12 Days of Christmas

This was sent to me by my friend Chris.
Just in time.
Today is the 13th.
12 days until Christmas.


Twelve Days of Christmas

The Golden Compass

When I was first invited to join facebook groups boycotting the golden compass,
I ignored them.
I'm usually not one to "jump on the band wagon".

However,
Now that I go to a normal college and have to commute,
I've had a lot of time to listen to the radio.

Even then I tended to ignore it.
Until that was all they were talking about,
And they started playing clips from interviews with the author of these books.

Now,
It takes alot to get me mad about something.
And even more for me to blog about it.
But this was just infuriating.

In his interviews,
The author has said things like,
"My books are about killing God."
- Pullman

Now,
It takes alot to get me going,
But when a main character kills her mother to be "free" from authority,
That tends to get to me.
And then the character proceeds to attempt to kill God to be truely "free" from authority.
If this guy really wantes to be free from authority,
I'm sure we can arrange get him his own little island were he can be free.
And then we can put all the criminals there too,
Since they also want to be free from authority.

When I first saw some of the commercials,
I wanted to go see the movie.
(I have this thing for polar bears)
It looked alot like the Narnia movie.
If you didn't think so,
Look at these trailers.

Narnia


Golden Compass


I would not be surprised if anyone else thought the same.
But...
SURPRISE!!!
"I hate the Narnia books, and I hate them with a deep and bitter passion"
- Pullman
This is like Nrnia's evil twin.
Pullman's main character's name is Lyra.
Does anyone remember Lewis's character Lucy?
And this polar bear?
I recall Lewis had a lion named Aslan?
And the trailer doesn't give that one lady's name,
The one you thought was good at first?
And then we found out she was Evil?
I think Edmund had a run in with someone like that..
The White Which anyone?
For someone who hates Narnia so much,
Pullman seems to rely heavily on it as a model.

Well...
That's about all I have time for at the moment.
If you still want more info,
I found these links through some reliable sources.
(To be added to as time goes on)

PluggedIn by Focus On The Family
Snopes

Post Note:

I’ve already been contacted by several people.
And they all point out that it is only a movie,
From a book.
It’s just fiction.

This is my problem with the story.

It’s the fact that (I feel) Pullman is trying to push the fact that God is wrong.
When the author says things like
“I am of the Devil's party and know it."
And
“if there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against.”,
That tends to concern me.
Some have said that he is not trying pushing his views on kids.
I’ll admit,
Even he said,
“When people ask me what I meant by this story, or what was the message I was trying to convey in that one, I have to explain that I'm not going to explain. Anyway, I'm not in the message business; I'm in the 'Once upon a time' business.”
But when he turns around and says,
“All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions.”
I want to question his motives.

Let me explain why I have a problem with the idea of making a movie targeted to kids with this kind of story.

As you may or may not know,I have a soft spot for kids.
(Actually, a very large soft spot)
I tend to get particularly upset when kids are the victims of anything.
Be it of neglect, a crime, or lies.
I feel that parents should be armed, informed, and ready to discuss it with their kids.
Hollywood has released three Spiderman movies recently.
You've all seen kids these days.They all wanted to be Spiderman for Halloween.
I volunteered at “Boo at the Zoo”,
And there was an incredibly disproportionate number of spider men and spider women running around.
This is not by chance.
Kids all want someone (or something) to look up too.
A super hero with great values like Peter Parker will suffice for now.
But I don't want them looking up to a character that thinks she should kill God.

Now…
I haven’t got a problem with a good story,
Even if it is false.
Even if I disagree with the opinions in the stroy.
I’ll be the first to admit I like some movies that others consider questionable.
But I don’t watch them blindly.
A friend of mine said that when you go to the movies,
You shouldn’t check your brain at the door.
Keep it engaged and thinking.
Meaning…
Don’t accept everything Hollywood wants to give you.
All I want is for people to actively think about what they are seeing.
I’m not saying that people should not go to see this movie.
(I may even decide to go see it,If only for the polar bear.)
What I am saying is that people should be careful with it.
I’m often told to be careful when playing with fire.
Fire is can be a very useful tool,
But for those of you that know me, ;-)
It can be very dangerous when not controlled.
All I ask is that people do the same with this.
Go see it if you want too.But be careful about what you take out of the theater and into your world view.
(I would suggest that you not go to see it on opening weekend though)

I know of several families that plan to see the movie.
But the parents have done their homework.
They are going with the kids and are prepared and plan to discuss it with their kids.
I think that is awesome.
In fact,
I wish more parents would pay more attention to what their kids are watching.

