May 17, 2009: Congratulations to Caleb and Erin! What wonderful news! The Lord is doing great things every day--this certainly ranks up there! Marriage is a wonderful, glorious, awesome thing, one of the greatest of God's blessings to mankind. I don't know how I ever survived without Rebecca....
April 14, 2009: At long last, with Rebecca's help I have culled through the 900+ photos of our wedding from 5 different photographers (thanks, Caleb H., Daniel B., Moriah H., Brittany L., and Lori C.!) and put up our wedding album of 70 photos to the protected portion of this site. Sometime, hopefully soon, we will get up an album of our wedding trip also. But at least getting the wedding photos up is a start!
Spring is here in Norman, now. Every day in the 70s for the next couple of weeks. Torrential rain a couple of days ago. The grass is greening up, the sky is blue... beautiful weather.
Life is good--God is good.
March 8, 2009: All is well! I'm finally getting a little time to update this. We have been rather busy for the last month. There are innumerable details in getting established in a new home! The Lord is good to us...
I am working on getting wedding photos up, and hopefully wedding trip photos of the Natchez, MS area also. Here are a couple of pictures from there--a massive (MASSIVE!) live oak (I'm beside it)... and the Dunleith plantation where we stayed down there.
I have been poking around tempo-free statistical analysis of NCAA basketball for a little while (several years, actually), and have recently put together an Excel spreadsheet. What does it do? It predicts scores and outcomes of games (from data from the splendid KenPom.com site). It predicts the odds a team will win tournaments based on their statistical profile. It provides comparison teams based on 23 statistical categories. My major innovation--identifying Contenders for the Final 4 and Championship, based on previous statistical profiles of teams that made it (for example, no Final 4 team has had a defensive efficiency worse than 30th in the country--I'm looking at you, OU!). Most of my posts at OUHoops.com are about statistics.
So here is my Contenders_Bracket Excel Spreadsheet.
(Incidentally, anyone wanting to learn Excel would do well to look around at that sheet. There are a number of rather intricate techniques used on some of those sheets. Quite a bit of statistics, too!)
January 27, 2009: The Lord is so good... Rebecca and I have been married now a little over 3 weeks... it is far more wonderful than I could ever have imagined!
I will update this blog more when things slow down... We are getting settled here in Norman. The Lord has provided for everything we need--our mobile home is looking more like a home every day. We know every aisle of Walmart. We have a piano and a keyboard (what else do we need in the living room, anyway?!)
We are iced in today (1/8" of freezing rain and 2 1/2" of sleet)--Oklahoma does indeed get winter weather! A good day to stay inside and stay warm (it's 18 degrees out). Of course, we did take a 1 1/4 mile walk down to the main road to examine how hard it would be to drive. It demonstrated Oklahoma's philosophy of snow and ice removal: "God sent the ice. God will take it away. Who are we to interfere?" (In other words, despite it being a well-traveled road, it hadn't been touched by anybody.)
We had a wonderful time on our wedding trip to Natchez, Mississippi. The plantation in the background of the photo below is Dunleith, where we stayed much of our time down there.
The family page is new and improved!
November 29, 2008: What a busy month! The Lord opened doors so I could purchase land (2.5 acres, out in the country). Many, many details have been worked out; many things have been taken care of. There are still many to go, though... first and foremost at the moment is locating the right mobile home to move onto the land--I have some good leads, but no purchase has been finalized yet. The Lord is making each step clear at the proper time!
October 22, 2008: The Lord is doing wonderful things! I am betrothed to the most awesome girl on earth! (Yes, I know "awesome" is not a term to be used lightly. I wasn't using it lightly.) It was all the Lord's doing, how He brought us together. Spectacular.
The date for the wedding is January 4th in Bridgton, Maine (Rebecca is from Maine). Yes, it will likely be rather cold.
Some of Rebecca's photos of Maine are on a Wunderphotos album at Weather Underground.
If you see me using a lot of exclamation marks--well, I seem to have developed exclamation markitis since my betrothal!
Back to regularly scheduled programming: the economy is in dire straights, there is unrest in the Mideast, all the politicians seem to be demagogues in the worst late Roman tradition, etc. It seems the Treasury Secretary and the chairman of the Fed don't have a clue what they are doing with the economy, and if they do, that is worse. And scary. In the Mideast, the latest intelligence reports have Iran with nuclear capability within a year. The politicians running for president (at least the big two--who are our only choices in Oklahoma) don't have a clue on just about any major issue, as far as I can see. They just try to read the polls and respond (except, of course, for backing the bailout!) (If you want to be disturbed, read some of the information in the links and feeds on my economics page!)
I don't care. The Lord is with us!
October 10, 2008: I have updated my economics page with more links and information. Watch the bubble pop, just as was expected! It is pretty amazing how clearly the Austrian economic theories have been vindicated at the expense of Keynesian theory and policy. Unfortunately, the Keynesian theory is so dominant they are still trying to "fix" the economy using the same techniques that caused the whole bubble and collapse. It has never worked, but rather gives a short-term illusion at the expense of the long-term. They are fighting fire with gasoline... But then, the world is like that. They are simply deceived by the destroyer to do his work for him (and most, all the while, think that they are doing the right thing).
Oh, has this ever been a busy week! But a good one : )
At least I am finally healthy from the bad cold I had last week (which kept me home from work for 3 days). Too much sugar--I respond remarkably to concentrated sugar sometimes. The onset of a cold is so sudden that it seems to nearly be an allergic reaction to the white sugar. This last time it was a peanut butter/chocolate bar (almost like a fudge). Yet I don't get sick that often; I don't think I had missed more than 2 days from work for illness in the year previous to the cold last week. Sometimes I can eat sugar with no problem, though I usually avoid very sweet things. I have gotten sick just about every time I had a glazed donut, as far back as I can remember! I don't eat donuts anymore!
October 2, 2008: I am working on adding some new types of content to this site. Using FeedSweep.com I can add content from any site with an XML feed. My first use of this is on my new economics page, which summarizes some of what I said in the last entry here, but also adds more content via FeedSweep and charts from various sources.
September 18, 2008: An excellent album of photos from Hurricane Ike has been put together by The Big Picture (Boston Globe), which has numerous albums of current events. The photo quality of all of their albums is very impressive.
The weather is splendid here in Oklahoma. The last couple of weeks have been picture-perfect--clear skies, cool nights, days with highs between 75 and 85. We did have one or two wet days around the time Ike came through, but that's it. We've been spending as much time outside as possible.
I have also been following the current economic troubles. It seems to me that the fiat currencies are finally beginning to falter--they are just paper, anyway. As the Fed and the Treasury Department pump money (out of thin air) into the economy, the paper is depreciating. Fortunately for us, all of the other nations of the earth are in the same or similar boats. There is no place for the investment money to go to get out of the sinking ships, except commodities and other "hard" businesses directly related to production and not highly leveraged. Hence the steady but significant increase in oil, gold, silver and other commodity prices over the past few years. Since many in the industry seem to not understand what is happening (or at least feign ignorance), the market reacts erratically and inconsistently. Sooner or later, people will figure out what is going on and then the market will truly respond (welcome, inflation). Sooner or later, people will realize that the "money" being pumped into the economy actually comes out of the taxpayers' pockets via inflation, for it is just paper (or digits on a screen). Why did we ever go off of the gold standard?
Some links on this economic stuff:
- Ludwig von Mises Institute -- Austrian school economics, which I consider real economics.
- Shadow Government Statistics -- Perhaps the government doesn't always tell the truth about the economy.
- 24hGold -- Editorials -- Many links to editorials about gold in the economy.
- The Cody Word -- A young trader's blog from a non-establishment viewpoint, which is good.
- LewRockwell.com -- Plenty of articles applicable to the current economic and governmental situation. Take note of the many articles by Ron Paul.
- Chaostan.com -- Yes, Richard Maybury has been predicting much of what we are seeing for years. He's cynical enough to tell how to make money off of the government's blundering--something I might not do.
- Safe Haven | Preservation of Capital -- Articles about saving money.
- Gold Price.org -- Lots of information about gold.
- The Gold Report -- More information on gold.
That should cover the highlights of the current situation. Oh, and read some of Ron Paul's writings about the economy. He understands the economics better than most--certainly better than those who have been trained in the Keynesian and other interventionist schools. It seems the government could drive the economy into the ground, eventually, whether purposeful or not. Somehow, though, everyone seems convinced that the Fed is helping us by its moves.
Crazy, what goes on out there in the world. Good thing we are not part of it nor under its dominion. Our God reigns, and He guides the paths of those who seek Him. We have nothing to fear.
September 16, 2008: I have added Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas to my Cooking/Recipes section. A worthy addition; one of our favorites. Make it along with guacamole, have some fresh fruit with the meal....mmmmm.
Ike spared my relatives on the Gulf Coast of Texas...it was not as bad as it could have been, but did plenty of damage nonetheless. The storm surge damage photos at the USGS are pretty scary looking. I hope no one was in those houses.
September 10, 2008: Hurricane Ike is barrelling down on the Gulf Coast of Texas. In the last 6 hours the storm has dropped in pressure from 958mb to about 942mb--"rapid deepening". It is now very dangerous and the winds should catch up to the drop in pressure soon, pushing the storm to at least a Category 3 and likely a Category 4 storm. Unfortunately, Texas is not well prepared for this; the track has been highly unpredictable, so the authorities have not ordered mandatory evacuations. Galveston has not evacuated, and they are in the bulls-eye at the moment--and also very vulnerable (anyone remember the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900?). It is very dangerous, now, with some 48 hours before landfall. Keep up with the latest at Dr. Masters' Wunderblog, the National Hurricane Center, and the various other sources on my Tropical Weather page.
Here was my synopsis on the storm from an email I wrote this morning:
I don't understand hurricanes nearly as well as I do supercell thunderstorms, having only started watching them in the last year or two. Their steering patterns are remarkably complicated--but then, that is the case for all weather, which is why forecasts over about 3 days are often inaccurate. The same goes for hurricanes, but the stakes are higher! There are lots of computer models that try to take into account enough information (hopefully accurate information) to give a reasonable forecast, but they are innacurate out more than a few days. Also, rarely is there enough accurate information. The G-IV planes go out every few days and drop dropsondes through the atmosphere in grid patterns to find out what each layer of the air is doing, and after those planes submit their information, the forecasts are better....The thing about the atmosphere is that there are many layers (it is not 3D) and what each layer is doing effects the hurricane in different ways. I can't keep track of everything. I know that an upper level high over a hurricane strengthens it as it promotes outflow....and that shear (differing winds at different layers) is bad for hurricanes (though it is good for supercells). There are maps of steering currents, but obviously those are only accurate for right now and don't show the future. And many of the movements depend on the timing of things happening--when a trough comes through, for instance. And if it is just strong enough to "pick up" the hurricane or if it will miss it. Too hard to know.
That said, Ike looks really strong and well-formed. Symmetrical, good outflow on all sides (that's rare). Warm water, low shear. There is nothing stopping it from bombing (rapid strengthening) right now, save a little dry air to its west. It is a big storm, too, with winds spreading out quite some distance. This will limit strengthening somewhat, as it takes more energy to strengthen such a large storm. (More angular momentum). Where it goes, though, nobody knows. Texas, most likely. It all depends on exactly when the northward turn occurs. On water vapor satellite you can see the front coming from the west; when that gets close enough is when the turn will happen. It is sort of a race between the front and the hurricane.
Stay safe, everyone!
September 5, 2008: Fair Photos 2008 Album now up!
September 3, 2008: We've been busy putting together all of our entries into the Cleveland County Fair, which are due in today. I'm entering 10 photographs; Sarah is entering lots of canning, baking, arts, and crafts categories; the younger boys are entering a few things.
A useful link for understanding more about the original Greek NT and its variation is written by Harvey Bluedorn: Questions About the Bible in Greek. Harvey Bluedorn is a Greek and logic expert and wrote a Greek curriculum for homeschoolers that we use. (Not me, I don't study Greek).
September 1 , 2008: I have added a new page: Tropical Weather! I like to keep track of the tropical storms and hurricanes since I enjoy studying the weather, and thought I would put together a list of links to some of the sites I use. I also updated the Tropical Storm Erin in Oklahoma page somewhat.
I have put together a synopsis of the varying translations of the Bible and what underlies them. There are 3 primary methods of translation and there are 3 primary Greek source texts for the New Testament. The methods of translation are:
- Literal equivalence: a true word-for-word translation; the only changes are to arrange the words into proper grammatical structure in English. Idioms don't make sense, typically; nor do figures of speech. In addition, tenses are unusual in English; both the Hebrew and Greek use present tense quite a bit when telling a story from the past. Since the grammar is only minimally corrected, the sentences are often awkward in English, though technically permissible in proper English. Nevertheless, these require the translator to make far fewer judgment calls on what the original means. There is still some interpretation required, because the originals have no punctuation (though their grammar expresses itself such that punctuation is not needed for the most part), there is no capitalization, and many words do not directly translate into English (the word does not match up with an English word in all meanings, connotations, etc).
- Formal equivalence: similar to literal equivalence, and not always distinguished from it. Formal equivalence translations attempt to remain fidelity to the original, typically translating word-for-word, but also adjusting things to make the English truly proper and not awkward. Where the literal may be "hell of the fire", the translation would be "fiery hell". This level, while still accurate, requires more judgment calls by the translators.
- Dynamic equivalence: "attempts to convey the thought expressed in a source text (if necessary, at the expense of literalness, original word order, the source text's grammatical voice, etc.)" Wikipedia. With this method, the translator is essentially paraphrasing the source based on what he believes the intent to be. These translations are not literal; they do not contain the nuances of the original at all.
