Finals came and went.  I thought I did surprisingly well, considering the level of work I put in.  I was especially proud of my final CS grade, as I was pretty sure I’d be barely squeaking by.  I’d only really managed to get about half of the homework assignments to work according to the specifications and had been turning in a lot of assignments late, thus getting point deductions and whatnot.  I guess that the final project was worth two homework grades and I pretty much rocked its socks off was really beneficial for my grade.

I finally finished Mass Effect.  That was a fun game.  I enjoyed it greatly.  I played a vanguard with shotguns as my primary weapon.  As the game progressed, it got to the point that pretty much every common enemy would die in one shot from my shotgun.  And eventually, I didn’t even really have to get very close to be accurate and could hit targets from pretty far away.  Combined with Wrex, who I also built towards heavy shotgun usage, even the big geth units would die in two or three shots.  Add to that Tali and he Overload abilities, and nothing stood a chance.

When fighting Saren on Virmire, I dropped him inside of a minute.  Tali overloaded his shields, and then Wrex and I both simultaneously fired our Master Carnage blasts at him, killing him instantly.  It was actually sort of anticlimactic, as I had expected to get a good work-around by his biotic abilities.  The final fight in the Citadel was similar.  I managed to Charm him out of the first fight so we went straight to the final fight where he burns off all his skin and starts jumping all over the place.  That battle was a little more difficult mainly because it was hard to get him in my sights long enough fire Carnage at him.  Also, he kept dodging Tali’s tech mines, so I had to whittle his shields down the old fashioned way.

I’ve been buying up all the new D&D expansions.  I’m really loving the Manual of Planes that was released this month.  The information on planar vehicles like the spelljammer is exactly what I needed for planning my planar campaign.  Also, Sigil and Hestavar are perfect for my conception of the Nexus Plane, which I think will turn out to be something like a combination of those two with Sigil inspiring the Lower City and Hestavar inspiring the Upper City.

I recently got back into LiveJournal and opened up a new journal over there.  Regrettably, I totally forgot the password to my old LJ and the email I used for it has since gone inactive so I’ll probably never be able to retrieve it.  I’m fine with that, though.  LJ has made a lot of improvements since I left so many years ago.  They have a lot of new journal themes and the Scrapbook functionality is pretty nice too.

I was looking through the LJ help files trying to learn how to write themes using their S2 engine, which is actually rather complex.  S2 is a programming language unto itself which is compiled into Perl code that’s used to generate the pages, an idea that I think is pretty awesome, if a little daunting to new theme designers.  The engine isn’t very well documented and I didn’t find any tutorials readily available for how to write new templates and stuff.  It all looks very interesting to me, though.

I finally found a Safari-clone theme for Firefox that reduces the chrome to the same size as Safari.  This is awesome.  The one thing I liked about Safari was that it’s chrome was relatively small and gave me a pretty big viewing area even with the bookmarks bar enabled.  I also really liked the square buttons.  I’ve been searching for a theme for Firefox that matches the Safari chrome in both design and size, but hadn’t been able to find one.  Until now.  It’s called GrApple Yummy, in case you want to check it out.  Apart from the home button, it looks pretty much exactly like Safari.  And with the Fission extension, you even get the loading bar in the location bar!

I tried setting up AirTunes in the house the other day.  We have this big 5.1 speaker system that we don’t even use anymore since we got the new cable box and new HDTV, which is a shame ’cause the speakers are really nice.  I’d been toying with the idea of trying to configure AirTunes to stream music to them through our home network and finally got around to trying it out last week.  I picked up an Airport Express and a RCA splitter and proceeded to try to find the right inputs on the back of the receiver to plug into.  I eventually found the set that would take digital input through RCA jacks, but was disappointed to find that the receiver didn’t come with an amp.  What that meant was that the signal being streamed through the ports had to be strong enough to drive the speakers itself.  Of course, the Airport Express is nowhere near strong enough to do that, being made to be paired with powered speakers.  So, while I could just barely hear the music being streamed through AirTunes if I turned the receiver all the way up, I declared the experiment a failure.