We were in the same Speech & Debate league.
She is of the opposite view on this matter.
She thinks people are making too big of a deal about the issue.
She has also actually read the books,(And I have not)
So I feel obligated to link to her post in order to give a proper perspective.
Bears2002

These are my opinions and views.
If you disagree with me,
That’s ok.
I have nothing against you personally.
In fact…
If you’ve got other info you think I should have,
Either supporting or not,Please send it my way.
I am more concerned about being right in the end than right the whole time.
Even if that mean admitting I was wrong.
The last thing I want is people attacking each other because they can’t agree on something like this.
All I want is for people to able to make informed decisions.

Sarcos Exoskeleton

Link

???

It's snowing.
In Texas.
On Thanksgiving.
I don't think that's happened in this area in tthe last decade.

Happyness

I fixed my laptop.
yay!!!
I started getting slower this semester,
Even after a clean system reinstall and defrag.
Two weeks ago it started locking up within five minutes of booting up.
Every time.
I finally got a chance to open it up.
What a mess!!!
That was disgusting.
Dust bunnies every where.
The fan was so full of dust it was stuck.
My Ohm meter didn't even register that it had a connection.
The heat sink was packed full of dust.
A quick vacuum cleaning and reassembly,
And now it works good as new.
Actually better,
I have some enhancements that USAFA didn't preinstall.
I'd post pics for every one else,
but y'all can just take yours the the help desk in Faichild.
Now I can actually get some work done.

test

example

I Saw This On The Way To School

For Those Who Are Interested...

And in the area...
I'm trying to get a group to go to this.

Link

AFOQT

I took the Air Force Officers Qualification Test a few weeks ago.
It's like an SAT for the AF.
I just got my scores.
Apparently,
I'm ranked in the 91st percentile over all.
And 98th in Academics and Verbal.

?

Does anyone actually read these?
Or have I just been putting them up for my own amusment?

Relative Fingers

While I was doing a bit of research for some stuff I'm working on
I found this on page 4 of a book in Harvard's library entitled "Relativity: the Special and General Theory"
I thought it was funny
Link

Google Earth Upgrade

Sweet new features


Link

What's the Point?

First (Real) Day at a Real College

Everyone is wearing jeans and T-Shirts.
What's up with that.
I feel incredibly out of place.

Oh!!!
Guess what!
I got to ride in the elevator in an Academic building!
Woo Hoo!!!

A Little Peice of History

I found this on a really old hard drive.

The scout troop was out camping,
And we needed wood for the big campfire.
Typically,
We don't take wood from trees that are still standing.
But this one was obviously dead.
With most of it's branches fallen off.
Those few that remained wouldn't stay up there much longer.
So we proceeded to throw ropes over it and tear the branches off.
This was about the time I stayed making our fires particularly big.
That may be possibly why the guys took to calling me "Sparky" for some time.
Never stuck though.
(Actually, I've never had a nickname stick longer than a few weeks)

Anyway,
Because of these particularly big fires,
And the fact that we had some new lighting techniques we wanted to try,
(Blackpowder, we'll not talk about the amount)
I wanted more wood.
So while every one else went on to play capture the flag or something like that,
I got the troop axe out of the trailer and started working on the rest of the tree.
After about 2 hours,
I had broken the handle.
So the scout master got out his Axe.
A nice double sided one.
I proceeded to work on the tree.
I got about halve way through before I broke that handle.
Well...
By now,
The adults that had been watching me.
Were getting a bit ticked.
(At the tree, not me)

So,
One of them got his F-350 All Wheel Drive Pick diesel pick up truck,
And tied his tow rope to the top of the tree.
This rope was at least 4 inches in diameter.
The rope snapped.

So he got a chain.
And looped the from the tree to his truck.
And tore the tree down.
(It took a while though)

Long story short,
We figured we had put enough effort into tearing that tree down to Brand it with our "T98" brand.
This is a little clip of me doing just that.
(I hear this story continues to be retold at the troop still)



Link

Oh Wait, That was Funny...

