I’m going to start working to re-categorize all of the posts previous to this one. They will still be available (although I don’t know why on Earth you would care to go back and read them…I don’t even want to for that matter), but they won’t be showing up on the home page, or the normal part of the site (Archive only).

I will most likely re-attempt a theme project to make this a little more like a website and a little less of a blog. The idea I will be going for is more of an about me site that will touch on ideas and topics that I find to be relevant and interesting among other things.

If you were one of the very few who may have read any of my posts (regardless of whether or not you enjoyed them), then I you may (or less likely may not) enjoy the changes I plan on making.

I picked up one of my favorite book, Ender’s Game, and read it in a record-breaking, marathon of three days! I haven’t read a book for leisure in almost 7 years! I have decided that I need to read more as it seemed to be a very cathartic and stress-relieving activity for me. I also bought a companion novel to Ender’s Game; Ender’s Shadow. I haven’t gotten very far in it, but have enjoyed the first chapter.

I also have taken up drinking hot tea. Last week, I did sound for a play that went up last Thursday, and over Friday, and Saturday I drank about 6 cups of flavored tea while doing sound. Also a cathartic and stress-relieving activity, one I plan on usurping more frequently.

At the beginning of last week, some news was broken to me regarding my work situation. My boss has been deployed with his Army National Guard unit, and will be leaving for a years tour at the end of January. We have until then to get several things accomplished: (1) Figure out how we are going to deal with his absence, for which we have several options. (2) Stabilize the network infrastructure so that things will be easily recoverable while he is gone (and when he gets back). Lots to do, and not much time to do it in, but so far we are making decent time.

Needless to say, this could very well throw a monkey wrench in what I had been planning, and is a prime example of God showing his child that his timing and plans are best even when we can’t see them that way. I am of the opinion that God’s will is being done here, and I am eager to see how God intends to let things pan out. Things may still work out the way I was hoping for (and had previously felt that God was leading in the direction of), but they may not. This next week will determine this for the most part, and so I will pray that I will be able to discern God’s direction for my immediate future.

Oh, just updated to WordPress 3.0.2. Not sure what is new in this update (or the last one for that matter), but I’m curious. Nothing that reading the release notes and change-log won’t fix .

At this point, I am fairly agitated in my current work situation. It’s becoming more of an issue as I am now aware of my frequently being feverish and sick without even realizing it. My girlfriend, my Mom, and myself have all commonly identified the source to be work related stress. Sure everybody has stress in the workplace, and I don’t expect that any other job would be less stressful. I don’t tend to deal with this kind of stress well because it is the equivalent of 5 jobs worth of stress. I am convinced that changing my work situation will reduce my levels of stress in several ways.

1. I will reduce the amount of stress to that of one job, or even two.
2. The pay will be enough that I will not be concerned for my finances to the extent that I am now.
3. I will not feel as guilty about having to miss work, or ask for time off because I will not allow my employer to become entirely dependent on me.
4. I will have the opportunity to start over with a clean slate and redetermine what kind of commitment my employer can expect from me (i.e. not over-committed).

At the time of writing this, I have been home most of the day sick and as intentionally as possible apathetic to what I may have been missing at work. Tomorrow there is a meeting that I do not want to miss (I am rather looking forward to it, which is nice). I am also anticipating a doctors appointment on Friday to determine what direction I should take in regards to my recent frequency of illness. I expect there will be blood-work necessary to rule-out viral or other medical causality…for which I am not thrilled. I wish I could arrange for the blood-work to be done when my girlfriend could be there with me as I do not enjoy having blood drawn (bad experiences).

Surprisingly, I have a chemistry test looming over my head for Friday afternoon, and yet I do not qualify it as stressful as work; in fact I am almost looking forward to it in spite of my potential unpreparedness.

I am also looking forward to the weekend, because there is a possibility that I will be visiting the Wichita zoo with my girlfriend. I find that time spent with her is relaxing (and indeed stress relieving), and a trip to the zoo would be an enjoyable outing.

Finally, I am hoping to be baptized again on Sunday evening. I intend to spend time in prayer tomorrow between studying for the test, and reading my bible and throughout the weekend.

In the meantime, I think I’ll keep giving the broken pieces of my sanity to God so He can super-glue them back together.

a theoretical temperature characterized by complete absence of heat and motion and equivalent to exactly −273.15°C or −459.67°F

I started thinking about this at lunch…I have no idea why I did, but I did. Oh, by the way, I don’t have a beard anymore (RANDOM) more about that later mayhaps, more about what I was thinking about now. So what is absolute zero? Theoretically possible, but theologically impossible. The bible talks about things being made up of smaller pieces (atoms) and that they are always moving. Chemistry, and quantum theory support this by saying that atoms are vibrating, and that the pieces of the atom are in constant motion. We find that these particles move faster and more vigorously when energy is applied, and the opposite is true when energy is absorbed (removed from the system). Essentially this leads to how we harnessed the power of the atom to make large explosions happen (understatement XD).