Now I’ve been looking around at different 2.1 speaker sets that I could potentially use instead.  I’m trying to find one for under $100, but it’s hard to tell if the speakers are really any good.  Reading reviews isn’t really helpful.  Oh well.  Maybe one day when I have my own house I’ll return to this idea.

I think that’s just about all that’s happened recently.  I keep trying to blog more regularly, but life’s been really boring.

Back at SnowFire, the youth ministry program attached to my middle school, we had a weekly program geared towards the junior high kids called LiCK.  LiCK stood for Life in Christ’s Kingdom.  (We were big fans of inappropriate acronyms.)  Anyway, LiCK’s main focus was to teach morals and values, and also to touch on some common junior high issues such as peer pressure and bullying.  At the last meeting of each school year, we would all get together and make a pledge to each other to uphold the things we learned throughout the year at LiCK through the summer while SnowFire was out of session.  To symbolize this pledge, we had the TADSL beads.  The TADSL beads were basically beads with the letters T, A, D, S, and L on them, strung onto a piece of string, and tied into a necklace, bracelet, or anklet of some kind for you to wear through the summer.  Each of the letters stood for something we were to abstain from: T for tobacco, A for alcohol, D for drugs, S for sex, and L for (bad) language and lying.

I was a part of LiCK for four years: one year as a LiCKster, two years as a regular student leader, and one year as the Director.  As such, I’ve been wearing my TADSL for a while.  I’m not sure why, but for whatever reason, I’ve always taken TADSL very much to heart.  So, when my involvement with LiCK ended, I kept wearing my TADSL, even though I wasn’t technically part of LiCK anymore.  And when the string started to break, I went and got new string to repair it.  And when the beads themselves started cracking and falling apart, I went and got new beads to replace them.  Maybe it’s because the years I was in LiCK were the years when I was really starting to get a firm grip on my morals and my values.  TADSL is like a reminder of those times and the fun I had and the memories I made.  It means more than just LiCK to me; it means QuiCK (the Quest into Christian Kinship, SnowFire’s weekend retreat); it means Core Team (SnowFire’s youth leadership group).  TADSL reminds me of all the things I learned to value and hold close over those years.

As an aside, I’ll say again that I think my moral system is the weirdest thing.  Not really because my morals themselves are weird.  It’s more because my morals are very, very Christian, yet I don’t identify myself as a Christian.  Again, probably a result of my upbringing.

Anyway, back to the main story.  So, I’ve been wearing my TADSL beads for a long time.  Coming on nine years now.  That’s a fucking long time, now that I really consider it.  I like wearing the beads, but they do get a little troublesome every now and then.  Mainly because, as I said, the string breaks sometimes and the beads themselves also get pretty worn down.  So, I’ve been looking for a more permanent way to replace them.  My first consideration was a necklace with an engraved pendant.  But I already wear my jade pendant and I don’t want to have two necklaces.  My second consideration was to get a bracelet of some kind.  This was actually rather attractive to me, but I couldn’t find an engravable bracelet that was sufficiently masculine enough for me, so I ultimately threw this one out too.  And then, recently, I happened across a little thing called the Silver Ring Thing.

In case you’re unaware, the Silver Ring Thing is an evangelical Christian organization whose mission is to promote premarital chastity and abstinence among teens and young adults.  SRT tries to be ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ by modeling their events after rock concerts (albeit with Christian rock bands).  Their events also include the typical group exercises, speeches, and whatnot.  At the end of each event, everyone there has the opportunity to take a pledge of abstinence, to abstain from sex and remain pure until marriage.  Those who do take the pledge receive silver rings inscribed with I THESS 4:3-4, a reference to a Bible verse.  The rings are worn on the left ring finger, with the intention that they be worn there until they are replaced by a wedding ring.

This all came to my attention as I was digging through personal information on various young celebrities; namely: the Jonas brothers, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, and Nathan Kress.  My digging here was actually spurred by a little silver ring I’d been noticing Nathan wearing in a lot of his press shots.  I did some digging and came up with the conclusion that it was likely a purity ring, given Nathan’s rather strong Christian faith.