So...
My brother and I help in Sunday school for the first service,
So we stay for the second service after the rest of our family goes home.
As we were driving back today,
My brother notices,
"Hey, that old fortune telling place burned down."
With out thinking,
I responded,
"I'll bet they didn't see that coming."

Nightmare

I had a nightmare last night.

...

I was back at USAFA.
(gasp)

They put me through basic again for some reason.
I don't know why.
The other Basics couldn't figure out how I know exactly when every thing was going to happen.
They didn't know I'd been through it before.

the main question here is...
If USAFA was the nightmare,
Why am I trying so hard to get back?
Beats me.

Shuttle Endeavour

NASA says the nicely sized hunk of missing tile in Endeavour's wing poses no significant threat.
They say they have a week of research and testing to back this up.

My memory may be faulty here...
But I think they said the same thing about Columbia.

My memory may be faulty here too...
But I recall spending three days in the field helping pick up the parts from the tragedy that there was little risk of.

I decided that all my freinds back in Colorado could use something similar,

So I made one for y'all.

Also still needs some work.

Colorado Radar

Weather

I was bored one night so I made this overlay for Google Earth that shows all the major weather radar in Texas.
It works in Google Maps too
It still needs a little work though.
Texas Radar

Question

What do you call a dyslexic, insomniac, agnostic?

All in a day's work...

So…
My brother and I went down to UTA today to register for classes.
Most uneventful.
Until we tried to go home.
The gas gauge was reading 0.

We managed to get the car started after rocking it back and forth.
But then we needed to get more gas.
I knew of a station down the road that had diesel,
So we went there,
Trying to keep the rpms as low as possible.

We finally pulled up next to the pump just as the engine quit on us.
I was excited.
We had just barely made it.
Then I got out to put the fuel in.

Yeah,
You guessed it.
Wrong side.

Mud

Well...
For those of you who care about the whole mud thing,
Here is a little bit about what I've been doing.

One of my projects requires a source of Iron.
I know steel is high in Iron,
But I can't find enough info on the impurities.
So I can't use it.
That means,
almost every source I can think of is nor eligible.

Recently,
I thought I could skip the whole mud thing by ordering Iron pellets from a science store on the web.
Minor detail,
These pellets will not conduct electricity.
They seem to be used to dissolve in water for making batteries.
Not sure about the though.

So,
It's back to the mud.
I got a bag of Ironite from Lowe's.
It's soil with higher levels of iron for plants.
So I mixed it with water,
And used a magnet to pull the Iron out.
Using the info on the back,
I calculated I could extract 51.3 cubic centimeters from that bag.
I haven't measured it precisely yet.
But it looks really close

The Parable of the Talents

Modified from Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:11-27
The Master left for a time and told his followers to cultivate it and win him more followers. Before he left, he called in his followers to give them resources to invest for him. Too one, he gave great mental capacity. Too another, He gave great physical ability. Too another, He gave a great smile.
The one who had been given great mental capacity went out and studied God’s creation. He revealed many truths to the people and won 5,000 new followers. The one who had been given great physical ability went out and competed in the great sports of his time. He served as a role model and won 2,000 new followers. But the one who had been given the smile kept his face solemn and hid it.
Some time later, the Master came back and gathered his followers to see what they had accomplished. The one who had been given great mental capacity said, “Lord, your talents have won 5,000 followers.” His Master replied, “well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness.”
The one with great physical ability came and said, “Lord, your talents have won 2,000 followers.” His Master replied, “well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness.”
Then the one with the great smile came and said, “Lord, I know you are a hard Master, and I was afraid. So I hid your smile so that it would not be taken by evil men. See here is what belongs too you.”
His Mater replied, “You wicked, lazy servant! You should have at least put My smile on display and bring my joy to the world. At least then you could have of encouraged your brothers in hard times. Take the talent from him and give it to the one who I gave great mental capacity. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Refreshing Info

An item's value is not determined by the sum of the value of the parts,
or by its performance.
The value is determined by what is paid for.
$20 worth of paint and canvass can be valued at several million dollars if someone is willing to pay that much for a work by that artist.
I might not be willing to pay that much,
But someone else is.
The value is determined by the highest bidder.

I am Jason.
And I have been purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ.
That is most refreshing to know.

