Okay, I’ve decided to srape the abstinence thing.  It’s putting me really far behind, but I’ve decided to talk about the existince of God.  I have found such an awesome site about it! Check out www.doesgodexist.org.  It’s a completely scientific veiw about the existence of God and the truth of the Bible.  The guy that wrote the papers used to be an atheist and tried to scientificly disprove God.  Instead, he became a believer.  Praise God!  He actually came to the local college and did a debt on the existence of God a while ago.  I, unfortunetly, missed it and now am regretting it even more.  But, thanks for trying to help me before, Anthony and his mom.

I just found something awesome.  A really cool band has a song on a really cool movie.  I’m not talking about Evenescence on the Daredevil soundtrack.  (That was only a decent movie.  I’m a comic book fan, so I catch all the little things wrong with the flick and blow up at it, so it wasn’t as good as it could have been)  I’m talking one of the ’best movies of all time’s’ sequel.  P.O.D has a new song on the ’Matrix Reloaded’ soundtrack.  I know most of you don’t see this as big news, but remember, I’m a geeky fan-boy, so shut up.  :p

Two of my good friends are changing their majors, both from computer engineering.  One is going to comp sci (which is like comp eng, except a lot more programming and a lot less hardware), and the other to something business-related.

I’ve been thinking of switching from comp eng to comp sci for a while now myself.  Mainly because judging from the fact that I program so much in my spare time, it’s probably a safe bet that I’d enjoy doing that professionally.  Another big draw of being a programmer is that thanks to the internet, there is often no need for a programmer to "go" to work.  These sorts of people often work from home a few days a week, or even most of the time.  And that would be fantastic.  Fanstatic is a funny way to misspell fantastic, by the way.

Anyway I love to program, as is evident from things like this entire website, my blogger script, and my musicbox.  I do enjoy engineering though too; the hardware side of things is very interesting to me.  But lately I’ve been wondering if pure programming interests me more.

Argh.  Well in any event, this summer -- in two weeks, in fact -- I have an amazing job as a computer engineer, the same one I had last summer at Unisys.  It pays incredibly well and it’s fun and the people there are super.  So for the time being I’m going to just focus on that.  After the summer, I need to just focus on graduating at all, whether it be compsci or compeng or whatever.  I’ve been spinning my wheels for 2 years here at UP and I’m so frustrated and tired of not doing well.  This semester is the 4th and last of this slump; I didn’t do much better than the last 3, but towards the middle/end I finally managed to get a little more disciplined and to study, so I’m confident about next fall.  I also realized that if you don’t come out full-force in the first 2 or 3 weeks of the semester, it’s incredibly hard to catch up.  Before, it always seemed like "eh, first couple weeks, no big deal...", but that period really sets the pace for you for the rest of the semester.  Konstantin said that to me a couple months ago and I realize now that it’s completely true.

Anthony, once again, the site looks awesome, I still haven’t gotten mine to "emulate" yours, however, if you want to track the progress, I am doing it on my webserver here locally, which can be found at http://steev.is-a-geek.net - and as a lil added treat, im testing out this pretty cool blog type system, was considering going to just a blog, but then, I dunno... but it can be found at http://steev.is-a-geek.net/denial/  Both e107 and denial are fairly interesting, and as my "coding skills" aren’t quite up to par, I have to go with what I know, and since I know these guys, I can just ask them if there is a problem or I want something, they can always steer me in the direction.  Keep up the great site, I definately enjoy your musings.

Hey, I have to do a speech about something debatable and I choose celibacy.  I’d like some arguments for and against if you could give me some.  And also some testimonies on why you believe the way you do.  I know most people here will probably go the religious route, but I also need some reasons not to.  (The one’s I’ve found have been misleading and dumb, so please help.)

Bob Whitaker is right on the money, as usual:

When I was in Africa, a white government still ruled in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.  We said that the minute the Communist guerrillas took over the government there, the big tribe would slaughter the smaller tribe.  Liberals said no such slaughter would take place.  As soon as black rule arrived, the majority tribe slaughtered the minority tribe.

