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JediKyp56
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Name: Allen
Location: California, United States
Birthday: 5/21/1987
Gender: Male
Interests: Chatting online, Climbing (mountains, trees, walls, anything else), Driving, Giving capuchi's (piggyback rides) to little Mexican kids in Tijuana (they're great), Guitar (I'm learnin, aright?), Hanging out with friends, Listening to music (different styles, mostly Christian), Origami, Ping Pong!!!, Reading (Bible, good informational stuff, novels)
Expertise: What is my expertise?
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  JediKyp56
MSN: JediKyp56@hotmail.com
Member Since:
7/24/2003
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| After something of a hiatus, an encouraging word from a friend who reads my Xanga at the infrequent interval at which it is published has made me decide not to totally abandon my blogging.
In other words, new post!
Well, I'm home from college, and have been for about 4 weeks now. Almost a month, crazy! College, oh man I've had a great time. RUF kept going great, as did church and bBible study. I'm drawing with a bunch of guys from my Bible study and another one, rooming with a cool guy named Dan Tucker. (drawing with them means we'll all be in the same dorm next year, which will be one called Twain. Twain will rock!) So, I'm working back at Big3D.com, and that's pretty cool. My ping pong game is getting much better; I didn't play very much last quarter, and I've been playing pretty consistently with a guy named Mike at work, who consistently beats me - but our games are getting much closer.
Some briefs on Spring quarter:
Like I mentioned before, I was taking 20 units, and it wasn't that bad, but it was a lot of work. I stopped going to the ping pong club, for instance. I didn't do as much biking off campus. I kept up hanging out with friends a lot, although I wasn't out as late at night because I had to get up earlier more often. But, it was worth it in the long run.
My electronics class was pretty interesting, and fairly difficult in some places. We had labwork which took a bit of time, though nothing like, say, an organic chemistry class which many of my friends were taking/pulling-hair-out-over. Math was good, and one of the things that made 20 units bearable. It was differential equations, and I had taken a dif.eq. class at the community college last year, so it was a breeze. I stopped going to lecture halfway through. My favorite class of the quarter was computer science, where I learned how to program in Java. We did some interesting projects, and it was the class that I spent the most time on, much of it voluntary rather than necessary.
Philosophy (2nd quarter of it) was really cool, and I enjoyed the readings and the discussions, though I fell behind on the former. The professor is a very intelligent guy, and a good professor, but he is very... Nietzchean, including athiestic. After a lecture where he essentially decried belief in God as irrational and silly, I went in and talked to him 1 on 1 about it. It was a very interesting discussion, though I didn't make him believe in God and he didn't make me unbelieve, neither of which were expected. I felt like he hedged his athiestic belief in a wall of philosophical quagmire that sounded wise but doesn't have the capability to arrive at truth regardless of what truth is. I'd like to talk to him more in the future, though, if only to learn more about his kind of argument.
I was getting really tired of my roommate, and it became an exponentially increasing blessing that he went home every weekend. Every night that he was in the dorm though, he stayed up until about 5am (which often kept me up), slept until about 1pm (meaning i couldn't really do anything in the room until then). Luckily, he did intend to be respectful towards me, so he would try to stay quiet when I was in bed. But, after a little while he would basically forget I was there. He basically surfed the internet much of his free time, especially at night, including many hours of facebook. And, whenever he found something that most people would probably go "hmm" to or maybe "wow" or "weird" he would say "what the [various expletives]!" and not quietly. Bah, this is becoming a rant. Sorry. Basically, I could not wait to room with somebody else (or, nobody, at home). One guy in my dorm said that whoever put me and my roommate together was a genius because "if he was anyone else's roommate, he'd be dead by now." Haha, that was a lighthearted encouragement that I wasn't the only person vexxed by him. So, awesome roommate next year, oh yeah. Mild discomfort for a time makes God's blessings seem that much sweeter.