The 3 Greek source texts: there are over 5300 Greek manuscripts. The Catholic church early went away from Greek, instead using Latin--thus, the original Greek was primarily preserved in the East. There are several ways to compile these manuscripts into the whole since most are incomplete.
- The Byzantine Majority Text (MT). This simply takes the texts and whatever the majority says is what is used. Allowance is made for there being "families" of texts that are grouped together so as not to over-weight one "family" of texts. The Byzantine texts make up just about all of the 5300 Greek texts.
- The Received Text (Textus Receptus) (TR). Compiled initially by Erasmus from just 6 manuscripts that he had access to, this text generally is similar to the MT. The primary differences are in Revelation, which only 1 of Erasmus' 6 manuscripts had. That manuscript was difficult to read; comments and text were not adequately differentiated. In addition, it lacked the last 6 verses of the books, so Erasmus copied them into Greek from the Latin Vulgate, resulting in a few readings found in none of the 5300 Greek manuscripts. This is a generally solid text, but the 6 texts were all written relatively late. This was later polished somewhat by several other authors, but the text continues to have a few unique readings.
- The Critical Text (CT). Put together originally by Westcott and Hort, this text relied more on antiquity to determine the correct reading. The majority of the Byzantine text-type manuscripts were written relatively late. Several Alexandrian text-type text were very old and relied upon extensively by Westcott and Hort: the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. The Egyptian climate is favorable for preserving papyrus, thus the age of some of those remaining. Unfortunately, these very old texts did not agree with most other texts and often with each other, either. It seems that most of the Alexandrian text-type manuscripts were written by Gnostics, a heretical offshoot of Christianity. There are only about 30 extant manuscripts of the Alexandrian type, mostly fragmental. Nevertheless, these are weighed against the Byzantine majority texts and generally receive favored status in the modern Critical Text due to their age.
These 3 vary a number of times against each other. Here are the statistics, from the Companion Volume to the Analytical Literal Translation, 3rd Edition:
There are about 4,000 variants between the MT and the CT, 2,000 variants between the MT and the TR, and about 5,000 variants between the TR and the CT. So again, the MT and the TR are the most similar, while the MT is closer to the CT than the TR is.
These numbers may sound rather high. But the vast majority of these variants are very minor. About half of them are so minor that they are not even translatable, and many of the remaining ones are not significant enough to be included in this apparatus. So the number of variants appearing in this list is considerably fewer. Specifically, in this apparatus, there are 1,097 significant variants between the MT and CT, 294 between the MT and TR, and 1,154 between the TR and CT.
Or to look at it another way, the MT and TR agree 951 times against the CT. The MT and CT agree 148 times again the TR. The TR and CT agree 90 times against the MT. And 56 times all three differ. (Zoella, p. 109)
Below I have examples of 6 different translations of two different passages. These translations are the:
- New American Standard Bible. A formal equivalence translation of the Critical Text. Put together by committee.
- The Authorized King James Version. A formal equivalence translation of the Textus Receptus into 17th-century English. Put together by committee.
- The New King James Version. A formal equivalence translation of the Textus Receptus into modern English (not quite as literal as the NASB). Margin notes show Critical Text variations from Textus Receptus. Put together by committee.
- The King James 3 Literal Translation Bible. Available online at Sovereign Grace Publishers in PDF form. A literal equivalence of the Textus Receptus. Put together by Jay P. Green.
- The Analytical-Literal Translation. A literal equivalence translation of the Byzantine Majority Text. Put together by Gary F. Zeolla.
- The New International Version. A dynamic equivalence translation of the Critical Text. Put together by committee.
Those six illustrate all of the facets of these 3 translation styles and 3 Greek texts. Note some of these were translated by committee and some were translated by individuals. Committee translation would seem to be safer, but perhaps less willing to translate accurately a verse that conflicts with some of the mainstream denominational understandings.
Regarding the word-to-word translation from Greek to English: Greek words, like English words, have a number of meanings. English words rarely match up directly with all of these meanings. Thus, a translator must pick a word that matches the appropriate meaning, aware that the word chosen may not match exactly. In addition, the reader could take English word to mean something that was not one of the meanings of the original Greek words. The constellations of meanings of the Greek and the English words do not line up, and there are meanings outside the other's range of meanings on both sides.
Revelation 2:1-7. Differences in the underlying Greek texts in verses 3 and 5.
NASB1 "To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among (lit, in the middle of) the seven golden lampstands, says this: |
KJV1 Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; |
NKJV1 “To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, |
KJ31 To the angel of the Ephesian assembly, write: These things says the One holding the seven stars in His right hand, the One walking in the midst of the seven golden lampstands: |
ALT31 "To the angel of the assembly in Ephesus write: 'These [things] says the One holding the seven stars in His right hand, the One walking about in [the] middle of the seven golden lampstands: 2 I know your works and your labor and your patient endurance, and that you are not able to tolerate evil [people]. And you tested the ones saying themselves to be apostles [fig., who say they are apostles] and are not, and found them [to be] liars. 3 And you have perseverance and [have] endured because of My name, and you did not grow weary. |
NIV1 "To the angel (or, messenger) of the church in Ephesus write: |
James 1:2-8. No significant textual variation between the underlying Greek texts.
NASB2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials (or, temptations), |
KJV2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; |
NKJV2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. |
KJ32 My brothers count it all joy when you fall into various trials, |
ALT32 Consider [it] all joy, my brothers [and sisters], whenever you* encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your* faith produces patient endurance. 4 But be letting that patient endurance have a perfect work [or, full effect], so that you* shall be perfect [or, mature] and complete–lacking in nothing. |
NIV2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6 But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. |
What is the result, then? Well, we can't tell which translators to trust. We must trust the Holy Spirit and give God opportunity to clarify His Word to us, to give us revelation. We can't understand the Word rightly without revelation from the Spirit anyway! It seems useful to have several translations available and, when the Spirit leads, to investigate a verse further by looking at it in other translations. He will be faithful to give us understanding. We must be open to His speaking through men, our covering, our counsel, for often He gives revelation and understanding of Scripture not to us directly but to us through the vehicle of His servants.
The Lord is trustworthy, and has promised to protect His Word. That means His Word remains now. What exactly His Word says is not always clear, but He reveals it by His Spirit as we have need of it.
I use the NASB because that is what was recommended by those in covering over me, and the Spirit works within that framework. It is probably written in the best English, less dumbed-down than the NKJV. It is based on weaker Greek, but often has alternatives footnoted. I also use the ALT for reference. The KJ3 (actually the older LITV) version is in the margin of my interlinear. We have a KJV and NKJV also present. I think we have an old NIV, but I haven't laid eyes on it in a while. There are times that the less literal translation may be in order, depending on the reading level of the person studying the Bible. I have always read NASB, but some may need an easier-to-read version.
So anyway, that was more of an essay than a quick post, but I hope I gave a useful explanation.
It was nice to have a 3 day weekend, though I spent quite a bit of time typing on my computer (obviously). We went to Tulsa to visit my grandfather and his wife on Saturday. We spent a little time watching golf and football. Work around the house today, a little shopping, etc. The weather is still quite warm; we are awaiting the arrival of the rains from Gustav in the next few days.
I'm tired... at least my eyes are from staring at this screen. Okay, I'm done with this for today!
August 23, 2008: A relatively normal and busy Saturday. On the agenda: burning a CD of the Saturday and Sunday meetings two weeks ago, editing and culling down the 1131 photos I took at the wedding one week ago, selecting photos for entry into the county fair, checking the brakes on my car, making tamales for dinner (that's a pain--but worth it), and then the usual--reading the Bible, running in the morning, working on my website, laundry, maybe watching some golf, doing research on various topics if I have time, trying to keep up with correspondence via email and forum threads, etc. I greatly dislike running, but my next-to-youngest brother wants someone to run with him on Saturdays, and I accepted. It's good for me, I know, but for some reason I simply have no wind for running. I can play basketball or football all day, but not just straight run for more than a half mile. It's really odd--I know some people who can run all day but don't have the wind for football or basketball. I'm not sure what the difference is. Oh, and it doesn't help that my next-to-youngest brother is quite capable of out-running me over a mile if he wanted to, since his running wind is far better than mine (but not his football and basketball wind).
On translations of the Bible--I use the New American Standard Version as the most literal modern English translation. I also have a relatively new translation of the New Testament, the Analytical-Literal Translation. It is based upon the Byzantine Majority Text (MT) Greek New Testament. The MT seems to be the most accurate and reliable Greek text. It is very close to the Textus Receptus (TR) from which the King James versions of the Bible were translated. Both the MT and the TR vary significantly from the Critical Text, which was compiled in the 1800s from new manuscript finds, particularly from Egypt. Unfortunately, those Egyptian manuscripts, while older than those upon which the MT and TR are based, both had significant discrepancies between themselves and between them and the MT and TR texts, and were written primarily by Gnostics--which adds suspicion to their motivations. (The authors/textual critics who put together the Critical Text are not necessarily trustworthy, either). Honestly, though, the gist is there either way, and many variations between the Greek manuscripts are not actually translatable into English. In addition, the Holy Spirit will give understanding of the truth if we are listening to His voice, even if the text is somewhat flawed. He gives revelation and often when I am uncomfortable or totally puzzled with the way a passage reads, when I dig into it, the translation was flawed. I appreciate the Analytical-Literal Version because it is so literal, so word-for-word accurate (more so even than the NASB, which is mostly literal or at least puts the literal in a footnote, but is also based mostly on the Critical Text). Of course, this makes the reading of the text more difficult due to some awkward constructions in English, but I can live with that. I provides a good second perspective on the New Testament. I also like the King James 3 Literal Translation Version, which provides a similar service, based on the TR instead of the MT. Between these three versions, light is shed upon some of those totally puzzling passages of Scripture (I Cor. 7:36-38, anyone?). The NASB is still probably the best for just reading through, but the other two mentioned here help in study. The Old Testament has no such issues with source texts, the NASB is great.
Hmm, I got sidetracked there. The Analytical-Literal Translation (3rd edition) may be found at Darkness to Light ministry. I found their companion volume immensely useful. The KJ3 version is also widely available; both of these versions are on Amazon.com (though buying the ALTV through DtL is cheaper): ALTV KJ3.
August 18, 2008: The links at the top of this page have been updated; hopefully they will be more useful now. I am taking suggestions on the links--if you have a really useful site, email me and I will put it up. My top 9 most visited sites according to Firefox--all of them are in the table above:
- MyESPN.com
- Paradox Forums
- AllEmpires Forum
- NWS Norman, OK
- OU Insider Forums
- History Channel Forums
- WorldNetDaily
- Jeff Masters' WunderBlog
- MyWay - My Page
August 8, 2008: The last few days have been a nice change-up from the normal "life in the office;" the Virtis/Opis user group convention/annual meeting was here in Oklahoma City, so I was able to attend. I learned quite a bit about that software package; ODOT has licenses for it but I had not yet used it in design. Virtis is used for load-rating bridges; Opis is an analysis/structural checking tool for designers.
The convention was held at the Skirvin hotel in downtown Oklahoma City. The Skirvin is one of our oldest and grandest hotels in Oklahoma; it was recently totally restored and reopened after being shut for some 20 years. It is very impressive (at least to me). Click on the Tour Hotel button at the Skirvin Hotel for views of this historic structure.
During that three-day convention, the Skirvin served breakfast and lunch. They had a breakfast buffet for the conference, but the lunches were what was impressive. They have some serious chefs on staff, it seems. The first day's lunch was chicken breasts in a some remarkably rich cream sauce--the sauce itself seemed to be mostly pure sweet cream. There was a tropical fruit sweet relish on the chicken and a most remarkable potato/sweet potato concoction. It was layers upon layers of wafer-thin potatoes and sweet potatoes cooked in a sweet butter cream sauce. It positively melted in your mouth. There was also a half roma tomato, crusted in salt and broiled, and a garnish of whole green beans and slices of carrots. For lunch on the last day, they served massive, juicy steaks. Not being a steak expert, I had to ask around the table to find out if anyone knew what cut it was--it seems to have been a New York steak of some 16+ ounces. It was cut fully an inch thick and remarkably juicy. A bit red in the middle.. The sides didn't matter, as it was hard enough to finish the whole steak off! (I haven't even mentioned the deserts served after those "lunches.") And then, last night we went out for my mom's birthday and ate at Red Lobster. I don't know if I will need to eat for several days...
I've been looking into portable digital audio recorders for the last year or so... They have superseded any other setup (like the minidisk) as the best easily-portable high-quality audio recording system. A list of these devices and reviews of them is available at O'reilly.com. Right now I record meetings with my iRiver Clix2, which is an excellent mp3 player but is not a great recording device. It boasts a "voice" recorder meaning it is not high enough fidelity to capture CD-quality audio. I have a sample recording of the Clix2's capabilities here (a song on one of our pianos--not exactly a recording studio).
The heat broke last night. Over last weekend, we had two days over 105°, with the highest we saw on our thermometer being 105.6°. Then it dropped to 103°, and now finally a cold front has come in and the high should be below 90° today, with good chances for rain. We need rain--all of our grass out of range of a sprinkler, save some of the hardier Bermuda grass, has been toasted to a golden brown crisp. The grass crunches when you walk on it!
Here is how acclimated one gets--yesterday, when we got home, we were commenting on how cool it was outside--chilly, we said. It actually felt chilly to us. When we got inside, it was even colder. And then we checked the indoor/outdoor thermometer: 75.8° outside, 74.9° inside. How many think that is chilly?! We are acclimated enough it felt like long-sleeved shirts were in order!