In every African country tribes hate each other or kill each other.  Liberals and respectable conservatives say that what is needed is Marxism or Social Progress or Christianity to make tribes stop killing each other.  Let me ask an unrespectable question.  Why are those tribes that hate each other jammed together in the same country?

The reason was stated by General Wesley Clark, “There is no room in today’s Europe for ethnically pure countries.”  As a liberal, Clark demands that American troops be used to force different people to live under the same government.

Russia is already destitute, but it is spending what little money it has forcing the Moslem country of Chechnya to stay within Russia.  It took Tito, an absolute tyrant, to hold the gaggle of peoples called Yugoslavia together.  Once Tito died Yugoslavia fell apart.  Now independent Croatia is at peace because it is made up of Croatians.

You just can’t argue with facts and history.  Which is why you see a lot of people ignoring facts and history.

Here’s some more:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Operation Iraqi Freedom could not be justified because it freed the Iraqis from oppression.  Putin said that if America could invade countries to free them from oppression, she would have to invade most of the world.

That makes Putin a Nazi.

In the Old West a wagon train is crossing the plains.  As night falls the wagon train forms a circle, and a campfire is lit in the middle.  After everyone has gone to sleep two lone cavalry officers stand watch over the camp.

After several hours of quiet, they hear war drums starting from a nearby Indian village they had passed during the day.  The drums get louder and louder.

Finally one soldier turns to the other and says, "I don’t like the sound of those drums."

Suddenly, they hear a cry come from the Indian camp:  "IT’S NOT OUR REGULAR DRUMMER."

-- from the motd (message of the day) on my slackware linux system

The power just went out.  Which means I have about 20 minutes till my UPS dies and my computer shuts off.

Oh, and in case I don’t see you... good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight!

What is going on with today?

In Red Lion PA, about 2 hours from me, a junior high school kid shot his principal and then himself, killing both.  Late last night / early this morning, a guy in Virginia killed his 3 kids -- 9, 7, and 5 years old -- before killing himself.  This morning, there was a car chase in LA, ending when the driver crashed her stolen truck into a tree.  And now, there’s a car chase in Missouri where someone driving a white van is flying down freeways and side streets evading police.  Apparently this person made homicidal threats to police officers, and did injure/kill one officer.  I was watching it on FoxNews and they had a chopper video feed on it, but the van entered a parking garage.  That was just a second ago.

Wo, it’s post-o-rama tonight.  Anyway.  Colin Powell said something really cool in regards to Earth Day on Tuesday:

In today’s globalizing world it has never been more true that the well-being of the American people depends on the well being of all others on the globe.  And whether we live in countries large or small, developed or developing, all of our futures fundamentally depend upon the well being of our shared habitat: This wonderful planet that has been entrusted to our care by a generous God.

Not that I’m an environmentalist by any means, nor that I think Earth Day is cool, but it’s encouraging to see someone in a position of power credit the Creator with creation.  You know, rather than endorsing the religion of evolution / the big bang, which says there was nothing, and then it exploded, and that created the planets, and life too.  Sure, all the evidence (and our best attempts at it) show that you can’t just make non-living matter come alive.  But perhaps if we invent a "fossil record" where the ages of the fossils prove the ages of the rocks, and naturally the ages of the rocks prove the ages of the fossils... and perhaps if we convince people that these ages add up to millions of years... perhaps then people will understand that although physically impossible, things can come alive given enough time.

Right.

Oh and speaking of car commercials, the new Hummer "Metal" spot is really rad.  First of all, they have a bright yellow H2 which is of course a beautiful machine.  They show it driving around a city, with flashy lights and all, and have some catchy techno-ish music moving things along.  And they have a really pretty girl driving the thing, but here’s the cool part: she’s apparently not half-naked, and they pretty much just show her face.  It’s not everyday that you see a cool commercial with a pretty girl where they’re not using her body to sell the product.  The tagline is the best: "Slip into something a little more... Metal."  Heh.  And at the end, they zoom way out into space for a neat effect.

Saw Thursday at the Crowbar tonight.  Man I love that band.  But I need to rant first.

I hate the Crowbar.  It is so crusty and gross.  Not only is it gross because it’s a bar, and because it’s smoky, but because it’s tiny.  The standing room to watch concerts is maybe 25’ x 25’ with one corner shaved off because that’s where the stage is.  On the two edges opposite the stage, there’s an upper level where the bar is.