I asked out a girl I had kinda liked for a while. She turned me down. It kinda hurt, but it was actually more satisfying than anything. I had actually gotten the guts to ask her out, and decided to do that and leave the rest in God's hands, and so when she said no I was like alright, that's cool. I don't know if that makes sense. It felt really free to not have a girl on my mind so much anymore. haha. I mean, not that having a girl on one's mind is bad, but since it was an affection that wasn't returned, that wasn't really satisfying. Of course, that whole free thing didn't last all that long. But, anyway, that was an interesting event of this quarter.
Well, next weekend I'm heading down to LA to go to the wedding of Adam and Jenn, who graduated this year. Adam was one of my Bible study leaders, and he was one of the people who helped bring RUF to Stanford. He and Jenn are awesome, and I will miss them both. They're moving to Richmond, VA. Kinda funny, Adam majored in Biology, but he was offered a very competitive position with Capital One, which he was barely motivated enough to apply for because of so many dead ends and because it was such a long shot. But, God is a great provider!
In other news, I mildly injured myself again the other day. I was practicing dive-rolls, where you basically run and jump and dive into a roll on the ground. I was doing pretty well, and could do a good roll from a pretty good run with a pretty high jump. So, I decided to try it off of a step-ladder. Bah! stupid me. Hehe. It mostly wasn't stable enough, so I didn't rotate enough, and basically landed on my shoulder. So that was two nights ago, and it's still sore, but I'm expecting it to be mostly better by next week.
Also, I've proven that despite my best efforts (edit: I actually haven't made much effort, so this isn't actually true), most of my mild chess skill that I built up senior year is gone, and I've been losing online chess quite a bit today and this week.
I'm re-reading the Ender's Game books this summer. I got through Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, took a breather and started John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life, and am now concurrently reading that and Ender's Shadow. Such good books.
A new past-time of mine is reading random wikipedia articles. For example, today I read about rockets, space travel, and theoretical physics. Last week I read about the history of Isreal, and then two days later the war over there started. Crazy stuff. Anyway, it's fun. Wikipedia is very informational.
Hmm, what else. I'm writing here now so I'm trying to make the most of it. Don't know when it will happen again. Well, my mom got a pretty cool job as a network person, which meant that we needed a new car, so today we went and bought a Corolla. Unfortunately, I don't have a car that I can take to school, because Michael is starting to drive soon. Oh well, it's for the better. Speaking of Michael, I think he likes a girl. Haha, it's just interesting because he's much less social than I am, and I wasn't sure if he'd start overtly liking girls yet. Not that it's overt. I just happen to catch him emailing her, playing chess with her, and I met her at a Lazer Quest event Michael did with Campus Life that he invited her to, and he loans her Star Wars books (she reads Star Wars books, which is clearly the clincher). Not that any of you care, but I'm kind of proud of him in a weird way.
Well, if you read all of this, thank you! I hope the spacing makes it readable enough to get through all the way. Let me know how y'all are doing if you get a chance, if I don't hear from you often. God bless ye, my friends!
--Allen
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| I rappelled out my 2nd floor dorm window today. It was very fun. We're playing assassins, but it was mostly just for fun. It might turn out to be useful.
--Allen
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| So, I'm back at school after being home for about a week and a half for
Spring break between Winter and Spring quarters. That means that all
the classes I had before ended, and I have new classes (with the
exception of philosophy which was a 2-quarter class).
Winter Quarter:
Classes were pretty good, although PWR (Program in writing and
rhetoric) was frustrating at time because of the amout and the
lackluster of the work we were doing. Philosophy was really fun, and
our discussions of free will, morality, and personal identity
constantly turned to God, and I was able to have some pretty cool
conversations with people. Math was pretty interesting and pretty fun -
it was multivariable integration techniques, which will be very useful
before too long. Robotics was really fun - we got to build some robots
with legos and do some programming, and we toured a couple awesome
facilities that design and impliment robots for surgery and
entertainment. Finally, I had a classical guitar class that was
excellent as well. I learned a lot that will help me continue to
improve.