Realization

You know what I just realized…
UTA doesn’t have and AFROTC.
They have an Army ROTC.
UTA shares TCU’s AFROTC.
TCU also happens to be the only college from Texas that the Academy plays.
And this year,
That game is played on 13-SEP,
At USAFA.
Hmm…
Can you say,
“Road trip”?

Question

Why do people assume that I am more than I really am?

In class,
My peers think I'm brilliant.
I'm not really.
I just know how to apply the stuff.
That and I've had this stuff before.

At work,
Whenever I'm on the sales floor,
without my vest that says "cashier,
Customers assume that I'm a manager,
And that I can solve all their problems.
Fortunately,
I'm decent at solving problems and learn quickly,
So I can get them the answers when I don't know them myself.

I just talked to some grad student,
Asking him about his computer.
He kept calling me sir.
WHY?!?!
I know I look younger than I am,
I hear that all the time.
This guy is obviously older than I am.
Why is he calling me sir?
(Of course, I guess it's better than be called maam...)

People seem to assume that I am more than I really am.
Why is this?

World Record

Windows Vista installed in under two minutes.

New Part

What they sold me...
What I didn't need...
What I really needed.Gotta love that marketing.

Newton

An interesting story.
I'm most surprised it showed up on CNN.
Link

Bringing My Work Home...

At least the humorous side of it...
I thought this was rather amusing.
Think about it.

Windows Vista

No offense to anyone who actually uses Vista,

But I've had nothing but horrible night marish experiences with it.

So I made this image.

I pulled the original off "Windos Vista For Dummies" at Amazon.com and twisted it a bit.

Physics Homework Helper

For those of you in my Physics calss,
I made this little guide to help with Friday's homework.
Homework Helper
For those of you not in my class,
You can see what I spent all day doing.

It's Here

I ordered a copy of PCLinuxOS.
It finally got here.
I'm working on getting all the drivers for my laptop and installing it to another SD card.

SUCCESS!!!

I finally got my computer to boot from nothing but a 256 Mb SD card.
(Ya know, those little postage stamp sized cards y'all use in your cameras?)
No Hard Drive.
My next task is couple several cards together to make a much larger RAID Drive out of SD cards.
Preferably 16 Gb
This is a major step towards one of my current projects.

Link

Hello Again

Well,
It has been nearly three months since my last meaningful post.

For those of you who do not know,
I'm no longer at the Air Force Academy.
I'm not going into details here,
If you care to know,
EMail me directly.

Since then,
I've been doing my best to keep busy.
I've started multiple projects,
to be finished as parts come in.
I have finished one,
Here is a link to the photo album I made for it.
Photos
Here's a some video NBC took of the event.
They didn't really get o good shot of them though.
Video

I'm going to be taking classes at the University of Texas in Arlington.
I'm signed up for calculus and physics.
Should be interesting.

Well,
I'll post more when something interesting happens.

The Knack

The Knack

Happy Singles Awareness Day

Apparently,
Today is Valentine's Day.
I knew it was coming,
But I guess it snuck up on me.
Since I haven't come up with anything new worth posting,
And I did get alot of positive feedback on last years post,
Here it is again.

My roommate watch a movie called notebook over the weekend.
I only caught part of it sense I was doing schoolwork.
The basic plot it as follows.
An elderly couple is in a nursing home.
The wife has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember the husband.
He could go and live a normal live and she would never know the difference.
Instead he lives there with her.
Every day he reads her their story,
About how the met and fell in love.
In the evening she remembers and comes back to him.

That’s not really the point though.
My roommate commented on the change of appearance between the early years and when they were in the nursing home.
He mentioned how attractive she was when she was in her twenties,
But as in her seventies in a nursing home she wasn’t appealing.
I replied that it’ll happen to all of us.
He said something along the lines of yeah too bad.

The following is purely my own opinion.
Our society focuses too much on the external.
That which is unimportant and fades away.
We will all grow old and die,
And it will not be pretty.
It is character we must focus on.
The inside that makes us what we are.
This is why we should be attracted to another person.
Not because of their physical characteristics.

I read in a book a while back (I don’t remember the book) something similar.
When looking at someone of the opposite gender,
Don’t think of the outside, think of the inside.
Would you be willing to live with that person 50 years later?
Would you be willing to grow old and die with that person?
When all physical attractiveness is gone?
Would you be willing to feed that person when they become unable to do it for themselves?
Would you be willing to listen to the same story over and over again when the have no short term memory?

