Lions of Men

Aight well, I figured it would be a good time to talk about a little game I like to play called Call of Duty. I tinker with a few pc games every now and again, but this is one I play mostly. I found this server that has really good, fair, and fun settings, but the admin is an absolute jerk. If you say anything wrong to him, he will either kick you or turn you into a cow if he doesn’t all out ban you from the server.

Well, I started a “clan”, but that is kind of a childish name for it so instead I call it “an alliance”. The alliance goes by the acronym {LoM} which stands for Lions of Men. I stole this from a movie called Troy. Brad Pitt says to the Marmadans that they are Lions and in another part says something along the lines of “There are no pacts between Lions and Men.” So there you have it. There were four original members of this alliance.

Phil – The President a.k.a. “the politician”

Nate – LightningDerrick a.k.a. “the tax collector”

Paul – Loki a.k.a. “the artist”

Me – Shigeru a.k.a. “the general” I was the equivalent of Ujio from “The Last Samurai” just think of the part at the end of the movie where Ujio gets knocked off his horse and as soon as he stands up unsheathes his sword and takes out 7 guys and you will have a proper idea of Shigeru (me)

So there were your members. Well as I said before the admin is a jerk and I get sick of him. I can’t just be a jerk back because I love playing on the server so I devised a plan to take away his power figuratively speaking. I started recruiting on his server in order to build LoM so big that people would think they joined an LoM server and forget who he was. Well, this admin has such a pitiful life that he reads the logs of what we say on the server and while I never disclosed my plan, he still does not allow recruiting. In retaliation on his part he has banned Phil. I haven’t tried signing on, but if this was the reason that Phil was banned, make no mistake, I will share Phil's fate. So anway, that is a little bit of something I like to do. LoM is still a great idea for an alliance. And to leave you an idea of the fierceness of LoM, I will give you a quote….

“In the wild there is no health care. In the wild, health care is ‘ouch, I hurt my leg. I can’t run.’ The Lion eats me and I’m dead. Wow, I’m not dead. I’m the Lion. You’re dead.” -Dwight Shrute The Office

Phillip Freeman

Well, if you can remember from my first blog I said I would talk about my friends and dedicate a blog to each and everyone. Thus far, you have only heard about my wonderful wife Shannon. Well, I think its over due to write about another.

Phillip Freeman is an excellent friend of mine. You might know him as Buster Clutch Bunny or Mr. President. These are his aliases that are quite commonplace when talking about Phil. I ran into this gentleman when I took a part time job with UPS. The job started at midnight and this would definitely be my first introduction to nights. I was what you would call a temporary AOT (Administrative Officer Technician or something or other) Any who, I met my supervisor and her supervisor trainee. The trainee was Phil. I laugh about this today because I think he had been a supervisor trainee for like a year awaiting his first command. This is where we would get to know each other.

The longer I worked there the better I got at my job and the more free time I would tend to have while being at work. Well, Phil and I would hang out at a certain column between sorting belts. We would shoot the bull corn all the while making fun of the tug drivers as they brought containers in and out of the hub. Now as a weekly tradition for the night time sort (the one we worked on) a bunch of workers from all departments would go eat at Denny’s after the sort was completed. There would be at least 8 -10 people eating every week. It was good times. To introduce you to Phil’s character, he would constantly invite me to Denny’s, but I would constantly refuse. Not because I didn’t want to go, but I either had to be up in 5 hours or even more importantly, I didn’t want to spend what little money I was making on a night at Denny’s. I think Phil realized this and offered many times to pay for me, if I would just go.

So now let’s talk about Phil’s character. When I think of this man, I think about generosity. He is probably one of the most selfless people I know. He offers his time, money, and knowledge any and all times of the day. After talking with him a few minutes I realized he was a Christian. He talked about this website he had started as a hobby in order to provide a central place where all Christian praise and worship bands could either sell their cds or get chord charts to play different songs. After a few years of hard work, he had built up enough clientele to make his site membership based. He wasn’t trying to become rich or anything, but he did feel like he had spent enough countless hours to get a little redemption. He started charging $2/month to access his database. Just two dollars!! You want to know much he charges today, 3 years later?? Just two dollars!! However, he has become successful in that part of his life as well at UPS. Well, he never became a supervisor in the AOT dept. but he took a supervisor position in the HR dept where he has even been promoted once or twice within that area.

One thing about Phil that I have always admired is his “What needs to happen?” attitude. If he even senses that I need help then he asks me, “where do you need me?” If there is something that needs to get done, then he says “give it to me.” He worked very hard and at no surprise, owned a huge home at the young age of 22. He is still working hard and even after establishing his success he is working to get his degree in Business. I’m glad God put him in my life as a model and friend. If you are curious as the site he has built then you can go to www.delicatefade.com and see the fruits of his labor. So there is another one of my friend’s stories. There will be more to come. My friends mean the world to me. Relationships are the second most reason that God put us here, the first being to worship Him.