So you have, I dunno, maybe 150 people packed into that 25x25 area.  150 sweaty people all pressed right up against you.  That in itself isn’t as bad as it may seem.  But at a ~hardcore show, it’s pretty bad.  Let me explain the crowd dynamics of a hardcore show for anyone who’s never been to one.  CHAOS.  That’s all.  Pure chaos.  In a 25x25 square.  Pretty much the entire thing becomes a mosh pit.  Everyone is slamming against you on all sides, pushing and pulling you so you need to struggle just to stay on your feet.  Obviously I’m not anywhere near cool enough to appreciate how truly enjoyable that is, because I was preoccupied with trying to watch the band and sing/scream along.  I knew I should have gone up to the bar and sat or stood up there.

I’m more of the bouncing/rocking in place kind of concertgoer.  Music like Thursday moves me very much... when they played Cross Out The Eyes it was just... I thought I would spontaneously combust.  There is just so much emotion in that song.  And I can appreciate the fact that people get into it, because I do too.  But for me anyway, it’s just not fun when you can’t sing along because you’re trying to catch your breath because you’re getting slammed all over the place.

So that’s ridiculous factor #1.  Number two is the smoking.  I’m not even going to get into it.  Smoking is simultaneously the most idiotic and inconsiderate thing anyone could do, and the whole place was just full of idiotic, inconsiderate people who think that it’s a good idea.

In spite of all that, I’m glad I went.  Because I just love Thursday that much.  I don’t love the fact that Jonah’s Onelinedrawing played about 20 songs before Thursday, and then Thursday played all of 9 songs... that was total crap.  I don’t like Onelinedrawing; it’s sort of the same idea as Dashboard Confessional, except not good.  But whatever, you go to a show and you have to sit through bands you don’t like, but the thing is he felt the need to stop and say a bunch of perverted nonsense in between his 20 songs.  So that was annoying.

One really cool thing about Thursday’s fans is not only do they know all the words, but they sing them all -- loudly -- so loudly at times that they drown out the vocalist.  That’s really incredible to experience.  And at a show, you can really scream the screamed parts.  I only recently started to do this when I sing along to music; screaming is fundamentally different from singing, it’s not just "singing loudly," and it’s actually quite scary in solitude.  But at a show, it just fits because all the energy is there.

I never noticed before how much the vocalist (Geoff) looks like my cousin Micah.  In person tonight, it was quite striking; the resemblance isn’t nearly as strong in photos of him.  And on the new songs that they played tonight, I thought he sounded a bunch like Nathan Gray of BoySetsFire.  Weird.

So the show let out around 12:30 and me, Jeremy, Kris, and Andy went to Jimmy John’s for subs.  Mmmm good subs at Jimmy John’s.  All in all it was a rather rocking night.

My brother Nick hooked me up with this, check it out.  Which reminds me, I saw a Honda Element the other week.  That is one..... different looking car, but I think I really like it.

So Scott Peterson is going to be charged tomorrow with a double-murder for killing his wife Laci Peterson and their unborn child.  Now let me get this straight.  He kills an unborn child, so he’s a murderer.  But if he had been a "doctor" then we’d call it "health care" and "a choice" and even "a right"?  This makes me so angry.  There’s no way that any honest person can call it anything but murder when someone kills a baby.

You know, it’s not that I think all these actors and comedians are dumb.  It’s just that I’m going to trust the guys that do politics and are briefed constantly on the world’s current situation for a living more.

So I picked up a purple lizard map of the Rothrock State Forest a few weeks ago, and I’m finally going to go bike some of it.  No one’s around though, so I’m going alone, so I’m just going to do a short ride... probably the Shingletown Trail.  Should be fun.  But yeah, since I’m going alone, I wanted to post a message saying send help if I don’t reply to this within 10 hours or so.

Anyway this state forest is huge, with over a hundred miles of trails according to some of the maps I’ve seen, so hopefully I’ll be spending some time there now that the weather’s nice.