July 29, 2008: Plenty hot here, recently--103 yesterday; 105 downtown Oklahoma City, 109 down in Lawton. Yes, that is hot. Acclimation comes with time, however: I walk briskly for 15 minutes twice a day during my breaks from work, and at this point I barely even break a sweat. Dad actually went and played golf in that weather, but he failed to persuade any of my siblings to play with him--they preferred the air conditioning.
I discovered an excellent site discussing apparent heat and sports--what can and can't be done; what should and should not be done. The site is: The Zunis Foundation. The information on the "hot wind" is something I have suspected for some time: with dry heat, wind can actually (through convection) make you hotter, rather than cooling you off. That only occurs over 95 degrees, though.
I added a new album to the protected portion of this site.
July 15, 2008: Summer is here in Oklahoma--every day is in the mid to high 90s. However, we have made it into mid July without reaching 100 degrees yet! A small victory. The grass is still green as we are getting consistent rainfall. Of course, that makes it humid....
I added another recipe to the cooking section of this site... Louisiana Jambalaya. One of my favorites! We don't do Cajun cooking other than that recipe--I've never caught crawdads and have only had true gumbo once. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the recipe to true Cajun, but it sure is good!
At work, lately, I've been working on designing a large reinforced-concrete box culvert extension (harder than it looks) and a pier design for a standard bridge (also harder than it looks). Apparently, doing designs of things like that are harder the first time as one works out the flow of the design. For that box design I ended up writing a stack of Excel spreadsheets and handwriting at least 30 pages of calcs. It seems that much of design is done the first time, and then one just follows the form developed the following times, adjusting as necessary. I'm also learning MathCAD, an interesting change from Excel--it is like a foreign language. It is fun to get back into doing some (low-level) programming!
It took me a week to recover from all of the sore muscles from that football game.
I guess that's about all for now...The day is winding down. Some are watching The Far Country (a Jimmy Stewart western--or is that northwestern?). Dishes are being done. Mom is freezing some dried oregano out of our garden...
Here are links to The Top 100 Generals at All Empires (talk about a huge thread!) and The Top 100 Leaders at All Empires, per request.
July 5, 2008: How did I spend the Fourth of July? Lazily! We just relaxed. My day's diary: up at 6:15--I can't help it anymore; I'm stuck in the rut even when I wish I could sleep in (jobs will do that to you). Bible. Spent some time on the internet--Top 100 Generals and keeping up with the Paradox Interactive forums, + sports. Breakfast. Spend next while trying to figure out what we were going to do, since we were all off work; the verdict was hang out. So we hung out. I played a game on computer, Europa Universalis III: In Nomine, as the USA starting on July 4, 1776; I eventually secured independence after a series of wars (France and Spain helped me out). Sarah made us pizza (tomato, chicken, and bacon on pesto).
After lunch, I finished up my EUIII game, then went out to join Dad hitting golf balls. I shot some baskets, also--and determined it was too hot to stay outside. It was scorching! The humidity was fairly high, the temperature 97 degrees, and (worst of all) there was no wind. Wind is the great equalizer--usually we have plenty of wind, which makes it feel cooler around here than it really is. "Oklahoma! Where the wind comes sweeping down the plains!" That is the first two lines of our state song. After cooling down, we got up a game of Puerto Rico, a board game that we enjoy. It is a very complex game, suitable for people who like to sit and think for extended periods of time. That took several hours to play, as it usually does. If you want to see what I think of board games (we've got quite a few and I have, at times, been rather "in to" board games) then head over to Board Game Geek to see my games. No, I do not qualify as a board game geek (do I? Am I a "geek" if I've designed games?). However, in the cold of winter and the heat of summer, it is sometimes nice to play a board game of an evening. We all played, although four combined on one team as they had to come and go. The other four played on their own.
Then, after dinner (beef stroganoff--I know it is not American...) we drove in to town to watch the fireworks (literally!) We sat about three blocks away, next to the lab on campus at which I used to work (Fears Lab). I snapped pictures while the fireworks went off--rather exciting! And loud!
Today, we played a game of football with some of the brethren. We started at 9:30AM to beat the heat, but we played until 1:00PM so it was plenty hot enough anyway. Four dads and 14 of their sons were there (aged 11 to 24), so we had 7 on 7 for much of the time. The dads just sat in the shade with the water coolers and watched us. We had a 50 yard field, 35 yards wide (we set it out with cones). We played, as always, two-hand-touch and used "shadow blocking," meaning that the rushing defensive linemen were not allowed to contact the offensive linemen, at least in theory. That way we didn't have to use the 3-second-count system. There were only a few injuries, but I suspect there will be some very sore people tomorrow! The worst injury was a pulled muscle, but the one who sustained that injury played through it, coming up with a key interception to set up the last drive of the game. Unfortunately, we came up short on 4th and goal from the 4 yard line, while down 7 points. I had an open receiver and threw it into the ground at his feet, the first time I had done that all day. Perhaps the "pressure" got to me. Oh well. We lost 35 to 28. The group consumed vast quantities of water and Gatorade in an effort to stay hydrated, but 4 out of the 5 of us in my family have headaches right now. It seems that whenever we are exerting ourselves in 95 degree heat on sunny days, we rarely win the battle to keep our electrolytes balanced.
We don't usually have such sports-related gatherings, as it is not usually a profitable thing and prone to over-competitiveness and little edification, but this time we felt to go ahead and do it. I think it has been a year or two since the last such occasion. We have grown in that time, and it showed in the more restrained attitude on the field--no tempers flaring, only one overly-aggressive hit instead of touch. Much better. And we were far more organized--everyone knows how to play, everyone knows the nomenclature, the positions, the routes, how to defend, etc. Much of that probably comes from being Okies, I guess.
Hopefully, in the next couple of days I will get up some of the information I have been collecting on the chronology of the ancient world. It seems that the standard chronology of Egypt (which yields few synchronizations with the Bible) is rather a long way off!
Whew! That took about a half hour to type! I'd better get to work on dinner--we've got a "get-together" to go to this evening. Hopefully involving watermelon and/or ice cream.
Happy Independence Day! God bless y'all!
(EDITED 7/8/2008 for typos--thanks, editors!)
June 30, 2008: A couple of recipes have been added to the cooking section (at long last).
June 29, 2008: More pages now have PicLens capable feeds on them. Enjoy!
A few graphics of that heat burst from yesterday:
From the National Weather Service Enhanced website:
Heat Burst Graphic from NWS (Image removed to speed up load times)
From the Oklahoma Mesonet site--this shows the wind speeds and directions. Note the peculiar flow--all coming out of the same point!
Mesonet Wind Vectors (Image removed to speed up load times)
For a radar loop of what the area looked like during this heat burst, click here. A most interesting occurrence!
June 28, 2008: I discovered an excellent plugin for Firefox 3 recently--PicLens. It allows for excellent slide shows of photos on the internet if a media RSS feed is provided. Since there is a utility available for creating such feeds, I went ahead and implemented the setup for this site. At the moment, only the photo albums in the protected portion of this site are enabled for PicLens, but I hope to finish the rest of the site soon. Even if a viewer does not have PicLens installed, a Javascript applet simulates some of the features. I still highly recommend that you get the PicLens plugin for Firefox 3! (If you don't use Firefox 3 for browsing--well, get Firefox 3!)
We had some crazy weather here today. I had never heard of a heat burst before this morning, but one occurred out in western Oklahoma. Essentially, in a collapsing complex of storms something happens that causes hot, dry air to rush downward and then spread outward along the ground in all directions. The temperature rose 10 or so degrees (at 6AM!), the dew point dropped about 10 degrees, and winds of 40 to 50 miles an hour spread outward in an area about 50 miles square. I have some graphics on that; I may post a few of them when I have time.
June 18, 2008: Here's the radar loop from the morning of June 17th, with my route to work traced in white:
(Picture removed to save load time--click the hyperlinked caption.)
The story of Tiger Woods and the U.S. Open keeps getting better! It is amazing that he accomplished what he did with a torn ACL and two stress fractures in his left leg. That U.S. Open was probably the most amazing golf tournament I have watched, with some of the greatest shots pulled off under tremendous pressure. Tiger's runs on Friday and Saturday afternoon were exceptional. And Rocco was great as well.
June 17, 2008: We are in the midst of a rainy spell down here, with storms regularly coming through. We have actually had two hail storms in the last week. I honestly can only remember a few hail storms, and none had hail as large as either of these storms. The first one was almost a week ago, with hail mostly about marble to penny size, but a few as large as nickels. There wasn't a huge amount of hail; it melted rapidly but at the peak there was probably a piece on the ground every 8" or so. Last night, however, it was much heavier and very loud. It woke us up at about 10:45 (yes, I was actually asleep at 10:45PM) and there was lots of nickel size hail, nearly covering the ground.
This morning, I drove to work into a tremendous storm. It was nearly sunny at home, with clouds moving in from the north. We were under a silver gray rolling layer of clouds, with clear sky off to the south. Off to the northwest, however, the sky presented a different scene. I crested the hill to the west of our home to the view of a most impressive storm. Dropping from the silver layer was a wall of cloud, nearly vertical. Its surface looked different from normal clouds--it was sculpted by the wind until it looked like a wind-carved canyon: its surface was smooth but gently curved in sweeping arcs, with slight horizontal striations visible. Where it met the silver layer, it was a clear, pale green. That color gradually faded down into a midnight blue, still with a hint of green. Beneath the cloud (which nearly touched the ground) it was well-nigh dark. The aspect of the storm was remarkable.
As I drove north on I-35 I went beneath the wall of storm. The base was rain-free, and probably 1000 feet off the ground (perhaps lower). It was ragged on the bottom, and racing southward. Underneath the cloud, to the north, was a steel gray wall of rain. I drove into that and experienced some of the heaviest rain I have ever been in. It was nearly night again, though it was 7:15; all of the street lights and signs were lit up. Visibility dropped to about 3 blocks for most things and about a half-mile for lights. The morning rush of cars slowed to about 15 miles an hour. Lightning crashed all about me; at Shields Boulevard lightning struck one of the high-mast street lights right in front of me (that was bright!). There were four ground strokes within one half mile of me as I drove. Rain fell faster than my windshield wipers could clear it off. It was deafening.
The storm started weakening about 15 minutes after the first burst, but it kept raining for a couple of hours and only reached the brightness it had been before the storm at about 9:30AM.
I've got a radar image of what I went through, but I left it at work; I'll get that up soon.
June 4, 2008: Back from our long trip to the Northeast; it was wonderful visiting the brethren. Of course, now we're back in the heat and I'm back to work. I had been telling folks how we treat tornados down here--as a matter of course but as entertainment. Well, the first Saturday I was back (my family wasn't home yet) I watched 5 hours of tornado coverage on TV. It was the only thing on since everything else was preempted on the 3 major networks. It was really interesting to watch, as it always is. No injuries, but one supercell put down tornado after tornado for those 5 hours. It only hit one major structure, a hog farm, but since the hogs were all in cages they were alright. The KWTV helicopter was in perfect position 2 miles from the tornados for most of the day, and there were many storm chasers there to spot everything. A typical afternoon when the storms fire up. You can watch some of the videos online: May 24th Tornado Coverage @ News9.com.
The weather here is mid 90s with howling winds. At least the winds keep it somewhat comfortable outside....
In the protected portion of my site I have put up some of the photos from our trip. Check it out!
April 24, 2008: At long last, the photographs of Uriah and Ashley's wedding are up in the protected portion of this site. Sometimes it just takes actually doing the work... It's really not that hard to do but it's also not as fun as playing basketball outside (for example).
Spring is well under way--everything has leafed out and all is green. There is rain every week, mostly in the form of thunderstorms. The weather has been bordering on hot for the last few days, coming close to 90 yesterday. At the beginning of the warm season, such temperatures seem quite hot to us, but by the end of the year quite reasonable. It is the same as in winter: the first 30 degree day is much colder than the last one, at least to our perceptions. We acclimate, I guess.
In a couple of weeks we will be heading up the Northeast once again. I can hardly wait!
April 10, 2008: Plenty has been going on, thus my lack of entries in this space. First, a description of the weather of the past few days.
Wednesday morning started out overcast, windy, and chilly. At my morning break, I walked around the state capitol park as I usually do, and it was chilly--in the mid 40s with a howling north wind. Being into weather, I kept track of the weather online and watched the rains come in on radar. There was no afternoon walk yesterday! Between 11:30 in the morning and 4:45 in the afternoon, the rain came down in buckets. About 2 inches of rain fell in that time. I sprinted to my car when I left work at 4:30 and still was sopping wet in that 20 seconds. On my way home, I encountered one street with water curb deep for about a block and several others (well, Franklin, mostly) with water from too small or collapsed culverts running across the road. I stopped for gas and discovered the north wind had come back with a vengeance, likely outflow from the rainstorms. It was gusting to around 40 mph, I'd guess.
Wednesday evening the water had made its way downstream so that the larger streams were full to overflowing. We had a bit of a difficult time getting to the interstate. Downstream on Little River, where we live, the river had not crested yet and so the road was passable; but 3 or 4 miles upstream the crossings were under water, so we had to take some detours to get to home meeting. The storms returned that evening; we took a different route home.
Overnight, another 2 inches of rain fell. This morning, my morning drive took 1 hour and 15 minutes, 45 minutes longer than normal. The Little River had flooded every route to Oklahoma City east of I-35. We live in a several mile loop of Little River, so I had to go south to get out, and I work to the north. Everyone that normally takes US 77H to Oklahoma City were on the same roads as I, thus massive traffic jams, aggressive drivers and so forth. I made it, at least.