We should not be as concerned with how the person looks as much as we are how the person acts.
This is the true person.
Their character,
Not their body,
Is what counts.

Commitment

Doc: So how are you?
Me: Still breathing.
Doc: Don't over commit now.
Me: My dad always said, "Under commit, and over deliver"
I've got a heartbeat too. So there's the over delivery.

A friend sent me this.

Superbowl 2007

That was fun.

I got to make the food during the 1st and 2nd quarters,
Slept through the 3rd quarter,
and played a new game during the 4th quarter.

Yeah...
I really get into football,
Can't you tell?

It wasn't worth watching,
The Falcons weren't playing.

Engineering

I've been learning some interesting things in my Engineering class.
The main purpose of the class is learning how to plan an airbase.
We're in the environmental block right now,
So it can get boring sometimes.

To help with that,
The instructor has a Video Card Policy.
One table gets the video card,
and at any time during the class they can hold up the card,
And the instructor will stop in mid sentence and play a video.
Only one video per class though.
Today,
He had six videos that went with the class material.
So we didn't get a Video Card.
So I made my own card.
We held it up half way through class,
And he just looked at us.
"A Nap Card?!?!"
Needless to say,
That was most entertaining.

We learned the aircraft and trees don't mix well.
(duh)
Apparently there are regulations that require a certain distance to height ratio in relationship to the runway.
Most of the time,
This isn't a problem.
But at McChord AFB,
There are a million plus trees that are too high.
And on top of that...
There are hippies that won't let us cut them down.
I have a solution for that.
Napalm.
It'll get rid of the trees and the hippies.

Note To Self

Don't use minty toothpaste when it's eight below zero outside.

A Safer World

The World is now a safer place.
Story.

Anti-Terrorism Activities

Another terrorism plot foiled.
$1 Million dollars worth of old Soviet Uranium was prevented from reaching it's Middle-Eastern buyers.

Now,
I know you all think that it takes alot of skill, money, and special equipment to build a nuclear bomb,
But it's really not that hard.

I know alot of people that have to equipment in their garage.
I could fund it on my cadet paycheck,
And most 16 year olds I know could build it.

Now,
It wouldn't be as nice or fancy as the ones we have sitting in the silos,
But nontheless...
Enough to cause catastrophic damage.

I'm wondering why this isn't a bigger deal in the media right now.
Oh,
That's right...
Because every thing has to be a failure while Bush is still in office.

Even More New Toys

Hummer mounted Heat Ray

More New Toys

Apparently,
The AF uses one sixth of all government energy.
It seems rather redundent to buy oil from countries that don't like us,
So we've decided it's time to stop funding our potential enemies.
Hydrogen Power

More New Toys

Apparently,
The AF uses one sixth of all government energy.
It seems rather redundent to buy oil from countries that don't like us,
So we've decided it's time to stop funding our potential enemies.
Hydrogen Power

New Toys

Sniper Terminator

Going To Get More Milk

Today is Tuesday.
That means it's our day to milk the cow.
I went with Mom to do the milking.
Bessie was already to go.
We got about two gallons before we turned her and her calf loose.
Florence is her adopted calf.
For some reason,
I'm the only on florence will allow to come near her.
This is particularly odd since I've only seen her once before.
Apparently...
I have a thing with animals.

Parallel Parking

So...
My dad is teaching me to parallel park.
His technique is slightly outdated though,
So I showed him these.

Anti-Gravity Device

Mankind has finally created an Anti-Gravity Device.
It took our best minds many long years to develop this ground breaking technology,
But we have finally found the answer.
Ironically enough...
The answer has been right in front of our faces all along.

Murphy’s Law has been well known for some time now.
“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
One of the experiments that brought about this,
Was the toast experiment.

Toast when dropped from a table will always fall jelly side down.
This is because at the rate gravity pulls it down,
It only has time for one half of a turn.
It is also a well known fact that cats will land on their feet.
The application here is simple.

All one must do is secure a piece of toast,
Jelly side up,
To the back of a cat.
Now…
When thrown,
The cat part of the device will attempt to land on it’s feet,
While the toast will attempt to land jelly side down.
Since the toast is firmly secured on the back of the cat,
Both cannot occur.
Therefore,
Neither will touch the ground

Proof

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!