If you’ve ever clicked on the site stats link, you might have noticed that it takes a really long time to load -- as in 30 or 40 seconds -- or that it doesn’t load at all.  In that script, the code loops through a log file that keeps track of who’s browsing what.  But once it finds the current visitor in that logfile, there’s no reason to loop through the rest of it -- it should exit the loop and move on.  That’s accomplished with the keyword "last" in Perl, but apparently I used "break" instead, which is the C/C++ keyword for that function.  For some reason, that didn’t give any errors and the code ran OK, even though it didn’t do what it was supposed to.

Anyway back when I wrote that script, a year and a half ago, I wasn’t getting 200 visitors per day.  So it didn’t matter that the script was needlessly looping through the rest of the log, because the log was small.  Now, however, the log is big, and all that extra looping was causing the page to take forever to load.  But now I’ve fixed that bug -- it now says last instead of break -- and it loads normally.

In the security-news department, I discovered that someone was linking directly to a Thursday song on my server from their webpage.  In other words, I put up a server with a bunch of music, and create a webpage containing links to that music.  Then this kid, instead of linking to my music page, links directly to the songs on my server, bypassing my website completely.  That’s bandwidth theft and it’s dishonest and it’s inconsiderate.  So I learned how to use mod_rewrite and now that’s in place to prevent this kind of thing.  I knew I’d have to do that sooner or later.

Deep thoughts, by my brotha Konstantin:

We love the Iraqi Information Minister.  Here are a few of his choicest  morsels:

"They are not in Najaf. They are nowhere. They are on the moon. They are snakes in the desert..."

"Even those who live on another planet, if there are such people, would have condemned this action before it started."

"...they are nowhere (pause)...they are nowhere, really"

"Whenever we attack, they retreat. When we pound them with missiles and heavy artillery, they retreat even deeper. But when we stopped pounding, they pushed to the airport for propaganda purposes.’’

"They think we are retarded - they are retarded."

"Yesterday, we slaughtered them and we will continue to slaughter them."

"What they say about a breakthrough [in Najaf] is completely an illusion. They are sending their warplanes to fly very low in order to have vibrations on these sacred places . . . they are trying to crack the buildings by flying low over them."

"They are superpower of villains. They are superpower of Al Capone."

Visit the official site for more.

Just got back from the Jersey Shore.  Wait, not the Jersey Shore, but Jersey Shore, PA.  It’s a small town about 60 miles northeast of State College.  I’d been working on an improvement to my musicbox, and wanted to test it out, so around 4am I went for a drive.

A long drive.  I just headed up 220 north, because I’d never taken it before, and there’s something about driving to new places -- or just driving through new places -- that is enchanting to me.  I’d seen this town of "Jersey Shore" on maps, so when I happened to see a roadsign for it, I decided that that would be my destination.

There’s something fantastic about watching the night turn to morning, and that happened as I drove.  There are some decent-sized mountains here (decent compared to the Philly suburbs, not compared to Colorado...), and I saw the light blue creeping over the peaks.  I also drove through a storm, and then saw some giant lightning streaks in the distance.  When I didn’t see the bolts, I saw the sky flashing beyond the ridges ahead of me.

Jersey Shore wasn’t much to be excited about, though I can’t say I saw very much of it.  But it did have a neat river going by it, which I suppose is better said "it was built along a neat river," since it wasn’t the river who chose the town.

And the improvement to my musicbox turned out to not improve anything.  The problem was that if the computer is already on and playing music when you ignite the engine, then the computer reboots.  That’s because computers need their voltages to be fairly precise, and when a car’s battery is trying to turn the engine over, the voltage drops from the normal 12 volts down to about 9 volts.  The idea I had was to put a giant capacitor on the power cable, because capacitors store charge sort of like batteries, but they can release all their charge almost instantaneously, so they have the ability to smooth out any inconsistencies in voltage that might occur.  Big capacitors are often used in car stereos with subwoofers, because subs need a lot of current and when a loud bass note occurs, it tends to dim the car’s headlights and/or not hit as hard as it should.