Theoretically, absolute zero would be when the sub-atomic particles stop moving. Theologically, this should be impossible by any means other than God saying “HEY!!! sit still for a bit.” Lets say, for the sake of this argument, that there is some method to achieve absolute zero (other than laundering funds for false research lol ).

Einstein’s can be illustrated with a train approaching the speed of light (or any other vehicle for your imaginative pleasures). As it approaches the speed of light (c in the equation), energy is applied to increase velocity. Once light speed is reached, additional energy does not increase velocity, but rather, density is increased. According to Einstein’s theories, speeds above light speed (hyper light speed, or hyper-c tee hee) are not literally possible. Lets apply this same concept proportionately to absolute zero. As the temperature (and indeed the speed at which the particles are moving) of the system decreases we find that the movement of the particles decreases, until we have an absence of energy and have truly reached absolute zero. But how can this be possible? An atom without moving sub-atomic particles can’t possibly hold chemical bonds any more, can it? Electron sharing CAN’T happen, and so all bonds break causing each element to be individualized. I also theorize that at absolute zero, density disappears as well, and because of this matter is theoretically destroyed. Thermodynamics doesn’t allow for this, but at the same time, Thermo (meaning heat) doesn’t exist in this system. Absolute zero, then, must be synonymous with anti-matter as it would invariable dismantle the building blocks of matter. A few things could happen here in my mind:

1. Sub-atomic particles, like the elements, become individualized particles floating free in the ether.

OR

2. the sub-atomic particles themselves disappear either because they are converted to energy, or are completely destroyed.

So after the play on Saturday (the last performance of MacBeth at Central), I went home to wash the grey out of my hair/beard, and proceeded to shave; totally and completely. I did this for my girlfriend Nicole, as she has never seen me sans facial hair, only with the short and scruffy variety. I must love her or something because I am super insecure without my beard, and I find myself looking down at my feet, and hands-in-pockets sometimes. I also jump when I see my reflection due to the fact that I haven’t seen my face for about a long time. Thankfully, she likes me bewhiskered as long as I manage the extent to which my bewhiskeredness reaches.

I need to work on transitions…lol

What IS with that airline food anyways?

Do you ever wonder about what it would be like to live somewhere else?  Like really to live somewhere else…not like “oh, I don’t think I’d like to live there”, or “I couldn’t afford to move that far away”.  Like, what if you were born there.  What if you were born in some other country, and grew up in a different house, in a different town where society is quite different from what we know.  Would things be simpler? More complicated?  What about the way you see world issues?  How would you have approached an influential news event that has happened during your lifetime?  Maybe you would be more apathetic to it? Or perhaps you would have felt its effect more intensely.  Maybe, you would have had a dog that followed you everywhere, or some other pet in whatever other relationship with you.  What would its name be?  Do you ever think about things like this?  I do; I think about things that might have happened as if they were my own memories.  Not to say that I accept them as reality, or adopt them as my own, but sometimes I just play out alternate childhood happenings in a vastly different setting than the one I am/was familiar with.

Does that make me weird? (hypothetical question, do not answer….cus I already know.  I’m crazy, and only I would think of something like this.)

It’s all relative though, if you think about it.  It really is.  Can you really accurately live out experiences like this in your head?  Of course not!  Imagination will get you far, but by simulating an experience in your head you are missing an important element that is essential to any experience you have.  For instance, I can think about any given situation, and using logic I can predict its outcome, or any possible outcomes, but depending on how I relate to the situation determines how accurate I can be.  In chemistry, we have a strict set of rules that can be logically applied to predict things, as it is with most science.  Life isn’t so predictable, in that we can’t apply a set of definite rules to any given situation.  Some things are obvious, and you’d have to be pretty dense to miss it, but why is this?  Experiencing the particular situation gives us some frame of reference, which allows us to relate a situation to a previously experienced one.  I know that if I touch a burner on a stove that is on, I will invariably feel pain (in a large quantity), but I didn’t always know this.  Philosophy is detached from experience due to the lack of relation between them.

Back to our previous scenario.  How then can we find this frame of reference for something that we can’t relate to?  I’ve never been out of the country, but I have seen things on T.V. that would give me some idea of what it is like to live there, but I can’t really know unless I have experienced it for myself.  So then, to imagine what it would be like to grow up in another country can’t truly be accurate to what someone who did grow up in another country experienced.  Its like comparing an apple and my left shoe.  I have no way to know that I experience any one thing the same way anyone else does.  Who is to say that what I experience as the color red, is the same as how you experience the color red? True, we can all identify something as having the quality of being colored red, but this is a label that we have learned to associate with an experience through relation.  Experience has no meaning other than what it is related to, and what it is related to has no meaning other than the experience we have had.

Isn’t it amazing how wonderful God made our minds?  Learning, is in and of itself a paradox that requires a certain measure of grace and awe to understand.