So, what’s the relation to TADSL here?  Well, I consider the purity ring to be a subset of TADSL, pretty much.  Purity rings pledge sexual abstinence until marriage.  TADSL pledges that, as well as abstience from the other substances and actions listed.  So, I began to think that maybe a ring would be a cool way to replace my beads.  I could get the inside of the band inscribed with ‘TADSL’ and then wear it around.  It was a cool idea, so I started researching how to go about buying a ring.

I originally wanted a silver ring, but decided early on in my research that a silver ring would be too expensive to get at a good quality.  So, I started looking at alternative materials.  Men’s rings these days tend to be made out of a couple of hard metals: steel, titanium, platinum, or tungsten.  Tungsten is the newest and most ‘modern’ of the bunch because it tends to have a gunmetal color that gives it a very edgy and urban look.  It’s also extremely scratch-resistant.  I found a place that sold tungsten rings on the cheap, so I decided to go with one of those.

Sizing my finger turned out to be a big pain.  Rings are supposed to fit at the base of your finger.  However, they also need to be able to get over your knuckle easily.  This presents a problem, especially for men, as the knuckle is often significantly wider than the base of the finger, especially for the ring finger, whose muscles aren’t very well-developed.  My left ring finger is a size 6 at the base; however, the knuckle on that same finger is more like a size 7.5.  This big size difference means that I had to choose whether I wanted to have a better fit but have to risk bruising my finger whenever I wanted to take the ring off, or have a looser fit but a much easier time putting the ring on and taking it off.  I ended up choosing the looser fit, as I want to be able to take it off when I’m taking a shower or washing my face.

After I got the ring, I found another place that sold slightly higher quality rings at a higher price and that also offered laser engraving.  My plan is to keep the ring I have now until I can get to a real jeweler and get their opinion on how I should size my finger.  I imagine that the jeweler will be able to give me some advice as to what size I should choose to maximize fit and comfort.  Once I get that, I’m planning to order a fancier ring with the laser engraving.

I almost want you to be miserable.  Then I can say to myself, “Well, at least we’re not as bad off as you.”

At the same time, I don’t want anyone else to ever have to feel like this.  It’s horrible that you only resent others for living their lives and being happy.

So, I decided to try and teach myself something.  I’ve been into Relient K a lot lately and really like their piano stuff, so I did a quick google and found some chords for their song Let It All Out.

The chord progression is pretty simple.  A, C#m, D, A for the verses, which is all I learned.  It became obvious to me after fussing around and trying to find the right octave that this was mostly a left hand song.  Also, the C#m and D are apparently C#m2 and D2, whereas the A is an A1.  This actually makes it rather difficult to play with musical typing as switching octaves isn’t terribly easy.  All you have to do is press the ‘x’ button, but it’s annoying when you’re playing chords.

Anyway, I practiced it a bit and then recorded myself playing it.  It was kind of cool and makes me want to learn more piano.  Not classical piano, but enough to let me play modern stuff if I get chords for it and whatnot.  I guess all that matters is that you know where the notes are.

In other news, here’s a poem/song thing I wrote.  One Bold Step, someday?  Maybe.  You could eke a religious reading out of it without much effort.

It’s been oh so, so long
That I’ve been away
Away from all your greatness.
But I hope you can see
That I have changed.

And it’s been oh so, so long
Since I stormed out your door,
Declared I didn’t need you.
But I hope you can see
I’m not the same.

I took everything you ever gave to me
And cast it all away.
I thought I could do better on my own.
But oh how I was wrong.

And now times they are tough
And I’m down on my luck.
I’m so lost if I don’t have you.
I don’t know where to turn
Without your light.

I’ve lost everything
That I’ve ever had
And that ever even mattered.
I don’t know where to turn
Without your hand.

My life is so empty
If I don’t have you here.
I thought that I could fill the void
But I only made it grow.

So now please take me back.
I’ll do anything.
I can’t live if I’m apart from you.
I see now that my life has been
A mistake.

Now I’ve come back to you
After oh so, so long
In hopes you might have mercy
And forgive me for all the wrongs
That I have done.

I thought you had abandoned me
As I abandoned you.
But you took me back with open arms

“Son, you are a part of me,” you said.
“You need only look and see.”

Personal stories definitely make the best writing material.