Livin'

Robert Frost said he could sum up life in 3 words: It goes on. Well, indeed it does. I just finished up my online class and completed my research project for Chemistry. So I have one more major paper to write this semester for Geology and my Software project to complete. I’m doing my best to ensure an easy departure from the college world. Procrastination has been my friend and enemy at the same time my whole life. “If it wasn’t for the last minute, then nothing would get done.”

I’ve experienced a few enlightening devotionals, that I’ve either known or have shed some light in my current disposition. Just tonight, in Chemistry, our Professor talked about thermodynamics and the efficiency of transferring energy to do work. He related to the fact that all things require a mechanism to change whatever type of energy into something we can use. Plants use photosynthesis, a process by which carbohydrates are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water using light as an energy source and as a byproduct emit oxygen. Our own body turns sugars and other molecules into chemical energy which we use all the time. All this points out how much order there is in life which directly reflects our God, our Creator. Also, every mechanism that uses energy that we can observe today has had a designer. Well this makes perfect sense for us as Christians, but it’s cool how science confirms it.

Another thing that I had known, but it has been nice to remember, concerns the Resurrection. Basically, for Christianity to be hog wash then it comes down to proving the Resurrection didn’t take place. One HUGE thing that reassures us is that if it didn’t happen then why would 11 of the 12 disciples die a martyr’s death? If you research how they died, you find that it was awful. There were crucifixions, beheadings, and beatings after beatings all because they wouldn’t renounce that Jesus had risen. Why would they do this if it didn’t happen?? There is a simple answer…they wouldn’t!

I remember these things and get more messages from God all the time to lift me up. Danny and I used to play with ant lions all the time at my Grandma’s house. An ant lion is a bug that builds a small inverted dune like structure, kind of like a funnel, in sand. We would put ants in there and watch them struggle to get out. Sometimes I feel like that ant and when I do make it out, Danny is always there to push me back in. (I think he got a bigger kick out of it than I did..hehe) Anyway, all I have to do is keep my eyes, ears, and heart open and I find that God coaches me along the way.

My Valentine's Day

Nobody seemed to be too concerned with Valentines Day yesterday. I had 2 classes last night and neither professor demonstrated brevity. As a matter of fact, I think yesterday was the longest class sessions I had had all semester. We even went about 10 minutes over! Hmm… I’m not sure why this occurred. School is important, but I wanted to see my valentine!!

Shannon experienced this as well. Her principal called a school wide after school meeting for an hour and a half. Would you like to know the great importance of this meeting??? Sharpies. Yep. Sharpies. It was a sales presentation of Sharpies. Stop laughing..I’m not lying. Her principal made all teachers stay an hour and half longer on Valentine’s Day to talk about the greatness of the Sharpie.

Well, Shan and I were still able to have a nice dinner when I got home around 9 pm. We went to Tia’s and had some fajitas. We had a good dinner and a good laugh when I asked the waitress to give us some more tor till as. Sidenote: I have an Aunt that mispronounces the Spanish letter ll, so every time I refer to them, I purposely mispronounce it. Ok, well, that’s right. I accidentally mispronounced it in front of that waitress and Shan and I couldn’t stop laughing when she gave me a weird look. She said “tor till as… oh tortillas?” It’s funny because I’m actually about 50% fluent in Spanish. Anywho…that’s our story on Valentine’s Day.