In the afternoon, we had howling (I mean howling) southwest winds behind the front. The air turned dry. The clear blue sky of the morning gave way to a hazy grey-orange fog of blowing dust from far to the west--Texas, to be precise. Nothing in Oklahoma is dry enough to blow away! So now, as I type this, the trees are tossing outside and everything is bathed in an eerie orange glow. One can barely see the few puffy white clouds far above the dust.
At least Oklahoma's weather is interesting! No tornados of note, yet. The grass is greening up, and the weeds are growing fast. The apple trees are blooming, the Carolina Jessamine is filling the front garden with its fragrance, and the violets, vinca minor, and assorted wildflowers add color. The trees are not really leafing out yet, save the Bradford Pear which has already finished blooming and leafing out. Give the trees a couple of weeks... It hasn't frozen down here in nearly a month. We may have already had our last freeze. I hope so--I don't want to lose our cherry, peach, or apple harvest.
What has been going on down here? Well, Uriah and Ashley got married (congratulations!!)--photos forthcoming in time. Editing photos and working with mp3's from various recordings. I'm not sure what else has been going on, but I know we have been busy...
Probably playing sports and watching sports mostly. I know that's not nearly all we have been up to, but that's what I can think of at the moment. Kansas won the title Monday in an excellent game. I've been rehabilitating my knee from some chondromalacia of the patella which has been bothering me for a couple of years (it means inflammation of the cartilage behind the knee cap). I actually went to a doctor for that! It's been about 15 years since I've been to one. (The Lord has really blessed in that way for all of us!)
We've been eating well--that is the advantage of a large family that can split up the cooking duties. Let's see--cheese enchiladas, lasagna, macaroni and cheese (Wednesday), beef stew, Swedish meatballs, Hungarian goulash, meatloaf, broiled chicken, jambalaya, chicken in parmesan noodles, chicken and rice burritos, enchilada casserole, and 15 bean soup (keeps us honest, I guess). A pretty good collection! I cook one night, Michael one, Sarah one, Andrew one, Mom and Joe one, and Mom and Philip one. (We never eat dinner on Sunday nights--too full from a late lunch).
A snapshot of the moment--Dad and Mom are napping (while the Jambalaya simmers), I'm (obviously) at my computer, Andrew is working with computer graphics for a game Michael wrote the code for, Michael and Philip are in a heated game of Bowl Bound, Sarah is reading a book by the window, and Joseph (as always) is outside (probably getting grit in his teeth from the pallid orange sky).
I've been working on my Top 100 Generals (@ AllEmpires or Paradox)and Top 100 Leaders lists. Take a look! I've also found another neat historical map site: http://www.worldhistorymaps.info/. Another interesting link is a graph of the nations of the world through history @AllEmpires.com (drawn by an Iranian, though, so it's sort of biased in that direction).
March 3, 2008: The last 3 days have been a perfect example of March weather in Oklahoma: Saturday was gorgeous. Sunday was stormy. Monday was really cold. To be more precise--
On Saturday, it was about 75, partly cloudy, with plenty of humidity in the air and a gentle breeze. It smelled, it felt like spring. The birds certainly thought so; they were filling the air with their melodies. The daffodils are budding out back, and one could almost think winter was over, and spring was here.
Sunday did nothing to belay that notion. It was about 70 degrees, with a certain moisture hanging in the air, and a howling south wind. Our spring Gulf breeze was there in abundance, bringing one half of the equation for our old friend--the supercell. And up in Colorado, the other half of the equation was on the way--a low pressure system was bringing in a cold front. And to the south of that low pressure system was the key--the dryline. By late afternoon, we had all of the ingredients--wind shear, heat, humidity, and a dryline for focus. And up the storms fired, a whole line of them. Fortunately for us, the 2 tornados that formed were short lived, and our friend the cold front caught the storms from behind and absorbed them. Into our standard straight line wall of storms, which roared across Oklahoma dumping rain and hail and wind damage. Behind the storms were 50-mile-an-hour winds from the north and plummeting temperatures (besides swollen rivers and the odd downed tree). Which brings us to
Monday. Cold. About 35 for a high with an incredible north wind, reaching 40 miles an hour. What we lack in winter precipitation and bitter cold days, we make up for with wind chill! And of course, we had rain changing to sleet changing to snow--though the ground was far too warm for anything to stick.
That, in a nutshell, is March in Oklahoma.
We've been busy down here--a wedding was announced a few weeks up and will happen on Spring Break. We've had visitors from distant places, and plenty (plenty!) of sicknesses. There's also school (not me), work--somehow it is just quite busy. Oh yes--I have chosen my permanent assignment at ODOT, and it is the bridge division, design section.
February 2, 2008: Yet another album added to the protected portion of the site. We spent a good portion of the day endeavoring to burn all of the branches downed by the ice storm (I look sunburned but not from the sun). Thus, I am too tired to write a nice long entry here...
January 26, 2008: Another album has been added to the protected portion of this site! Enjoy!
After 1 year at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, I am now about finished with my training rotation through the department. I will now be picking which division to go to. I am under Training until I get my PE, as are all EITs--that way all the divisions like to have EIT's come to their division on permanent assignment, thus giving them additional help without additional payroll.
In my spare time I've been working on a board game--designing board games is one of my hobbies. I figure one of these days I may actually come up with a good, educational board game that is a good GAME as well. A rather hard chore, that--but fun to work on nevertheless. Then, of course, there is always work outside to do (still cleaning up from the ice storm). We've been watching sports on TV some. We just finished watching The 39 Steps, a superb Hitchcock film a few minutes ago. And I have been reading a few books--I highly recommend the book Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado by Nancy Mathis. Here is my review of that book:
The May 3, 1999 tornado stunned central Oklahoma--but yet, it was not entirely unusual. As I grew up in Norman, Oklahoma (the center of weather research and now home to the National Weather Service), tornadoes were a fact of life. Springtimes in Oklahoma always included the hours spent in front of the television, watching the supercells. Even the non-scientific minds among us learn to grasp the basics of supercells, of the hook echo, of the wall cloud. We are willing to watch the storm on TV until it is within 10 miles of us, and then, and only if it is heading in our direction, will we descend to our storm cellar.
Nancy Mathis has captured the feeling of the springtime in Oklahoma; the awe, the fear, and the respect with which tornadoes are regarded. The book weaves together many stories of common people from this area, people just like any other central Oklahoman. And she compellingly tells the story of how lives are shattered, molded--simply changed by the power of the tornadoes.
The May 3 tornado (the big one--A9) passed within 15 miles of my house; I had been playing golf that afternoon on a course in Moore that was destroyed--in fact, had we played the back 9, we would have been on the course when the twister hit. But the sky looked ominous, with the clouds at different elevations moving different directions--signaling significant wind shear, a factor in tornado formation that Mathis discusses in this book. It was simple stories like this that Mathis used to create the feel of the book.
Mathis captures the history of tornado forecasting and the personalities involved wonderfully. She tells the story of the meteorologists excellently. I believe this book to be the best available at telling the story of the tornado in totality and of the people it impacts. I have just a few quibbles with this book--the occasional instances of strong language (always in quotes) require editing before youngsters can read it. The book is not particularly scientific, and there are no photos or charts explaining the science. That is not the intent of this book. The story is so gripping (and graphic), that some children could have difficulty stomaching it. But this gripping retelling is what makes the book so good--for the story of the tornadoes is so extraordinarily exciting, and the springtime afternoons in Oklahoma so spellbinding, that only a book written in that way can accurately tell the story of the May 3 tornadoes.
January 5, 2008: Well, I thought winter was here for good. It turns out that I was wrong. Today it was 72 (!) with our springtime warm south wind. It was howling. Taking advantage of the good weather, we played the new miniature golf course nearby--I had asked to do that for my birthday back in November, and this was the first time we have had both the opportunity and the weather for it. I managed second place in the family. The new miniature golf course (at Hey Day) is by far the best I have seen in the area, more on par with courses seen at vacation destinations. It was very interesting.
Many in Oklahoma are in mourning after their team looked pitiful against West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl. Anything less than a National Championship is disappointing around here. The analysis goes on for days afterwards as everyone dissects all of the reasons for the failure. From listening to sports talk radio (yes, I do that on my way home from work--along with the contemporary Christian stations), there seem to be a few general opinions: OU coaches are having trouble motivating their super-talented players when playing for anything less than a championship; OU coaches tend to expect to be able to defeat the opponents by the shear personal skill of the players (which works until one meets his equal), thus game-planning fairly conservatively; and the loss of 5 of OU's best players for various reasons for the bowl. What it summed to was a pasting by a team that may be, when all players are healthy, the best team in America. Pat White, WVU's quarterback, was injured for at least part of their two losses this year.
The family is enjoying the break from school (I have to work still--such is life). We have been watching a lot of football when the weather is bad, and playing a good bit when the weather is good. Last game was 4 on 3; only Mom didn't play. Essentially, things are getting back to "normal" after the ice storm, the pressure-filled end of school, and the wedding. I actually have a little free time sometimes! Normally I collect lots of tasks; at the moment, I have few left on my plate. Finishing the touch-up on the photos of Jon and Allie's wedding is one thing yet to do... Nice and peaceful except for the sweeper behind me, Mom cutting hair with the electric trimmer behind me, and the speakers playing celtic hymns in front of me.
The primary topic of conversation in our family (besides football) has been the presidential campaigns. I'll discuss that later, once we can make heads or tails of the candidates. It's such a wide open race, with no obviously great candidates!
Welcome to 2008, another year in which the Lord will show His faithfulness and His glory to us and through us.
December 22, 2007: Winter is upon us in Oklahoma! Yesterday, we left for Miami, Oklahoma at about 3 PM and it was about 65 degrees outside. Today, we drove home through blowing snow with black ice on the road in various places. We made it home safely, I hope everyone else at the wedding did as well.
Congratulations to Jon and Allie!
December 15, 2007: Well, recovery from the ice storm is progressing. My grandfather in Tulsa finally got electricity back to his apartment today. The number of customers without power in Oklahoma is under 200,000. We've spent quite a bit of time the last couple of days out cutting fallen timber and hauling limbs. There is still a long way to go on our cleanup. The ice decimated several of our more ornamental trees, particularly our large Bradford pear tree. Around town, it looks like the Bradford pears were the hardest hit, as they were still holding their colorful leaves when the ice came down. I only ended up working 2 days this week: all non-critical state employees around here were told not to come to work Monday, and on Tuesday, the Tecumseh yard was still without power, so after I drove out there for my normal 7:00 starting time, I ended up just being sent right back home. Then, I was off Friday as normal because I've been working 10 hour days. Of course, it was hard to get much done with the power off for some of the time and it rather bitter outside all of that time!
For more on the ice storm, I have put together a page: Ice Storm December 2007. There are photos and a radar loop of the storm event there.
All of these difficult times with the weather are an excellent opportunity to look to the Lord for provision, and to be thankful for all the blessings we have in the way of covering and shelter and warmth.
I saw somewhere not too long ago that Oklahoma has more natural disasters than anywhere else in the US. I think that was counted as number of state of emergency days per county per year, or something like that... I believe it. Floods, tornados, straight-line winds, dust storms, droughts, ice storms, blizzards (not this far south), even a tropical storm--we've got it all. I guess that's something to be proud of! Actually surviving it all with such little difficulty is what we should be proud of. We've seen so much that we take it all in stride. There's a reason that the National Weather Service picked Norman, Oklahoma for its national headquarters!
I also want to recognize Tim Tebow, a Christian homeschooler, for winning the Heisman Trophy this year.
December 13, 2007: My grandfather and his wife have had to come down to stay with us, as their power has been out in Tulsa since Sunday, and their apartment was getting icy. All of the brethren in Norman have electricity, I believe, and so do those in Miami (I think). Elsewhere--well, last I heard, there were still over 400,000 customers without power. There are no generators to be had--there has been a run on the normal supplies for such an event. We're doing fine, though.
December 11, 2007: Go to NewsOK.com for more information on the ice storm. We heard today that some 600,000 houses and businesses are without power in Oklahoma, and it will likely take a week or more before the power is back on for everyone. At the moment, I don't think that our phones work; my grandfather in Tulsa has been without power for 48 hours, and without phone as well. We are blessed to have our power on. It seems, however, that our phone is out, so this will be posted after the fact. EDIT: posted early on 12/13.
December 10, 2007: The worst ice storm in many years is finally clearing out of central Oklahoma. This ice storm didn't make the roads bad, at least where we live south of Oklahoma City, but it did take down the trees. By the thousands. And the electric lines, and poles... We were without power from 8:45 this morning to about 7:00 this evening. I was given the day off from ODOT, as all non-essential workers were not called to work. Which was a good thing. Getting that 3/4 inch of ice off of the car would have been hard, and there were fallen limbs all over the road. When I was outside this morning, as the rain came down hard off and on, it looked and sounded like a war zone. Reports rang out from all over the valley, followed by crashes. Several a minute, at times. By this evening, scarce a tree in the region is in one piece. We drove to town to eat, and there are power lines down in a number of places. Many (perhaps at times most) of central Oklahoma has been without power. However, things are looking up; with the power on, we have good heat and water now. When I have more time, I will try to put together some more on this topic. I took lots of pictures of the damage....
That's all for now. I just heard another limb snap out back... and the lights flickered...
December 7, 2007: After some delay, I have finally finished putting up all of the photo albums in the secure portion of this site, reached by logging in at the login button to the upper right.
