Vacation

Wow, so I've been hanging out at my in-laws for about a week now. It's madness. I like my in-laws almost as much as my own family (which is great, right?). But it's funny how different spending time with them is. For starters, I'm the 4th of 5 in my family, right at the end, then there's the fact that Kamis is 5 years younger (she's my teenage bride :-). What it all means is that Kamis and all her syblings are younger than all my syblings. So it's like I've gone from being one of the little kids to being one of the big kids. I'm reliving childhood through them. Everything's smaller and sleeker these days. Games (my favorite pasttime) are all cooler and more intricate. Every card game has its own special deck, not just go fish and old maid. Computers and the internet are part of pop culture, not special things that I wish I had more of.

Anyway, concerning Christmas, it was awesome. Tons of fun to see the little ones get cool stuff. I do rather miss my family. I've been out of town the whole time my own family has been in town. That's been kind of a bummer since I miss them. We're all grown up and gone our seperate ways, so seeing my syblings is kind of a big deal. Of course, when we made the decision we were weighing in balance the fact that Kamis has been desperate to see her family for a long time, she's a lot closer to home than I am. I've had half a dozen years to get used to being away, she didn't even get to spend last summer at home (it was her first away from it) because we were engaged and trying to attend school and work in Provo. So we came here.

The New Year is coming up. I'm going to have to think about resolutions. It'll be a big year for me. I'll be starting graduate school in Civil Engineering. There are a lot of unknowns. I still don't know what the next move is after graduate school. I don't know what kind of jobs I should be working at in the mean time. I've got a great job already, but I feel like I need to get another good part time job in my field to shore up what I'm learning. I guess I'll just keep working at things. Life has always worked out snarls like that before, and by Life I mean God.

Winding Up/ Winding Down

That's right, the semester's winding down here. Or possibly winding up. What's certain is that stress is flying away away away and I'm ever so happy to see it go. I've finished all my assignments for the semester and am looking forward to finals. I'm a strange person in that I don't stress out about finals. Generally I've learned all I need to know over the course of the semester. When finals come around I brush up on the old stuff and then just go in and take the final, it's that simple.

So right now I feel completely at ease, just waiting for the scheduled hours of my finals. So far one's behind me. It was especially easy since the final was just presenting a semester long project for a programming class I've been taking. I've been putting in the work for the past couple of months and so the actual presentation was simply a good chance to show off all my hard work. The project I chose is devoted to one of my hobbies, role-playing games. The idea was basically to set up an interface that can handle all the combat maneuvers and rules that go on so that combat can be expedited. I only did a preliminary prototype version of it, but I think it's got great potential. The best part about that class this semester was learning a great straightforward way of programming a GUI (graphical user interface, eg what you're looking at right now), and drawing graphics to the screen.

Sometime before Monday evening at 5 I have to take a four hour (max) test for my Structural Dynamics class. That's been a tough class in someways. The concepts and math behind the scenes is confusing and difficult to understand. Once you get a handle on the basics, however, it's relatively straightforward, lots of calculations though. That's definitely been the toughest class of the semester. Structural dynamics, for those non-technical people (practically everyone that reads this I suspect), is studying the way buildings vibrate. It's used to figure out how much a building will sway so that the building can be strong enough to sway and not break itself, notably in a strong wind or earthquake.

Monday evening after 5 I have a super easy final for my senior seminar class. The class, while enlightening and informative, has not included a difficult technical side to it. Some of the work has been arduous, but not hard to think about. The final is going to be really easy, our teacher promised us that if we studied for it we would be wasting our time.

Tuesday morning I'll attend the final presentations for the rest of my programming class. I presented early because I felt like my project was completed.

Tuesday around lunch time I'll be locked away working on my last final, for Structural Steel Design. That's been an awesome class. The teacher is absolutely superb. Excellent at explaining difficult concepts, funny, charismatic, understanding (but not a push-over). He's challenged us without overwhelming us. I've learned so much in that class.

When I'm done with that final I will have completed all of my undergraduate course work. Now don't get too excited, come January I'll be picking up where I left off, carrying on into a Master's degree, but it is cause for some kind of celebration, I think. I guess a three week Christmas break ought to be satisfactory.

Jonathan Coulton

Okay, I know some of you won't think this is as funny, but I think it's hilarious. Go to:

http://www.JoCoVideo.com

This is a guy that writes funny songs and posts them for free on the internet. They've got lyrics and even guitar chords to go with a lot of them.

My personal favorite is "Skullcrusher Mountain". It's about the love that a super villain has for his prisoner (who doesn't exactly return it). But he's got a lot of other funny songs, one about the Presidents, one about Mr. Fancy Pants and so on.

Enjoy!

Pictures

I'm posting so you can see what a cute family an ulgy mug like me can have :-)


From the top:

My wife Kamis

Nephew Adam, me

Dad, my wife, my two nephews

Dad, my wife, my two nephews, my niece help by their mom/my sister (see Potato-Girl)

Politics

Tonight I visited the Provo City Council meeting. It managed to be boring and interesting at the same time. Boring because none of the issues discussed were directly relevant to me. Interesting because it was fascinating to watch the interplay of the personalities on the council.

