gloss over something because people found it unbecoming. Afterall, do you see anyone putting paper bags over ugly people because they are not attractive? I am going to end this paragraph here because that sentence sums up the idea I was trying to portray better than anything I could have imagined.

Today, I realized that I had been right all these years. I just did not have the logical argument worked out yet. The problem with the present notion of "political correctness" is that it relies on the speaker to not say anything that could potentially be offensive. Considering that anything can be offense to the wrong/right person, a person cannot say anything. Assume a person used to be cruelly humiliated for their weight as a kid when they bent over to pick-up a pen off of the floor. Throughout their childhood, their peers would joke about dropping pens and the strain of having to pick siad pen up. That means you could potentially offend someone by simply remarking, "I dropped the pen." However, if someone were to ask you what you just happened as they saw you stop taking notes in class, it might be considered rude (and therefore not politically correct) to ignore them altogether for fear of offending them by stating you dropped the pen. Now this case is taken to the extreme.

Some of you are probably thinking that in the case of the "pen" individual, it is such a ridiculous thing to be offended by that they should simply understand. Therefore, they should take the responsibility upon themself to not be offended. Why if one person cannot be offended in a unique situation can an individual not be offended in a common situation? If we shift the responsibility to prevent people becoming offended to the listener rather than the speaker, we no longer have to worry about a situation not being "politically correct." We need people to simply understand that the individual is not intentionally trying to offend them. I would have to say in most cases, it is obvious to tell when they are. And if they are trying to be offensive, but we assume they are not, does that really make the world worse? Maybe their would be a few less fights each school year. I am not even going to attempt to project its ramifications onto international politics.

In summary, let us all stop assuming everyone around us is an asshole who is trying to piss us off. Maybe they really do just think it is a funny joke. Maybe what they are saying is their real opinion or observation. Why does it have to be an effort to offend you? Then again, maybe everyone is an asshole, but how does getting offended help the situation?

Europe: Where the History Comes From

Today at work, we had a consultant come in for the week to help us with our implementation of the software we support. The cool thing was the guy grew up in Holland. Not only had he grown up in Europe, but he is trilingual with dutch, english, and german (and in that order). I don't know how long he spent in Germany, but apparently he lived there for a time as well. Now he lives in Illinois doing his consulting job. So what's the point of me giving all these details? Well, as Eddie Izzard once said, "Europe is where the history comes from."

I (along with a few others on my team) got into a fairly lengthy chat with the guy that started on World War II. Most people that I've known (aka Americans) have a rather narrow understanding of the era. It's not their fault, it's just the way it's portrayed in textbooks and Hollywood. I don't want to this to come off as arrogant, but I like to think I have a little better understanding than the average person I meet on the street. While I originally started being interested about 10 years ago, I've only done solid research on it for the last 3-4 years. In that time, I've read things written by Americans and British along with translations from French and Germans. Needless to say, I've gained a much wider perspective of what happened during those years than I used to have.

This guy seemed to have all that down without the extensive years of reading books. The best part was he had the perspective on pretty much any topic. It was fascinating talking to him about all sorts of things. In some ways it is nice to be part of a country that's so large. In other ways, it kind of sucks. The lack of diversity and learning to deal with people who don't think exactly like us is one of the disadvantages. I think about the only thing that can be done to combat the ignorance is to make a concerted effort to immerse ourselves in other cultures. Anyways, that's my two cents on world politics even though a lot of people will think it doesn't have much to do with politics at all. That's for another day though.

My First Blog: Metablogging

So blogging has started running through my friends like the flu. Fortunately, we're just puking out a bunch of words instead of our guts. Anyways, I had enough to say in response to my freinds' blogs that I could write blogs to their blogs. Therefore I thought I should start blogging. So here I am at my first blog and what do I do? I blog about blogging. My question is, is that considered metablogging? Afterall, data about data is metadata. It only seems logical then that blogging about blogging would be considered metablogging.

What do I intend to blog about? I have no idea. As most people who know me know, I am quite an opinionated person. I usually have something to say about anything. So I will likely blog on my thoughts about other people's blogs. I will probably blog about some different types of technology I've been recently playing with. I may write a few blogs as how-to's. I play a lot of videogames so chances are I will be writing some about those as well. I'm an avid sports fan so there will definitely be a few those (Go Cubbies!). But yeah, I feel like I've used the word blog way too many times in the past few minutes so I'm thinking I'll just stop here for now and hit it again sometime later. Enjoy!