I am now working in surveying for ODOT, and will do that for 3 weeks. Actually, I'm done with the first 2 weeks of that already. Surveying is enjoyable, but it is a bit chilly at some parts of the day. It has been okay, though. The weather has thus far stayed in the upper 50s or higher nearly every day I have been out there. I'm working 4 10 hour days, which is an interesting change. It means that I am up 13 hours before I see the rest of my family, but I do get Fridays off.
Hopefully I will soon have time for a complete blog entry; right now, I have work to do.
November 8, 2007: Fall is finally here in Oklahoma. We had our first freeze yesterday morning, so the trees are losing their leaves. The weather is spectacular--around 35 at night and 68 in the day. I ate lunch outside of the ODOT division III headquarters in Ada (where I am working for a few weeks). It was beautiful--pecan trees overhead (and plenty of pecans to munch on underfoot), yellow maple trees nearby, a brilliant blue sky, and a cool breeze. I just ate lunch at the old picnic tables and read my Bible. Talk about a nice hour!
Of course, working isn't like that. Take, for example, last Thursday:
Well, my first week out on my maintenance assignment (for ODOT) was certainly interesting. One day in particular was unusual, to say the least.
Last Thursday, I was with the chip seal crew, as I had been on Wednesday. We finished up a project about an hour east of Ada on Wednesday, and Thursday was expected to be a quiet day, just cleaning up the project, preparing to paint, and hauling equipment. Nope.
I rode out to the job site with the “second” of the crew. There were two truckers who work for ODOT out there with low-boys to haul out the first set of equipment. We were to lead the first truck, which was hauling a very large piece of equipment, nearly 20 feet wide--a chip spreader or "chip box." A chip box lays down the 5/8" chipped stone on top of the oil sprayed by another truck in front of it when doing a chip seal on a road. Anyway, we were going over two lane highways, so it was pretty interesting to get such a wide load through. We were on the radio all of the time with the trucker, letting him know of upcoming obstacles. One major obstacle was a construction site with no shoulders on the highway. There, we went ahead and shut the highway down to let him come through--we did that one other place as well. That was interesting enough... we and the trucks made it on safely to Ada and the yard. The trucks headed out to the project for another load. I stayed at the yard for about a half hour, and then drove back out myself.
First of all, I got rather turned around trying to get through Ada, having never driven it myself. I was only lost for a couple of minutes, though. Then I went on to Holdenville, thinking that the crew would have come over there to do a small project they were planning to get to that day. They hadn't made it there yet (though it took me a while to figure that out, as I didn't know exactly where the project was). Finally I radioed them over the CB (ODOT has a dedicated system) and found out they were still out near McAlester. So I drove over there--arriving just as they were needing an air compressor to pump up the tire of an old and decrepit broom (a machine that cleans off the road with a rotating broom). It turns out the truck I was driving had a air compressor on it.
One of the workers needed to drive that broom to the other end of the project (about 4 miles) to get it loaded up to take back to the yard in Ada. Since the tire was barely holding air, he drove it as fast as it would go, about 45 mph. Well, that was too much for it. About 2 miles in, he threw a CV joint. The supervisor of the crew pulled the broom on to the end of the project while I followed to cover him from traffic.
How do you load a dead broom onto a trailer? That was a good question. They first tried to pull it on with the pickup driving alongside the trailer. The pickup didn't have enough traction to do that. Next, they tried to lift it with the low-boy's trailer lift cable, which is too complicated to explain in text. Essentially, all it did was make the broom bounce around, giving the operator the sensation of riding a bull (a point which he took care to explain to us). A few of the crew went off to get a grader started to pull the broom on. It wouldn't start--which was bad, since it was going to be used in Holdenville that day. Supposedly. While the crew men were working with the grader, the two truckers got a Gradall started up—essentially a boom truck but with an excavation attachment rather than a winch/hook assembly. I haven't actually seen one in action. Well, they used that one to pull the broom finally up onto the trailer, finishing the loading process. They took their two trucks and headed back to the yard in Ada.
A few minutes later we (the supervisor, a crewman, and me) got called over the radio as we were working on the grader, "Drop everything! We've got a bad wreck over here on the highway just west of town, and we need your two trucks for flagging!" So we jumped in our trucks and headed out there.
It was bad, alright, though I didn't see much. Pieces of the cars (actually pickups, I think) were everywhere. The speed limit along there was 65, and these were probably doing all of that and more. It was close to a head-on collision--the front of one truck was just about gone, and the front and side of the other were pretty well gone. The two ODOT truckers were directing traffic while passersby were trying to help the people in the trucks. The crew supervisor sent me around the bend and to the top of the hill to flag the traffic there, and he took the other end of the project.
At first, we just slowed the traffic down, as the trucks weren't actually on the road and the road was 3 lanes. Then, after the ambulances got there, we sent only one direction at a time, so 2 lanes could be shut. Then, when the medevac helicopters came in, we shut the road down completely, for about 20 minutes for each helicopter.
I don't know what became of the two people that were in those pickups. I don't know if either one survived.
It was already nearly 3:30 by the time the wreck was cleaned up, and I hadn't had time to eat much--it is hard to flag traffic while eating. Grapes and one sandwich after the helicopters had left.
So I headed back to the yard in Ada—but as I started off, I heard over the radio that someone had turned the Gradall over while driving it back to the yard. Great! I got there a few minutes after the fact, as several of the crew members were standing there surveying the damage and trying to figure out how the machine could be turned back over. The driver was there, shaking in his boots, repeating how he had never wrecked anything in his life and how he couldn’t believe this happened to him.
The Gradall is very top heavy, and turning it at top speed (about 45 mph) is quite a chore. The wheelbase is short as well, and the front end “bounces like a basketball” according to one guy. The driver was turning the corner and the front end got to bouncing (it just does that) and he couldn’t get it to turn. He first went off the overlay (kicking him out) and then off the shoulder. It started going down the bank without turning over, and he was going to drive it down to the bottom if he could and then recover. Unfortunately, there was a culvert box in the way and a back tire caught in it, stopping the Gradall cold—and over it went.
I was asked to take the driver in for his mandatory drug testing (for all wrecks by ODOT employees).
Suffice it to say, I was late leaving that day! It was almost 5:20 before I left work, and I was supposed to be off at 4:00.
But the overtime was useful, as I had a flat tire on the way to work the next morning, got there late, and left early to get the flat fixed.
Just another day in the life…
The Lord has a purpose in everything. Even days like that (which seem to happen pretty often!) and flat tires. It is all about coming to the character of Christ, so we can be the Body of Christ on the earth in every last thing that we do.
Oh--in case anyone wants it, I have put my thesis online--in PDF form (it is 7mb). It will take a rare person to be really interested in Fiber-Reinforced Concrete and Bridge Deck Cracking!
October 31, 2007: A few new things added in the writings section--some of my essays from the Discoveries in Archaeology class.
October 30, 2007: Just a quick update: I have updated the layout of this website (I suppose that is obvious!) and have put up a few new things: primarily my papers from my History of Science class. The one of most interest (or at least relevency to modern life) is the paper on Science and Religion.
I'm quite busy now, as I am commuting one hour and ten minutes each way every day to Ada for work. I am learning about maintenence for the next 4 weeks, and Ada was the closest place to go for that part of my rotation.
September 25, 2007: The beauty of our Oklahoma weather has been exceptional the past few weeks. Oklahoma's scenery is not so much in its mountains, trees, or waters--it is its sky. Out here, you can see the vastness of the sky almost all of the time--there aren't enough hills and trees to obscure it. You can see thunderstorms from 100 miles away on a clear day. There is almost always some beautiful cloud or something else of interest in view. This morning, for instance, the sun came up as I was driving to work. There were storms to the west, and the sun lit the top of the storms before it came up itself, bathing the earth in a brilliant white light. Then the sun came up through the haze--a brilliant red ball hovering just above the surface of the earth. Then, as the sun rose higher and the showers moved in, I saw an exceptional double rainbow. We had some brilliantly lit-up clouds to the east, and lightning in the clouds to the west. Always interesting.
A few weeks ago, we had an exceptionally scenic view of the clouds. As we were driving to home meeting, the sun was going down through thin clouds to the west, streaking them in red. To the east was an impressive cumulonimbus cloud, just a couple of miles away--close enough that you had to crane your neck to see the top of it. As the sun went down, the storm was colored with wonderful colors: below the storm was a dark blue-gray. The lowest portion of the storm was lavender, then the next portion was orange, then yellow, then golden, and at the very top the anvil head was a brilliant white. Spectacular!
And finally, I wrote a paragraph describing the sky about a week ago while I was wishing I had a camera with me:
Oklahoma’s scenery is not on the ground—it is in the sky. Without mountains and forests to obscure the view, the canopy of the sky stretches from horizon to horizon without interruptions. This morning, the view is excellent. To the east, the solid dark gray of a weakening storm is broken by small silver-gray cumulus clouds in front, while beneath the storm, red light filters through the rain shafts. To the northeast, the storm’s dark gray smoothly changes to silver, as the sun’s light filters through a gap in the towering clouds overhead. Around further to the north, a second storm twinkles in the distance; brilliant flashes of lightning flicker against an indigo-blue storm. The back side of the storm shows crisp billows of the strengthening storm in indigo against the cyan clear sky. In front of this brilliant display, wispy silver-gray clouds highlight the indigo of the storm. Northwest, behind the second storm, there are growing cumulus clouds, some in dark gray shadow from the storms, highlighted by the cyan sky behind, and some in the brilliant golden morning sunlight, where beams have found their way through the storms to the east. Due west is a cyan clear sky, with scattered scraps of clouds of white and dark gray in front. Far off in the distance, near the horizon, a row of cumulus clouds tower in orange and red in the early-morning sunlight. To the southwest, a mix of cumulus, altocumulus, cirrostratus and other types of clouds, in white, silver, and dark blue, form a confusing arrangement. Far off through them one can see golden billows of another thunderstorm building in power many miles away. To the south, wispy gray clouds dominate, and round to the southeast, these clouds give way to the back end of the first thunderstorm, still with rain shafts evident but weakening and with rays of sunlight piercing through.
As I am putting this entry together, I am sitting in a shower of rain, with lightning nearby but blue sky also visible...
I realized last Saturday as I was making dinner that I seem to keep making Mexican food for dinners: chimichangas, tamales, burritos, fajitas, and stuffed peppers are the last 5 Saturday meals I've done. We've also had taco salad and enchiladas in that time. Mexican food is wonderful, though it does take a lot of work to put together (particularly the tamales). One thing we always have with those meals is guacamole and chips. An excellent recipe we use for guacamole is as follows:
- 1 ripe avocado
- 2 T picante sauce
- 1/2 T lime juice
- Dash of onion powder
- 5 grinds of black pepper
Slice the avocado in half, remove the pit, and scoop out the flesh. (Make sure to remove any brown parts). Mash the avocado with a fork, add the rest of the ingredients, and mix well. Stir up the guacamole and serve. Serves 2-4. We quadruple this recipe for 8 hungry mouths, and usually have some left. Use mild or medium (or even hot) picante sauce according to your taste. We, being indecisive on such matters, use half mild and half medium picante. Lemon juice may be substituted for the lime juice. The dash of onion powder might be about 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon (I'm not sure). Our black pepper mill is generous, I think. Essentially, this recipe always tastes a little different due to the lack of specifics on some quantities and variations in the flavor and consistency of the avocado
A few points on avocados: they age quickly, so they must be picked out somewhat green. A ripe avocado is very dark, almost black, and somewhat soft (about like an apple you would throw away). If the avocados you get are pretty green, leave them out on a counter to ripen. If they are almost ripe and they have to wait a few days to be used, refrigerate them. The flesh should be green to light green and buttery soft. Often, there are brown parts in the avocado that should be removed for the most part, and sometimes stringy dark lines that have to be pulled out.
September 15, 2007: This is just a quick entry to note a major revision of my page on Surviving College as a Christian and my discussion of Tropical Storm Erin in Oklahoma (warning, page size near 2mb).
September 12, 2007: Fall has arrived in Oklahoma--I can tell this because I have had to wear my jacket when going to work at 7:00 in the morning. I know that doesn't seem like much to northerners, but around here--well, I haven't had to wear a jacket since April. It just doesn't get that cool at night. But now, it has been 50 the last two mornings, though of course it warms right up to about 80. The air feels different as well--instead of the heavy, hazy air with dust and humidity, the air is very clear. The sun is brighter than in the middle of summer, and the sky much bluer. It just feels "crisp," like a normal summer day in the mountains of Colorado.
I say fall has arrived, but it's probably just a sneak preview. I'm sure it will go back to hot and hazy...
But then again, football season has started. Football season is fall in Oklahoma. In fact, they should just name fall "football season" around here. I saw a poll in the paper yesterday--over half of Oklahomans (56%, if I remember correctly) consider fall their favorite season. This must be because of football, because the weather is nicer in the spring.
It is amazing how important football is in Oklahoma, particularly for OU fans. It controls the state's psyche. When the Oregon fiasco occurred last year (when OU lost the game because of official's blunders) the whole state was in consternation. It was all anybody talked about. Everybody had an opinion (or worse). You could almost say that football is a god around here. Nay, I will say it--football is a god to many people around here. It is more important than anything else. When Oklahoma was on its run to the national title in 2000, the whole state was entranced (except the OSU fans, of course). Nobody wanted to talk about anything else. Everyone was on an emotional high.
Is that good? No way--the emotions stirred by football simply mask real life. It allows people with problems to escape for a time, without solving the problems. It is an escape, just like drugs or alcohol. People can blank out the rest of their life for a time, just focusing on football. Is it good to have an escape like that? No, for the only real escape is through the Lord Jesus Christ, and all other "escapes" are simply ways the enemy can keep people in bondage still longer.