I had a hand in on this video…mixed the audio as well as layin the sweet beat down and edited video for it.  Girlfriends Dad likes to do all these crazy projects and he got me involved in this one.

to continue a geek motif, I will move in that direction briefly. I took Chemistry at Central this semester…and…I like it…but I remember why I had such a hard time with it in high school. My teacher is better now I think, so it makes more sense to me.

Ok back to the girl . I am super excited about her being in my life…still. She is and has been my best friend for some time now, and I am truly blessed to be able to say that I get to date my best friend. Something amazing about our relationship that I just absolutely LOVE is that we are doing a devotional together. Its something Ive never done before, but it is absolutely amazing. I love to talk about God with her, she is so cool cus she sees things that not many people see at first glance. She sees things a little differently and has super awesome perspective on things. She loves talking about God with me too. She loves having the devotional with me too .

Been playing in a praise band down in Wichita…I love that city. I love driving in it, i love seeing all the buildings, I just loove that city! Playing in the praise band is nice; haven’t done it in 3 and a half years. This is the closest to a church family that I have had since back in Emporia. It’s nice having that family feeling especially since my family doesn’t really go to church anymore and I dont get that spiritual part of it from them.

So WordPress 3 is out, I just updated the blog prior to typing this post. Havent really seen much of a difference, but I plan on playing around a bit after the post.

I think I suck at this blog thing.

Today, my friend Sean and I decided to look into RSA cryptography. This is exactly how crazy we are (and bored apparently). I found it amusing, I’m not sure how he felt about it.

Anyways, here is what we came up with after about 4 hours of number crunching and prime numbering (and a fair amount if wikipedia-ing).

First, sean came up with two prime numbers p and q

Then we calculate our modulus (n) for both of our keys.

Now we apply Euler’s totient function to these poor poor prime numbers…

This will be an important number or something…
Now we can create an encryption exponent. Wikipedia says this can be pretty much any number that is coprime to . That means that the only denominator they can share is 1. So we just decided to make it easy, and pick a prime number that is not a divisor of …

This will be used during the actual encryption function. We have one more number to derive. That is our decryption exponent. This one was the rough part. We had to iterate through the Extended Euclidean algorithm in order to find a number that would help us find this number. The premise of this iterative methodology is that we can find the greatest common denominator of these two numbers (or any two numbers for that matter). So here goes….

i	Q	R	Sub	Comb
1	-	40	-
2	-	7	-
3	7
4	5
5	2
6	2	0	End of algorithm

Whew! That was fun. Now lets figure out what this means. We iterated 6 times, but on the 5th, we found the x and y value of Bezouts Identity. We only really care about y because that will help us figure out what our decryption exponent is. y here is 63. Now, lets look at d:

And sub our values in…

But this still doesn’t tell us what d is….it only checks it to make sure it is right. So lets get d.

And again subbing our values:

So lets check this out:

And it does!
Now to see it ALL in action

Ok, so we have just spent 2 hours to add 6 to our number…awesome.
Lets decrypt it:

There…we did it.

In both situations I found change,
For good, for bad; not sure…
But change brings wisdom to young eyes
Like rain washes my car for free.

So with this wisdom,
Bestowed upon me by my experiences,
Why is it that I am unable
To find an answer to my question?

How long is long enough?
An answer would shed light
Enough to illuminate this world…
And the next.

How long IS long enough?

So now that I have an idea of whats happening, I’ve made a few decisions that have been waiting, contingent on me figuring out how i feel. One of these involves a girl that I have posted about before. She is now my girlfriend, and I’m pretty happy about that. Before I go much farther, I would like to take a moment to define the use of the word girlfriend (because I totally have to convince anybody and everybody who reads this. I mean, I care about your opinion SO much…not really). I use the term girlfriend in that we are now in a relationship and acknowledge that there are mutual feelings. I do NOT intend to imply that we adhere to the traditional definition (the definition that society would apply to the term) but rather to a simpler, more precise definition.

We found today (by we I mean myself) that I am a geek. It wasn’t under speculation, but today affirmed it thrice and again. I found that I could express the way I felt physically (ie. sick or otherwise) by taking the hours of sleep that I’ve had in the last 24 hours divided by the amount of coffee I’ve had since midnight then multiplying it by the vital status of Schrodinger’s cat as a Boolean value (true(1) or false(0) as in alive or dead) to the tenth power divided by pi.

_{Where m=how i feel,s=sleep in hours, and c=coffee in cups}

This is not simply equated to say the least. Lets give it a try. I have used the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in lieu of the actual Schrodinger formula to simplify things a bit especially since we aren’t really dealing with cats here .

Now we just keep simplifying the equation…

_{I substituted for Boolean 1 meaning true}

Almost there…

And finally…

So since m<1 I am obviously slightly not good…..

But at least I’m not stuck in a box with a deadly poison like some cat…that would suck