Anyway I installed a 1 Farad capacitor.  Which is huge -- it’s about the size and shape of 2 soda cans stacked on top of eachother -- and to put it in perspective, the electronic circuit boards in computers and CD players and other devices also use capacitors, but their capacitance is usually only a few microfarads (0.000001 farads) or maybe a few millifarads (0.001 farads).  But as huge as it is, apparently it’s not enough, because the computer still doesn’t survive ignition.  Which isn’t a problem from any practical perspective; I rarely use the ignition once the car is already running, unless I stall the engine (which never happens), or for some reason, I turn the car off but leave the key in the accessory position, and then turn the car back on.

So... the cap didn’t solve that problem, but at least now my headlights don’t dim when the bass is pumping.

For the (former) dictator of Iraq, only the best will do... or something like that:

The home’s 1960s look parodied in the series of "Austin Powers" spy spoofs inspired a round of imitations from soldiers slogging door to door.

"Yeah, baaabeee," said Carter, doing his best imitation of actor Mike Myers’ character.

"Shagadelic," another soldier shouted.

The situation in Iraq has shown beyond a doubt that Bush says what he means, and does what he says.  He’s a man of his word, much to the chagrin of the anti-war and anti-America kooks of the world.  (Including especially those anti-war and anti-America American kooks.)  Steve Den Beste lays out the big picture:

The goal of this war – the overall war, not just the battle of Iraq which is part of it – is to destabilize the entire region. That is the desirable outcome.

Destabilization is being portrayed by many as being an unintended side effect, a negative result which we are urged to work to limit. Those saying this are either naive or disingenuous, because it’s the primary reason for fighting in Iraq and always was. The goal is to bring about reform in a large number of nations in that region which have been mired in incompetent and brutal autocratic rule for decades. Conquering Iraq, and giving Iraq a liberalized government and a successful mercantile society will help bring that about.

This is truly a war of liberation. We are fighting, out of narrow self interest, to liberate the Arab people from the chains of tribalism and religious extremism and authoritarianism which bind them. We intend to liberate, and liberalize, the entire region over a generation, because if we do not they will keep attacking us and trying to kill us.

Check it out!!  Flavors include:

I Hate the French Vanilla
Iraqi Road
Smaller Governmint
Nutty Environmentalist

Go get some!  (Good lookin’ out to Stan.)

I understand we are not friends...but this link is worth visiting.  There is sound so be sure to turn up your speakers.  God bless America and our troops!

http://www.jafo.net/stuff/soldiers/

The TV news channels are live in the center of Baghdad.  Hundreds of Iraqis are gathered around a giant 3 or 4 story statue of Saddam Hussein.  Apparently no longer afraid of Saddam, they have put a long noose around the neck of the statue, and are pounding away at the base of it with a sledgehammer.  Amazing.  It continues to be absolutely mind-boggling that anyone has ever claimed that the Iraqi people didn’t want this war.  This news, along with so much of the news over the past 3 weeks, shows that the anti-war camp had entirely different, selfish motives for their position.

[Update:] Steve Den Beste says it well:

It’s got to be damned tough right now being a leftist antiwar columnist. Everything went wrong – which is to say, nothing went wrong. There doesn’t seem to have been any mass slaughter of civilians. The Americans stupidly refused to carpet-bomb Baghdad. The war went rapidly, and coalition casualties are extremely light. The bombs which have been dropped have stubbornly insisted on actually hitting what they were aimed at; none of them seems to have gone off course and hit an orphanage or an old people’s home. Some days it just seems as if there’s hardly any point in getting out of bed.

And what is now coming out about life in Iraq, and the way that the Iraqis are beginning to greet the invading army, is beginning to make it look as if they’re actually the good guys; it’s beginning to look a whole lot like liberation rather than brutal conquest. Facing all of that, it’s got to be damned tough trying to find some way of proving that you were right all along and that the war really, truly, was wrong – and still is.

Of course, there’s one easy way to do it: ignore all the evidence. See what you want to see; dismiss all the rest as being propaganda manufactured by the coalition. And, of course, it is a foregone conclusion that there’s no moral equivalence between the two sides. Naturally not! How can there be equivalence when it’s obvious that the Americans and British are much worse than Saddam’s regime?
...
In order to prove your case, all you have to do is to make up coalition atrocities. It’s obvious that using cluster bombs on civilians is a terrible crime. Never mind that the coalition hasn’t actually done such a thing; that doesn’t matter.