Should Christians then renounce watching sports, renounce being interested in them? No, that is not the solution. The solution is to keep everything in perspective, to not allow ourselves to be entranced--absorbed--consumed by it. Don't let it take your time or your mind over. Sure, it is okay to watch football--just don't let football (which is a waste of time) keep you from accomplishing all the Lord has set before you. We are to "be careful how we walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of our time, because the days are evil." Eph 5:15-16. Our first responsibility is to the Lord. If He allows us to have some time to watch football, that's great. I like to watch football now and again. But if we let our emotions be swayed by a game, we have gotten in to far. If we feel upset because a team loses, how does that reflect on us, as the Lord's ambassadors to this fallen world? That is like an ambassador to Italy getting upset because one mob boss bumps another off. What is it to you? You are not of this world!
College has started, also. The university environment is a unique challenge to the God-fearing student. As one who has successfully survived that environment without losing my faith, and with the insight that has given us on the matter, I put together an essay on how a Christian can survive college. It is not easy, and should not be undertaken lightly.
Over Labor Day weekend, my sister and I went up to a pair of weddings in New York, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. The whole weekend was a wonderful time of fellowship with the brethren in New York and with those who had come from Oklahoma and Maine for the occasion. The Lord covered the whole time, and everything went well--even our travel to Dallas, flying to La Guardia, and driving out of New York City.
Those weddings were the primary reason I purchased my new Nikon d40x, and I had ample opportunity to use it. I was one of the official photographers for the Sunday wedding, and over the whole weekend I took 2886 pictures (give or take a couple). With a 10 megapixel camera, that takes a lot of hard drive space, and I have been culling down the photos. I think I have about 1300 good photos. It was a blessing to be able to do the photography for the brethren--being of service in that way was why I bought the camera.
Oh yes--the county fair. My sister did wonderfully, getting ribbons on over half of her 35 entries. In fact, she got 3 ribbons on her 7 photography entries, while I only got 2 on my 12 entries. : ( . We always enjoy the county fair; it is a pleasant time for us--once all of the entries are in. Before that, it can be rather hectic.
I leave you with a scripture from 1 Peter 5:
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to HIs eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
I Peter 5:6-11
August 30, 2007: Let's see--there is plenty of stuff to talk about. I'll start with the weather. On August 18 and 19, we had one of the most extraordinary weather events recorded in Oklahoma. Essentially, a tropical storm redeveloped over Western Oklahoma and dropped unprecedented quantities of rain. I have put together a separate page for Tropical Storm Erin. Here is a picture of Little River (normally a small stream at best) flooding our road, just a mile away from our house:
The road was flooded for about 3 miles, with just a few dry spots in that stretch. Nearly everyone has a story about the great flood of '07...
Another thing I have been working on is assembling my fair entries for this year's county fair. I have 12 entries in the photography area this year. I recently purchased a new camera, so some of the photos were taken with my old Canon S1 IS and some were taken with the new Nikon d40x with a 18-200mm VR Nikkor lens.
Other than that, what is going on? Plenty, but I have not the time to discuss it all right now, as I must get up early tomorrow to catch a flight. Golf is in its new playoffs. I got Europa Universalis III and Napoleon's Ambition expansion. I've got to discuss the new camera. Oklahoma State continued its dominance of golf--3 OSU golfers are on the President's Cup team (Scot Verplank, Charles Howell III, and Hunter Mahan), and 3 OSU golfers are on the Walker Cup (the amateur equivalent of the Ryder Cup) team. The President's Cup mark is a first, and only OSU has put 3 on a Walker Cup team before. The weather was fall-like today. Work on the new meeting house for our church has started. My sister is going to dominate the county fair, with over 30 entries. I'm going to New York for a pair of weddings this weekend--DFW to La Guardia on Friday of Labor Day weekend (Whee!). There is more going on, but I can't remember it all now. I'll get to it when I have time.
How is that for a random stream of disconnected sentences?
August 11, 2007: It has been a long time since I posted here on my blog--we have been busy. The trip to New York and Maine was wonderful; our family had an excellent time. I had to come home before the rest of my family because I had to get back to work, so I was at home by myself for nearly a week. It went okay, though. I didn't starve... The rest of the family had a pretty crazy time getting home, with car trouble twice, wild traffic, walking vast distances in D. C., and plenty of surprise expenses. When Dad told the story of their trip home, everybody in church was laughing so hard they cried (he made it awfully funny).
Trip report in a nutshell: driving straight through from Oklahoma to New York takes a long time. We left on Friday at 1:00 PM and reached Deleware County, New York, at about 6:00 PM Saturday. The night was hard--few of us got much sleep. I think 3 hours was the maximum. But, on the good side, it cut a couple of days off. Would we do it again? Only if in a similar time crunch. Doing a 2 day drive would be better, as at least you get some sleep.
In New York, we had a wonderful time visiting the brethren...the weather was nice. Ditto in Maine (I don't give names on my blog for privacy reasons). It had been some 7 years since we had visited Maine, so it was a good time to meet new people and catch up with those we knew from the past. We were in New York from Saturday to Friday, and in Maine from Friday to Monday. On Monday we drove to Portland to visit Delorme (okay, it was Yarmouth, but close to Portland). Then began the wild adventures... I quote from an email the story:
Remember that noise in the van? By the time we had reached downtown Portland it had changed to more of a howl, scream, or something of that ilk. I pulled off somewhere near downtown and into a Firestone place next to an Enterprise rent-a-car. They were too busy, and sent us down the street to a AAA shop. They rapidly determined that this was no quick fix--and it was already 11:30. Well, what could we do? We rented a car for me to drive to Manchester and the rest stayed to watch the van get fixed. It took a bit of logistics working, but I ended up with a Nissan Sentra by about 12:30. Which didn’t leave a lot of time. I had a similar string of events another time where I was in an absolute time crunch and it just had to work out—and it did. So I mostly just watched the events that unfolded as rather a bit of comedy. Anyway, it turns out that Manchester is only 1:30 from Portland if I’m driving, so I got there, got gas, got lunch, got through security (without being strip-searched!) and was at the gate with 45 minutes to spare.
So, at 3:25, I was about to board my first airplane—but no, the plane has a faulty valve and they are going to have to fly up mechanics from Baltimore. Hmmm—a connection in Chicago at 6:00, mechanics from Baltimore…. *gulp*. Actually, I just sat there (on the floor—not enough chairs) and waited to see what they would do. They ended up doing a plane swap and getting us in the air in a different plane (which took a while to set up) by about 3:50.
Flying is wonderful—from the views of the ground to the piercing of the clouds to the Gs on take-off to the turbulence (fun!)—well, not to the food. What does two bites of peanuts count for? And a little bitty cup of water? I think they try to keep the passengers in a sort of suspended animation due to lack of nutrition…. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed flying, and never had a hint of airsickness. Maybe it was the ginger. Maybe not. Do I really want to find that out?
And now, back to the story—The captain kept us posted on our projected arrival time in Chicago “15 minutes till 6” “20 minutes till 6” It ended up about 15 minutes till six when almost all the passengers raced up the ramp and started looking for their next flights. I had to go about a quarter mile--gate 4 to gate 23. But I and the rest of the passengers made it—5 minutes to spare. No sweat! (Actually, maybe a little…)
From there on, the flight was uneventful, except for the waiting 30 minutes in St Louis for people making a connection from another delayed flight. It’s nice to know that they will delay flights to ensure connections… I discovered that my limit for sitting hunched over staring out a little window at the ground far below and the cloud formations is well above 4 hours. I just looked out the window the whole time. The whole adventure was rather fun and not to bothersome—I knew the Lord had something good set up. Just a little more soul training in the anti-anxiety field, I guess…
Dad and Mom finally got out of Portland about 6:30, I think.
Ahh well. We made it home.
In Oklahoma, summer is here. Finally. After a cool and rainy July, Thursday and Friday typical summer weather finally moved in: hazy and 100. At least the wind was still blowing, but after the temperature climbs above about 98, it no longer feels cool--it feels like a blast furnace. Watching the contractors lay asphalt was not an enjoyable job on Thursday and Friday. Too hot! It's okay--I can stay in my state truck most of the time. The air conditioner doesn't work too well, though. I'll survive.
The PGA Championship is in Tulsa right now--and local boy Scott Verplank had the lead for much of Friday. Until Tiger tied the all time scoring record with a 63 and moved 2 strokes into the lead. Is everyone just playing for second? I know Verplank won't be intimidated playing with Tiger, and he has the advantage of knowing both the course and the conditions well. We will see if he can catch Tiger.
I went ahead an purchased Europa Universalis III, the sequel to the best game I've ever played. Is EUIII up to the same level? It is close. Performance issues are a bother on my laptop, making the game play slowly and jerkily (is that a word?) Nevertheless, it is a very good game. I will withold judgement for a while.
And that is what is going on right now. Fall will be busy, with 4 weddings before the end of the year, and of course school for the rest of the family. An interesting time!
July 12, 2007: That storm on the 10th flooded caused Little River to flood our road within a couple of hours after I drove through in the morning--I know, because a photo of a half-submerged car on Franklin Road about 2 miles from our house was on the front page of the Daily Oklahoman. It's a good thing it wasn't flooding when I went through when it was still dark this morning. Oh, and I'm writing this as I sit in my state truck in the middle of yet another thunderstorm. It never ends! So I guess I'll just leave--my vacation starts tomorrow.
Computer games that look promising (I don't play computer games much anymore, but I do keep up with such things):
- Europa Universalis III
- Europa Universalis III: Napoleon's Ambition
- Birth of America
- AGEOD's American Civil War
- Grey Dog Software: Bowl Bound College Football
- All-Pro Football 2008
- Trackmania United
There seems to be rather a dearth of good computer games at this point. The big companies are primarily doing reruns with higher quality graphics. As for good, deep games, particularly in historic settings, only the four listed above seem decent. Driving games also seem worse--I haven't seen anything to match Midtown Madness 2 yet.
We are going to attempt a straight-through drive to New York on Friday and Saturday. It takes about 24 hours driving time. If we leave OKC at about 1:00 PM on Friday, we'll probably make it to the Catskills about 4 or 5 PM on Saturday. We'll see. This could be rather interesting.
The rain is coming down in buckets, and the lightning is constant (I say as a bolt of lightning strikes close enough to my truck to shake it).
July 10, 2007: We had the wettest June on record, and through the first sixth months of the year have the second most rainfall on record for that period, some 32 inches (our average annual rainfall is about 36 inches). The Miami flooding turned out to be only about 30% of the town, as the rainfall (thankfully) stopped. We had about 1 week without significant rain, though it was partly cloudy, very humid, and uncomfortably warm when the sun came out each day.
Today, however, seems to be a different story. Last weekend the meteorologists were warning that the low pressure pattern was returning, sucking moisture in from the Gulf. They were right. Last night, splash-and-dash thunderstorms appeared, dumping a quick 1" of rain on Norman. Then a cold front pushed through about 3AM with torrential rainfall (I don't know how much, but the puddle in the dining room from our leak in the roof is really large). Next, a band of heavy rain came through about 5AM. It looked like that was all, as I could see deep blue sky to the west as I drove to work at 5:45 this morning. (The contractor was hoping to slipform concrete median barrier while it was cool this morning, thus my coming in 1:30 early). But there was still another band coming. So here I sit, in my state truck in the median of I-40 at 7:00AM, with the floodgates of heaven opened up around me. The median is a river, now. It looks like the slipforming will have to wait a while...
All of these storms today have had very intense lightning, and the storms I could see had very impressive cloud structure. The 3AM primary line of storms produced about 10 groundstrokes of lightning within a half mile of our house (making it rather hard to sleep). This last line I am sitting in right now (wait--I see blue sky off to the north--I think the back edge is just passing us) had 5 groundstrokes within a mile of where I am. Coming to work this morning, I was treated to an outstanding lightning show in the clouds to my east and north, highlighting all of the shapes in the towering cells. Total rainfall total: about 3 inches for home, 2 inches for OKC, 4 inches for Norman proper, and 5 inches down towards Goldsby and Washington. Not good news for septic systems. Norman's street flooding headlined the morning TV news.
July 5, 2007: The weather has finally broken--last Tuesday, Oklahoma City failed to get any rain, after getting 21 days in a row. That certainly put the record out of reach! Northeastern Oklahoma is experiencing severe river flooding, particularly the Neosho River through Miami. Close to 75% of Miami is flooded. Fortunately, most of my friends up there live on hills outside of town--I think everyone is dry, or at least relatively so. Everybody's got mud. It is said that this is the worst flood there since 1951, and may surpass that flood as well. Similarly, Lake Texoma on the Texas border has reached the main spillway for only the third time ever, triggering flooding downstream. Only once in the 1950s and in 1990 has water flowed over that huge main spillway.
Independence Day was yesterday. What did I do? I tried to lay low to prevent a cold that has been trying to attack me this week. Thus, I was taking elderberry, echinacea, nettle, olive leaf, and of course plenty of vitamin C. We also replaced the U-joints on our 15 passenger van in preparation for our upcoming trip. We hoped to get rid of a severe vibration at highway speeds. Unfortunately, it seems that the U-joints weren't the problem. There aren't many things left to try. Perhaps it is an imbalanced brake drum (the brake drums were replaced recently, about the time the vibration started).