The Mind

Memories, so unlimited,

Memories that are intimate,

A gift from the One who created us,

A fire to the one who tames us,

It encapsulates our cynosure,

Treacherous in times of exposure,

Unbelieving during juvenescence,

Unyielding during senescence,

A wall in times of innovation,

A flood in times of deprivation,

Amusement collaborating with creativity,

Worry manifesting calamity,

Uncharted are the lands we go,

How different from what we show,

Tendencies are what we study,

Yet the science is still quite muddy,

There are more factions than one can bear,

More places than one can stare,

I do not seek, but yet I find,

There is something magnificent about the mind

---Shaheen Matuni

Progress Report

Let me give you a quick report on how my classes are going this semester. I’m pretty much kickin ace and takin names, but it’s early. I have an A on my first geology and chemistry tests. I’m about to finish up my online class which I’m about 90% sure I will have an A in the class overall. Now, I looked at the graduation requirements for graduating with honors. I’m set to get that for sure, unless I completely bomb. My GPA right now is 3.55 and with an additional A it might go up 100^th or 200^th of a point, but I’m going to be about 0.05 – 0.1 points away from graduating Magna Cum Laude. Even if I ace out the semester, I think I will be a little shy of the mark. Oh well..I think with honors is cum laude, but I’m not sure about that. Last night, I had a little chuckle in my Operating Systems class because I got some assurance on a problem I had about 3 years ago. It is very trivial, but I thought it was funny. Back when I was living with Danny, I was taking 1408 which was the second semester of C++. I took one of the labs home and completed it. Once I finished the lab, I started to clean up my folder on my C: drive, but it wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t figure out why this stupid folder wouldn’t let me delete it. I looked into this folder and found there were infinite levels to it. Well, last night, 3 years later I over hear some of the guys talking about some of the machines in the lab. One student, which is like a mini professor because he spent his entire childhood learning about computers and does a lot of work in the CISC lab area, explained this problem with the pcs. He said that they had folders which they couldn’t delete and all had infinite levels. I couldn’t stop laughing and they looked at me and I had told them I had that problem. I told them where it came from, but even they couldn’t fix the problem. They asked me what I had done to fix it and I told them that I reformatted about a year ago, but before that I just renamed the folder ‘go away’. The professor looked at me and said “And that didn’t work!!” It was funny. I guess after reading the story you think that is pretty trivial, but if you only knew how much time I devoted to figuring out what was wrong with it and then just having to cope with it. To finally have closure was like one of those moments when you don’t say anything and you just kinda grin.

Plug In and Re-Charge

GNO is “Girls Night Out” and took shape about 4 or 5 months ago. Basically, all of my friend’s wives that are capable and available meet about once a month at a picked destination. My wife enjoys these times and I really enjoy it for her. I’m not able to be home much at night when she is home and I hate that after a long hard day’s work, she has to come home to nothing. It’s a great thing that Shanille started and I wish the guys could get together as well. I don’t know if that will ever be possible for me however. I can normally get together with 2 or 3 friends at a time, but these girls usually get about 6 – 9 girls in attendance and I think it’s wonderful. Plus, I get to hear about my friends through Shannon and all the gossip that goes on. What makes me sad is that Shannon can stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning when all these girls get together, but if we’re together, I’m lucky to keep her up till 11! Anyways, they are having fun right now and probably talking about some stupid shopping experience they had, but at least they get to talk.

I think it’s very important that we plug into our roots every once in awhile and get recharged and that is what this type of environment will allow. I enjoy going home to the country and talking with my family. I enjoy playing with the cats because I don’t have any and my mom has enough for everyone in my apt complex. I enjoy walking to my grandmother’s house to have a chat. I enjoy doing the same thing with my uncle and aunt. I enjoy sitting down at a card table to throwing down some 42 or moon while talking about a trip to Arkansas. I enjoy going by friends’ houses and hanging out, talking about stories of when we grew up. To me, that is what I call plugging in and recharging. If you haven’t plugged in lately then you should start making plans.

Operating Systems

In my final semester of school, I'm taking operating systems. I'm very excited about this class because unless you do something about it yourself then you will get very little exposure to other systems until you have to deal with them. Luckily, I have experience with various operating systems in Windows, a little Mac experience, and some unix/linux experience. Well, my professor has about 8 operating systems for us to get our hands on this semester and there are only 6 of us in the class. He has 2 mini macs, 1 imac, and 3 other pcs with removable docks and dual booted windows systems as well as Netware with Susa Linux and a copy of Fedora Linux with Gnome. The only unix we get into is when we dig down into the Mac OS X. So I will get much exposure. My professor is good friends with the head guy of operating systems at Microsoft and he was able to get us a beta copy of Windows Longhorn a.k.a. Vista that is coming out later this year. I only played with it for about 10 minutes or so and I have to say that they tightened up the graphics and the interface has a few different features. This is all based off the little time I had with it to notice the difference. I'll get more time with in the next few months and get to know it a little more intimitely, but it will take a little bit to adjust to it. I've just gotten to where I know many ins and outs of XP, but this will be a new challenge. I'm enjoying it and its nice to get to be taught some things instead of having to just figure it out all the time. However, much of Computer Science is just figuring it out. I enjoy it though. I love to study these things and new technologies and look forward to getting to learn the things in our future.

Close Encounter

Well, God spared me tonight. I was coming home from school and talking to Shannon like I normally do when all the traffic came to a sudden halt. I had to stop pretty hard, but I was never in danger of slamming my breaks. However, when I stop hard like that the first thing I do is look in my rear view mirror to see who I'm depending on. Thankfully, there was no one there. This was not the case for the HOV lane however. So once I realized that I was ok the next thing I did was look up to see the car in front of me getting side swiped like a mad dog. A black SUV must have swerved out of the HOV lane to avoid direct contact but traded good paint with car in front of me. I think he added a side mirror as well. He hit about 2 other cars and took off like a wild pig at feeding time. I was just thankful that it wasn't me that he hit. The car didn't stop to see the damage he had done and is probably long gone by now, but I left the victims my info if they needed me. I just thought I would share that story. This world woudn't be so bad if it weren't for those type people.