I was tossing around band names again after getting back to considering splurging for a Squier VM P-Bass and trying to learn to play it passably well on my own.  I came up with a handful of good ones, but my two favorites (The Northern Lights, and 42nd Street) were both already taken on MySpace Music.  The Northern Lights was taken by a band from Liverpool that was actually pretty good based on the stuff they had up.

Other names: Fear of Dinosaurs, and One Bold Step.  I actually like these too, and neither of them were taken when I searched.  Hopefully by printing them here I don’t give anyone ideas.  Maybe I should just go and reserve them?  Hah.

Were Adam and I actually to start a band, we’d be sorta out for a melody section as we don’t know anyone who knows how to play the guitar or keyboards.  Adam would be playing drums and I’d be playing bass.  I’d probably also be singing; though, as I’ve said before, I don’t really have a voice that’s conducive to singing.  Maybe if I practice actually singing I could work out the kinks and come across a good punkish sound.  If I knew how to play piano, I’d do the popular vox/piano combo to fill the melody role, while Adam fills out the rhythm role with the drums.  Being as I don’t know how to play piano though, I’d rather learn to play bass.  It’s kinda too bad we don’t know more musically inclined people.  Rather, musically inclined people with whom we’d want to start a band to dick around with.

Still kinda fuzzy on what kind of music we’d actually make.  My tastes tend to drift towards pop-punk, though I’ve always got the feeling Adam kinda doesn’t like that genre.  We’d come to a middle ground eventually, I think.

And what about lyrical content?  I don’t really have enough life experience to write interesting lyrics.  I can make stuff up, but it probably wouldn’t have the same resonance.  If I did try to write songs based on the big events in my life, I’m afraid my songs would be really depressing.  I guess that’s where the idea of Avatar-rock came from.  It gives us subject matter to turn around while we develop more personal stories to tell.

God is an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent being.  He is everywhere and everything simulatneously; is at once the beginning and the end of everything.  Man is pretty much the exact opposite.  Man is imperfect, selfish, weak, and sinful.  We are given so much, have so much potential; and yet, most people spend their entire lives squandering the gifts they are given, wasting their lives doing nothing.  That a being as infinitely powerful and great as God could so fully and unconditionally love creatures as low and as flawed as Man is completely baffling.

When I was going through religion class at school, that was always the thing that caught me as amazing.  God loves us and will accept us into Him no matter our mistakes or our actions in life.  All we need do is ask Him, open ourselves up to Him, and He will takes us back, love us completely.  It’s that personal interpretation of God that I really like.

I’ve always called myself an agnostic.  I think I’ve spoken before at length as to how a lot of my personal beliefs and morals are very Christian; yet I don’t think of myself as a Christian, nor do I practice Christianity in any way.  That’s because there’s always a part of me that just can’t accept the existence of God.  I can accept that a man named Jesus did live sometime two thousand years ago and he had some pretty good ideas and was pretty smart and forward-thinking for his time.  Whether he was the Son of God, that’s something that I have a harder time accepting.

It’s really a leap of faith in the purest sense.  There is no evidence to suggest God exists.  Everything in the world can be explained by science.  So to believe in God is to accept something as true on the basis of nothing except that you believe it to be true.  And that is faith.

Religion is really built on faith.  If you can’t have faith, then you can’t participate in religion.  That’s why I stopped calling myself Christian around when I entered SHP.  I realized that, while I do accept and believe in the majority of Christian teachings regarding morals and right and wrong, I couldn’t make the leap of faith necessary to believe in God.  And really, if you don’t believe in God, can you be a Christian at all?

Faith, to me, is something personal.  Faith has to come from yourself, it can’t be something that’s forced on you or that you adopt just because you were raised to think that way.  At least, that’s where the strongest faith comes from, I think.  I was raised in a Christian environment and have had Christian schooling all through high school.  But I didn’t want to keep practicing something that I didn’t really believe in.

I’ve been on a Christian rock streak lately.  That’s the main reason I’ve had religion on the brain recently.  And being existentialist is really bleak.  I don’t think I’m cut out for it.

Some things make you cry.

Some things make you laugh so much you cry, cry so much you laugh, and leave a warm ache in your chest that’s like a weight that you miss just as much when it’s gone as you hate when it’s here.

The four-letter word I can’t say because I don’t know what it means.