We took a drive to try out our handiwork in the evening, and ended up at a fireworks stand about 4 miles from our house (actually, it was more of a fireworks superstore). The Belmar golf course was putting on a spectacular display across the street, so we watched for about a half-hour, before finally getting bored and going inside the store. There were people setting off fireworks all around the area--probably 10 places within a mile of there. It is illegal to set off fireworks inside the city limits, but that area is just between the Oklahoma City and Norman city limits. Of course, it seems that nobody pays attention to the law anyway, judging by the fireworks going up hundreds of places that we saw. Most of which were inside the city limits of Norman or OKC. Anyway, Belmar kept up its display for well-nigh an hour, I would say. It was more impressive than the Norman city display.
I'll be heading to New York and Maine on Friday the 13th, and will be flying back on Monday the 23rd. The rest of my family will mosey back in their own good time. I will also be flying to New York for several friends' weddings over Labor Day weekend.
June 28, 2007: The rain continues to fall--like a fireworks display, it appears the grand finale is upon us. Yesterday we broke the all-time record for most consecutive days with rain in Oklahoma City--it was the 15th day in a row. Tonight, the rain is expected to fall heavily throughout central Oklahoma--1 to 5 more inches. The National Weather Service Norman office website has changed its color to red, a warning that has previously been reserved for tornados. "Exceptional flooding likely" the site says-and when a government agency says exceptional, it really must be. Dangerous flooding... At least our house is on a hill.
On my way home from work today I had to drive through water flowing across the road in no less than 8 places in the 6 1/2 miles between our house and the interstate. What could I do on a job site in the rain? Get my ODOT truck stuck. Wonderful. Fortunately, the contractor's crew had little difficulty pulling me out... (not exactly a boost to the ego). The rain continues to fall.
There's been a run on gopher wood.
More books read recently:
- Twice Freed by Patricia St. John. A white-knuckle tale of Onesimus of Biblical fame. Not a very hard read, but very intense. I've read it at least three times. A very well-written tale (St. James is a very good writer).
- God's Smuggler. The wonderful true story of Brother Andrew and learning to follow the Holy Spirit. One of the great true stories of following Christ in the 20th century.
- Hunted and Harried. My first look at the books of R.M. Ballantyne, a 19th century author. A rather short book, overly abbreviated in a few places, but worthwhile nonetheless. I like books about the indomitable Scotch. Particularly the Covenanters.
The NBA draft is going on. Seattle got Kevin Durant! Great! Now come to OKC...
Hopefully, my family and I will be off the the Northeast within a few weeks...
June 26, 2007: In the last few months I've purchased several CDs of contemporary Christian music. Here is my 5-star playlist:
| Above All | Lenny LeBlanc |
| All Hail King Jesus | Terry Clark |
| As the Deer | Brent Helming |
| At the Foot of the Cross (Ashes to Beauty) | Kathryn Scott |
| Awesome God | Aaron Gayden |
| Awesome God | Praise Band |
| Be Unto Your Name | Robin Mark |
| Blessed Be Your Name | Kathryn Scott |
| Change My Heart, Oh God | Eddie Espinosa |
| Come Let Us Worship and Bow Down | Dave Doherty |
| Come, Now is the Time to Worship | Brian Doerksen |
| Days of Elijah | Robin Mark |
| Garments of Praise | Robin Mark |
| Give Thanks | Todd Warren |
| Great Is the Lord | Michael W. Smith |
| Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing) | Brian Doerksen |
| He Has Made Me Glad (I Will Enter His Gates) | Terry Clark |
| He is Exalted | Twila Paris |
| He Reighs/I Could Sing of Your Love Forever | Peter Furler |
| Heart of Worship | Jeff Johnson |
| Here I Am to Worship | Eoghan Heaslip |
| How Majestic Is Your Name | Michael W. Smith |
| It Is Well | Brian Doerksen |
| More Precious Than Silver | Lynn DeShazo |
| Open Our Eyes | Bob Cull |
| Refiner's Fire | Brian Doerksen |
| Revival | Robin Mark |
| Sanctuary | Randy Rothwell |
| Shine, Jesus, Shine (Lord, the Light of Your Love) | Eddie Espinosa |
| Shout to the Lord | Brandi Holbein |
| Step by Step (O God You Are My God) | Jacque Deshelter |
| The Heart of Worship | Matt Redman |
| When I survey (The Wonderous Cross) | Kathryn Scott |
| When It's All Been Said and Done | Robin Mark |
I have a lot of time at work where I can listen to music, so I listen to my iRiver Clix2--contemporary Christian music, music recorded by various brethren I know, and recordings of teachings from the churches. I also listen to KLOVE and Airone radio stations sometimes--I switch off when their music is too rocky. I am not a fan of a strong beat at all. That said, a number of the songs above have a fairly strong beat; it is hard to find otherwise these days. The top CD set I have, I think, is the Celtic Worship: Live from Ireland set of 2 CDs. I really like nearly all of the songs on that set.
Here are my 4-star songs from my collection:
| All I Want to Do | Eoghan Heaslip |
| Arise King of Kings | Eoghan Heaslip |
| As the Deer | The Maranatha Singers |
| Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty | Bob Fitts |
| Change My Heart, Oh God | Eddie Espinosa |
| Come into His Presence | Lynn Baird |
| Come, Now is the Time to Worship | Brian Doerksen |
| Faithful One | Brian Doerksen/Kathryn Scott |
| Father, I Adore You | The Maranatha Singers |
| Filled with Glory | |
| Give Thanks | H. Smith |
| Give Thanks | Don Moen |
| Glorify Thy Name | Eden's Bridge |
| Glorify Thy Name | Terry Clark |
| God of Wonders | Marc Byrd |
| Great Is the Lord | Deborah Smith |
| He is Exalted | Eden's Bridge |
| He is Exalted | Twila Paris |
| Heaven Is Our Home | Kathryn Scott |
| Here I Am to Worship | |
| Hope of the Nations | Brian Doerksen |
| How Great Is Our God | Jesse Reeves |
| Hungry (Falling on My Knees) | Kathryn Scott |
| I Exalt Thee | Todd Warren |
| I Give You My Heart | Delirious?/Hillsong |
| I Love You, Lord | Laurie Klein |
| I Love You, Lord | Audra Wyrosdick |
| I Stand in Awe | Ross Parsley |
| I Will Celebrate | Linda Duvall |
| I Worship You | Eden's Bridge |
| Jesus, name Above All Names | Naida Hearn |
| Jesus, name Above All Names | Bill Batstone |
| Let the River Flow | Darell Evans |
| Listen To Our Hearts | Eden's Bridge |
| Lord, Have Mercy | Eoghan Heaslip |
| Lord I Lift Your Name on High | Maranatha Singers |
| Lord I Lift Your Name on High | Aaron Gayden |
| Majesty | Eden's Bridge |
| Mighty Is Our God | Gerrit Gustafson |
| More Love, More Power | Jude del Hierro |
| More Love, More Power | Keith Matten |
| More Precious Than Silver | Eden's Bridge |
| More Precious Than Silver | Kristina Hamilton |
| My Redeemer Lives | Reuben Morgan |
| Open Our Eyes | Holland Davis |
| Open the Eyes of My Heart | Paul Baloche |
| Rescue | Jared Anderson |
| Shout to the North | Robin Mark |
| Sing for Joy | Lamont Hiebert |
| Sing to the King | Billy Foote |
| Surely the Presence | Eden's Bridge |
| Take My Life | Scott Underwood |
| The River Is Here | Andy Park |
| The Wonder of Your Cross | Robin Mark |
| There Is a Redeemer | Hope Owen/Jason Eskridge |
| Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus | Eden's Bridge |
| We Bring the Sacrifice of Praise | Angel Smythe |
| You Are Holy (Prince of Peace) | |
| You Are My All in All | Dennis Jernigan |
| You Shine | Brian Doerksen |
| You Surround Me | Brian Doerksen |
| Your Name | Paul Baloche |
It's raining again. And the rain chances remain high throughout this week. I do believe we are going to make up for the last several years of drought all in a few months. Normally this time of year is hot and dry--like 95 and sunny with a few puffy clouds. Instead, it is heavily cloudy most of the time, with breaks just enough to really get one hot.
My father is recovering well from his cancer surgery. He had an appointment with his doctor/surgeon yesterday, and he said the recovery was going fine. Dad has had a little blood that was worrying us a little, but the doctor was okay with that. He said dad needed to walk about a mile a day, which isn't entirely comfortable, but dad will do it. All in all, the recovery is going quite well. Dad still has 2 1/2 weeks before he is cleared for full activity.
June 23, 2007: I've put together a couple of new photo albums. The Real Oklahoma is an album that shows what Oklahoma really looks like--not at all like the deserts of the cowboy movies. A second album shows my family through the years in different locations.
The weather here still behaves as if it were April or May--storms and rain have come nearly non-stop since the beginning of May. Since May 1st, we have had a total of 4 clear days and 26 days where rain has fallen. That is entirely abnormal. We have gotten some 12 inches of rain, or about 1/3 of our average annual total. It is truly a blessing, though--an Oklahoman never complains about rain. The drought of the last few years has come to a complete end, and the lakes have finally filled up.
Because there has been so much rain, work has been rather slow, as there isn't much construction work to inspect when the rain is coming down. I have read a number of books in the last week, all of which I recommend heartily:
- Henty's In Freedom's Cause: one of the excellent books written by G. A. Henty, this being perhaps his finest. If you haven't looked into the Henty novels and want to learn history, this is the way to go. From a semi-Christian perspective. Written by a Victorian-era Englishman.
- The Crown and Covenant Series:
- Duncan's War
- King's Arrow
- Rebel's Keep
- These books are wonderful historical novels looking into the trials of the Covenanters in Scotland. I have read them three times a piece. I consider them almost a "must read." Not difficult reading--appropriate for early teenage readers.
- Guns of Thunder (the first of the Faith and Freedom Series). This series follows the grandchildren of the characters in the Crown and Covenant series, now in the American colonies. Indians, the War of Jenkin's Ear, and the Great Awakening are the main points of interest. Set in the upper Connecticut valley.
- The Raider's Promise (the fifth and final book in the Viking Quest series). The whole series is written from an excellent Christian perspective, following an Irish slave in the hands of the Vikings. The writing isn't great, but good enough.
- Unwrapping the Pharaohs. This is an excellent book which reconciles ancient Egyptian chronology with the time frame required by the Bible. I strongly recommend this for defenders of Noah's flood and the Biblical chronology.
June 11, 2007: Another week--another betrothal announced. Again I was caught utterly unawares. A perfect record!
The weather is turning hot, and I am outside all day long (when I'm not in my air-conditioned truck). I'm working on a job site for ODOT, assisting the inspectors who make sure that the job is done right. I will be out there for another 5 months. The work is easy but rather boring, as much of the time is spent simply watching and making sure the contractor does everything right. Which they don't. Which is why we are paid to watch them.
Soon, I hope that, with the assistance of my computer-language whiz brother, this site will be transformed, with added functionality, features, and interactivity. We'll see..
My father is continuing to recuperate and is doing well, though it takes time to heal.
Last month I purchased a new mp3 player called an IRiver Clix 2. So far, I have been very pleased with its performance. I usually carry it everywhere I go--when out in my truck on the jobsite, I hook it up to an FM transmitter so I can listen to it over the truck's sound system. It also does a decent job of recording, though its microphone is rated a voice recorder. I've recorded all the church meetings since I got it. A few weeks after I got it, I tried it out at our house for recording piano and voice. Since it was the first try, the results weren't the best, but surprisingly good for just an mp3 player's microphone: sample worship song.
June 4, 2007: It has been a while since I wrote here, the reasons for which I foreshadowed in my previous entry. My father had his cancer surgery, which was successful in any measure of the word. The primary focus was on battling fear, rather than on the physical ailment. In truth, we looked on this as rather an opportunity to grow, a trial in the path, a way to learn how to battle the enemy. And there was victory. In our family, fear was never allowed to persist—whenever the enemy attempted to plant fear, we battled back. Dad, in particular, had the greatest “reasons” to fear. Cancer killed his mother and other relatives in the past—this history was a potential avenue for the enemy to attack. But rather than fall to the enemy’s blows, Dad stood firm and took the land from the enemy, conquering one of his greatest fears. It was a great victory for him, and his victory was echoed through the family he leads, as we saw him happy and joyful in the midst of the trial and reflected that attitude. Certainly, there were difficulties, trying times. But those circumstances were simply opportunities for victories.
Here I will quote my notes from my Dad’s teaching the Sunday after he found out he had cancer. These show what our attitude should be in cases like this:
"Be able to walk in supernatural peace and joy—be peaceful and joyful whether you feel good or not. The Lord is bringing that in us.
"There are milestones after which you are never the same again—marriage, children, my acceptance of the Lord…. When I accepted the Lord, many things fell away immediately. But there are still battles with the old man. The Lord drove out the Canaanites little by little. It is the Lord’s timing when He reveals more to us. We do not judge those who do not see—the Lord hasn’t shown them. Take the land.
"Believe the good report. When I was waiting on the biopsy report, was I going to claim I was cancer free? Is that the good report? Numbers 13:30; 14:7-9. The good report is not that there is nothing bad going on, it is that we will overcome it and the Lord is with us. You need not fear the giants. Fear is a big thing we must deal with.
"Hebrews 2:5-9. We take part is putting all things in subjection to Jesus.
"1 Corinthians 15:24-28. Death is the last enemy to be abolished. There are a lot of enemies between here and there. All of us will die—I am not worried about that. I just would not like to leave before my work is done.