I was impressed that everyone on the council got along very well. They all seemed dedicated to the city and even when they disagreed they did so respectfully. Most of the voting turned out unanimous. One issue was discussed at length and the council was clearly divided. They took a vote on doing it one way, it failed 4-3. They took a second vote on doing it the initially planned way and it passed 7-0. There was no desire to be disunified, no hard feelings.

If politics were always like that I would love it! I could totally be interested in voicing my opinion on a council of wise people and trying to find the best way of doing things. It has inspired me to consider DOING politics in the future. Real politics with real people. I doubt I would want to do national politics, probably not even state politics, but city politics, that would interest me. I think I could do that.

This I Believe

One of my classes recently gave us the assignment to write an Essay "This I Believe" patterned after the NPR essays. I thought everyone might be interested in reading my essay.

This I Believe

I believe I can change for the better. Every day I’m faced with weakness and folly in my own behavior, but I am dynamic. I can improve. I can cope with my weakness.

I believe in an ultimately good character. I believe that integrity, chastity, charity, humility and faith are ideals worth striving for. In my daily walk I can find violations of these principles, but never without regret. I believe that the closer I come to personifying these principles, the happier I become.

I believe in prayer. I am lost without the hand of God guiding my life. He remains close to him when I pray for aid, and so I pray always. When I am faced with large decisions and trivial decision I seek his counsel. When I am faced with big hurt and small I seek his comfort. The more I seek him, the sooner he is to say “Here I am.”

I believe in forgiveness. Jesus Christ is the power of change within the souls of men. I have felt guilt swept away by the power of his love. In sincere repentance I have found peace. I have gained ground in the war for my soul.

Further, I believe in forgiving. I have felt hate and anger dissipate before the warmth of forgiving others. Pain mitigated and eventually healed by simply letting go.

I believe in others. I give my trust and love readily. I have been hurt much by others, but the joy of loving and finding love in return is worth all such hurts.

We all can change for the better. We all deserve the chance to change. Change is the miracle of humanity.

Programming Demons

Well, today was another day mostly spent programming on my class project. I faced a particularly nasty problem today. Something was inexplicably not working. Basically I was trying to draw something to screen but failing. Confusingly, when I drew the exact same thing to another part of the screen it was working. Let me clarify. I had two drawing windows, the drawing commands were working in one, but not the other. I talked to the TA of the class about it. After some more investigation it was apparent that the drawing list, a piece of code that's stores drawing commands, was not being shared between the two drawing windows. Very Very confusing. my TA was confused and looked up what he thought was an answer. He found a little piece of communication between a confused programmer and one of the Qt developers. He showed it to me, but it turned out to be answering a different question. It did, however, inspire me to look in the same place for an answer. I was able to find out that the windows had to be created specifically knowing baout each other in order to share the drawing lists. I changed the code accordingly and VOILA!! it worked.

This is an example of a programming demon. This one was particularly devious and subtle. It involved my ignorance and a whole lot of witch hunting (I tried several other solutions before finding this one). In the end, it was so easy to defeat, I just had to know where to strike at it.

Yay for me!

Programming

I love programming. It's strange how much pleasure I find in getting stuff to show up on the screen and work RIGHT.

Today I spent most of my discretionary time working on a programming class project. It's a big term project that's supposed to be of significant scope. I've been thinking about it and slowly programming it over the entire semester. It involves two tools I've never used before: Qt, a graphical user interface (aka GUI) programming tool and OpenGL, the universal programming language for graphics. It's amazing how much these two tools have opened up in the way of powerful programming. Yet at the same time, they get in the way as much as they help. Maybe more to the point, they are so much more powerful and complex that when they break (due to a lack of understanding or error on my part usually) they break very hard.

It's not a very good analogy, but it reminds me of a conversation I was having recently with a friend of mine. He was asking me whether there was any advantage, any tangible advantage in marrying in the temple as far as Earth-life was concerned. "As far as the scope of this life, is there anything that's gained from marrying in the temple as opposed to simply being in a committed and loving marriage relationship not sealed in the temple?" We talked about it for a while. He pointed out that many prophets have promised such blessings but left out the specifics, saying rather that the Lord would give an added measure of his Spirit to keep us together. He has been married for a few years and hasn't noticed any significant difference in happiness. After pondering the question a while I pointed out that just because the power of the Lord was more present in his life didn't mean that he would automatically be happier and more successful, rather it meant that he would be able to meet greater challenges, "for of him to whom much is given much is required."

I'd love to hear everyone else's views on the question, especially those who have been married longer than I. What difference does the temple sealing make in a marriage if all other things are equal?

Happy Thanksgiving!

I would just like to say that I'm happy with practically every aspect of my life. I admit it sounds far-fetched, but the fact remains that I am simply a happy man.

Ergo (I hate Matrix II for ruining that word), I am thankful for life and everything in it.

I was planning on writing more about specific things I'm thankful for, but I'm full... still.

Blogs

I've been avoiding this for a while. Recently I've realized that I haven't been diligent in my journal writing. I thought this would be a fun way to get me back in the habit. Plus, Kamis is always bugging me about writing down all these crazy ideas about role-playing that I have, so I might post some story snippets or ideas. If you read this and like it, you're welcome to borrow it as long as you give me credit. If you make millions, maybe you can give me REALLY generous Christmas presents or something. True credit goes to Andrea for her pioneering spirit into blogging. At least I know what it means now...