RUF was awesome, as expected. I helped lead worship on guitar about 6
times during the quarter, which I love. A big part of why I started
learning the guitar was so that I would have the opportunity to glorify
God with musical worship, on my own and in groups. Bible study has been great, and I've gotten to know the other freshman guys in RUF a lot better through it. Church has also been good, and I've been able to go a little bit more than last quarter, since I went home fewer times. I took the membership class and am joining the church, and I'm planning on being more involved by helping with the sound crew and/or the children's classes.
I also biked a little bit more this quarter. As I said in my previous post, I biked up to Skyline, and after that I did a few smaller trips, including one with a little bit of real mountain biking, which was a blast. I worked at the rock climbing gym quite a bit, and managed to bring a good number of friends to climb there, which was very fun. Steve (leader from Campus Life) and Katie (friend who went to CW and is as FSU) came to visit on two different weekends, and I had a great time showing them aroud campus. I only went steam tunneling once, briefly. Anyway, all in all it was a fun, productive quarter.
Spring Break:
I did some biking, some hiking, got a new digital camera, hung out with friends, went to church, and hung out with my family. All in all it was fun, fairly relaxing, and about the right amount of time.
Spring Quarter and Summer Plans:
I have a 20-unit quarter lined up, so that should be very interesting. Philosophy should still be fun, Math 53 should be pretty cool, and hopefully not too difficult since I have experience with differential equations already. I have E40, which is intro to electronics, and that should be a lot of work but an extremely fun class. Then I'm taking CS106A, which is a beginning programming class, in Java. I'm looking forward to doing that too.
This summer I'll be back in Fresno, working again at Big3D. I enjoyed working there last summer, and the pay is nothing to complain about. I visited it over spring break to ask the owner what the chances of being able to take me back on for the summer were - since they are right now struggling for sales and looking at possibly having some lay-offs. He told me "100%" so I'm very glad to have that pretty well set up so easily. I'm thinking about Sophomore College, which is a 2-3 week program before the start of the school year in one of a few different areas (one of which is backpacking!), and isn't too expensive, relatively.
Miscelaneous:
A friend of mine and I ordered a case "Mega Pocket Torches," which are basically amped up lighters, which are hot enough to solder, and even melt pennies according to the description. Pyros? You decide. Anyone want to buy one of the extras (since we don't actually need 12 each) for around $5?
I might also be taking a rock climbing gym route setting class, which meets five times in April and May, at 7:30 on Wednesday mornings. That'll be tough, since the earliest classes here are like 9, and occasionally a little earlier.
I would appreciate it if my Christian brothers and sisters of you would pray for me when you remember me - that I would carry a faithful witness of God's power and mercy, and reveal Him to friends, dormmates, classmates, even professors.
Y'all are tight.
--Allen
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| Oh, and I cut my hair.
I got in a bike accident about 2 weeks ago. It was an asocial one, involving damp asphalt and a turn that I made too fast, and the forceful union of my chin and the asphalt, resulting in 14 stitches. It's all good though. I'm healing up quite nicely. I was just trying to get to class... whatever.
This last weekend I did some real biking, more than 2000 feet elevation change over about 14-15 miles. It was really intense, I'm not in shape to do that, so I was walking my bike quite a bit. The descent was really really fun though, I went about 6 times as fast as the way up. A 9-mile portion that contained most of the elevation change took me 2 hours to go up, plus breaks, and 20 minutes to go down. It was insanely fun to go down.
So, school is going quite well. Everything is pretty cool. Yeah... for any specifics go ahead and ask me, by email or phone or whatever. I don't know what else to say right now. Really though, feel free to call me up, if you don't have my phone number go ahead and comment and I'll email you it.
God is really good. Praise be to Jesus Christ now and forever!
--Allen
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The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick
brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox decided that it would
be a good idea to jump over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox wondered whether
the decision to jump over a lazy dog was already determined by God, or whether
he truly had free will to attempt to actually decide to do it or not. The quick
brown fox questioned whether there really were a lazy dog to jump over, and if
there were, how he would perceive him to be lazy, and if he were to do so, what
right he would have to jump over him.
IHUM-based musings in the context of a boring 2-hour PWR section...
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