"We give way to too many words the enemy speaks. There is also a measure of authority over sickness God has for us that we have not yet walked in. We have seen many miracles over the years… A lot of that has to do with really finding the will of the Lord. My illness is a practice ground. God is bringing us to a more complete walk in that.
"The enemy cannot win. We stand against his attempts to create as much destruction as he can.
"Healing is one thing we are learning to walk in. Another is overcoming our emotions, controlling them. Another is fear, combating fear.
"Everybody has their own set of giants they are supposed to defeat. Don’t worry about other’s giants. You can help them fight theirs, but don’t get all worried about the giants you fear the most. You won’t necessarily have to fight them.
"God is good—don’t anticipate things and fear them. Get rid of fear entirely. John 21:18-22. God has a different plan for each person. It is what Jesus wants. His power is able to make me remain as long as he wants. Don’t worry about how you would deal with what others are undergoing. I have the grace for what I am walking through. When the time comes the Lord has the grace for you.
"Emotions, thoughts can get to you. Grab on to the Word. 2 Peter 1:2-3. Those kinds of words are very strengthening. God has given everything pertaining to life. Romans 3:4. God is true. The reality of God’s Word is greater than the realities of this earth.
"God wants us to take the land. Of the increase of the government of Christ there is no end. It is not static.
"Psalm 103."
The outcome of the surgery was success, and my father is a week and a half into his convalescence. He was able to go to meeting yesterday, and he is able to get around, though he is careful. The pathology report came back stating that the cancer was contained and radiation is not required. He’ll probably go back to work this Wednesday, though he will primarily just supervise others doing the work.
Thanks to everyone who was and is praying. The Lord’s work is being accomplished. Many good things are and will be coming out of this time.
April 24, 2007: What a month this has been. At the end of March and beginning of April, our family was hit with probably the worst stomach bug we have ever had. I missed four days of work, and went without food four days. I never have had anything like it. It took at least 2 weeks to regain my strength afterward, and only now am I back to playing basketball, football, and other sports with my brothers. I still am 5+ pounds lighter than I was before the illness, as are several of my siblings. I lost 13 pounds, which I did not have available to lose. I am one of those odd people who wants to put on weight...
To top it off, a few days after my illness, I went through the most intense pain I have ever felt--some pain under my sternum. What it was we don't know, but I think I qualify as knowing what it is to be in agony now. Fortunately, that only lasted about 30 minutes.
In other words, I have felt a lot of pain recently, but the Lord has given us all the grace to deal with our troubles, and it has been good for us. A growing experience.
Now, new things have happened over this past week that made the last weekend about as crazy as we have ever had.
My father was diagnosed with cancer on Friday, which was a surprise. However, the Lord was giving us grace, and nobody in our family is even worried. It is rather amazing. The prayers of the saints buoy our spirits. This is an excellent time to show our trust in God, and Dad is leading the way, remaining happy and joyful--almost more than he usually is.
Last week, my mother's cousin died in Portland, a man distanced from his family and with no friends we know of. My grandmother is taking care of the arrangements, in lieu of anyone else who cares. So that is a second thing we are involved in.
Finally, one of my closest friends announced his betrothal in church last Sunday. It was a surprise to me--I maintained my 100% oblivious average on all betrothals that have happened in our church. It is an awesome thing, however, and will be wonderful. God is good.
So--it has been a busy time. And the Lord is being glorified. Isn't that the point?
March 20, 2007: Spring is truly here in Norman. The weeds are green (the grass takes longer), the trees and bushes are all blooming and leaves are starting to come out. Much of my spare time recently has been spent pruning trees, trimming the hedge, planting things, etc. The weather is splendid. Of course, what comes along with spring? Allergies. I definitely got a good dose of them--after being up several hours in the night coughing, I gave in and am now taking an antihistamine.
My rotation through ODOT has now taken me to the Roadway division--designing the road's geometry, vertical and horizontal profiles, and drainage. It is very different from the lab environment of my last stop, materials. It should be interesting!
I am spending quite a bit of time working on some websites right now, both for myself and others. There just isn't a whole lot of time for doing hobbies right now...
March Madness is also something I am following closely, as I do like college basketball. My bracket is a mess, unfortunately--however, I could still make a comeback. My final four picks were Florida, Kansas, Georgetown, and Texas A&M, with Florida beating Georgetown in the championship. My youngest brother is leading our family bracket challenge.
March 8, 2007: This site is migrating to a new domain: GodismyJudgeOK.com. My name, Daniel, means God is my Judge in Hebrew, and I have taken that as my motto. OK is there because I live in Oklahoma, and GodismyJudge.com wasn't available.
Spring has come in Norman. The daffodils are blooming, and I saw a crab apple tree (I think) in full bloom. The weather is in the 60s and 70s. Sorry, friends in New York--we are making up for our nasty winter, I guess.
A great website that I frequent is
Answers in Genesis promotes the literal interpretation of the Genesis account of Creation. From all my studies on the subject, which have been many, I have come to hold views which agree with what Answers in Genesis says. Their scientific work is impeccable. They have great resources on all issues relating to creation and evolution. They are an excellent resource for the study of anything related to scientific apologetics. I would consider their site one of the best sites on the internet, hands down. Once their museum is open in Cincinnati I hope to visit it.
One of my favorite studies of all is that of the early histories of post-flood man. (Obviously, pre-flood history is only available in the Bible). One of my favorite books on the subject is available online: After the Flood. I think I know that book backwards and forwards. Also interesting is The Table of Nations, an essay online. One must be careful, as there is a lot of junk history and science out there, but these, I believe, are accurate. I have tons of other links relating to creation and evolution, but 'tis time for bed...
February 19, 2007: President's Day. I'm off work, since I work for the state. It has been some time since I last updated the blog.
I am now working as an engineer-in-training with the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. ODOT has an excellent training program for its civil engineers. I will be rotating through the divisions within ODOT. For example, my first two weeks were in Planning and Research, then the next two weeks in Traffic, and I am presently in Materials. After six weeks in Materials, I will move on to Roadway, and then move out into the field to a residency to work in Construction, Surveying, and Maintenence. After one year I will have my choice of which division I want to go to, provided they have room. At this point, civil engineers are in demand, so that is no problem. It is really a wonderful system for giving the new engineers a good, well-rounded perspective on the work done by the department of transportation. So far, working for ODOT has been a good experience. Very different from school, but good.
This site will soon be migrating to a new domain, since I am not a student at OU. This site will be hosted on JayTech Systems' server.
January 2, 2007: The Fiesta Bowl last night was a truly excellent game, with plenty of determination and guts shown on both sides. Oklahoma was down so far that they could have given up, but displaying the heart they have shown all year, they fought back. There were numerous breaks that went to each team, and plenty of mistakes. I wouldn't say Oklahoma lost that game so much as Boise State won it, and they deserved to win it.
Again, this is an opportunity to not let one's emotions be dictated by the outcome of a sporting event. It seems, from the message boards, that there are a lot of sore losers out there. As a Christian, my emotions should not be dictated by such things.
Where does my loyalty lie? God, family, and the Body of Christ. A sports team is not included in that list. Should I feel loyalty to OU? They paid me to go to school there, but does that require my loyalty in return? In my case, I went because I felt the Lord called me to. The University was simply a tool the Lord gave me to use. The Regents did not specify any return they expected from me when they gave me the scholarship. Therefore, I will assume none. I gave them my talents for four and a half years--they got to tout the quality of their students, and the research I did while at OU.
Loyalty to a sports team is misguided. Being a "fan" is not worth my while. I still like to watch sports--I like the toughness displayed, the qualities of heart and determination shown in a game such as that played last night. I like to watch the splendid atheletes use the skills God gave them. However, I do not believe letting myself get emotionally involved in a game is productive.
And now--I've got to get back to work...
December 30, 2006: I have been enjoying time off, catching up on everything I neglected during the last semester. It is wonderful to have all the pressure off after so long a time working under it. I start work at the Department of Transportation on January 8th, Lord willing. What have I been doing in my time off?
- Working out: weights and basketball
- Cleaning up: finding a place for the piles of books and papers, sending some of my college stuff to the attic.
- Cleaning out my laptop: the hard drive was full, so I've been dumping quite a bit to CDs.
- Straightening out my finances, which I have not touched since the last semester started.
- Appointments: dentist and orthodontist checkups.
- Shopping and running errands: I've got to get my wardrobe in order for my new job.
- Watching sports: when they're on, which isn't that often since we don't have cable. Sports means basketball and football. Figure skating doesn't count, sorry.
- Playing more piano and guitar: I've been out of practice entirely.
- Listening to music: students get a free subscription to Ruckus, so I had access to unlimited downloads of music. I downloaded quite a lot of music by Christian artists. Then I've been going through all the rock and roll stuff, which I can't stand. Of most of the artists I have just a few songs that I found worthwhile. I have quite a few by Don Moen--most of his music was good. Overall, I have music by:
- 2nd Chapter of Acts
- Alvin Slaughter
- Amy Grant
- Brian Doerksen
- Davy Bauer
- Don Moen
- Eden's Bridge (Hymns)
- Hillsong
- Jason Morant
- Joe Pace
- Kristyn Lennox
- Michael Card
- Michael W. Smith
- Newsboys
- Newsong
- Paul Wilbur
- Petra
- Robin Mark
- Steve Green
- Straightway
- Terry MacAlmon
- Twila Paris
- Veggie Tales
- Finally, the next thing I must do is write up my thesis as a journal article for publication in a peer-reviewed technical journal.
December 18, 2006: It was a difficult final month, but the Lord's grace was there. I finished my Master's degree, and am done with college. I start work at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation on January 8th. It has been an amazing ride at OU, but God was there all the time.
This website will soon have to be moved off of the University servers, so I'll be on the lookout for a good host.
Here I reprint the dedication and acknowledgements from my thesis:
Dedication
To the Lord God:
by His grace and love I am hereAcknowledgements
I want to thank my major professor, Dr. Chris Ramseyer, for his help throughout my time at the University of Oklahoma. He hired me as a research assistant before my junior year, and obtained the funding for the research project that became this thesis. He was always accommodating and very knowledgeable and helpful on all questions I had. I am very grateful for his mentoring throughout my time at Fears Structural Engineering Laboratory. I want to thank him for his editing of my thesis and advice on how to write this thesis.
I want to thank the other two members of my Master’s committee as well. Dr. Kyran Mish (the Director of Fears Structural Engineering Laboratory) and Dr. Jin-Song Pei both contributed much to my learning experience at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Pei hired me as a teaching assistant during my junior year, and was always helpful to me. Dr. Mish was always ready to discuss things with me, whether related to the University, research, structural engineering, or any other interesting topic. I thank him for letting me study and work for countless hours in his “IMish Theater” conference room at Fears Lab. I want to thank both Dr. Mish and Dr. Pei for their advice on and editing of my thesis.
I want to thank my parents, Tom and Sharon Myers, for their love, training, and wise guidance for the last 22 years. I thank my siblings, Michael, Sarah, Andrew, Joseph, and Philip, for their love and support through my time in college. I thank Sarah specially for her help in editing this thesis. I thank all of the brethren at Norman Christian Fellowship for their prayers and support during my time at OU.
All of those who helped during the research at Fears Lab deserve thanks as well. Mike Schmitz gave much good advice on safety and construction of testing equipment. Jen Teck Kao, whose lab assistant I was during my first summer at Fears Lab, contributed much to this thesis through his Master’s work. His work opened the door for this research to be done. I also want to thank Nam Nguyen, my lab assistant during most of this research, for his hard work. Finally, I want to thank all those who helped with the batching of concrete: Kenny Biggs, Chris Ely, Matt Gastgeb, Roozbeh Kiamanesh, Randy Martin, Jared Schwennessen, Shideh Shadravan, Zach West, Cortney Westfal, and Jessica Whittle.
Finally, I want to thank the companies that supported this research project. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation provided the funding for this project. Dolese Bros., inc., and Holcim provided materials for this research project.
Finally, I want to give some links to the information on the internet regarding Megan Ripley's death. She was a part of our sister church in Maine.
- Sun Journal: Megan Michelle Ripley
- Sun Journal: A Lover of Horses, Her Family
- Sun Journal: Sharing Memories
- MeganRipley.TroyTabernacle.com
November 18, 2006: What an incredible two weeks! Quite possibly the hardest two weeks since I started college.
It all started two weeks ago--Sunday, November 5th. I realized that I would have a hectic week, so I wrote out a schedule for the week. I had Advanced Finite Homework due on the Wednesday, and on the Friday three things: Plates and Shells homework, a Matrix Structural Analysis project, and my thesis. Despite working on that tight schedule all week, I couldn't get everything done. The homework sets both took quite a few hours to work, but I finished them. The Matrix project I worked on all day Thursday and in the morning Friday, and couldn't get good results from the computer program. I ended up giving up and asking for an extension on the homework, which my professor graciously gave. I simply didn't have enough time to finish it. Finally, I didn't get my thesis done either. The last permissable day to turn in a reading copy to my committe was the next Tuesday, so I was not overly concerned.
And then I got sick. I got quite possibly the worst upper resparatory infection I have ever had. Saturday I was down, but worked on my thesis some. Sunday I was okay, and did more work on the thesis. Monday I started out okay, and then the fever hit. By the end of the day I was miserable. Tuesday I didn't get off the couch all day. My sister helped me work on my thesis by taking dictation and helping me organize my references--but I didn't get the thesis done. Then the sore throat of doom hit. I've never had a sore throat of this caliber, I think. I mustered up enough strength (and took enough medicine) to get to class Wednesday for one class and to finish my thesis and get it printed and assembled. Then I went home and crashed. Dad and I stayed home from meeting (he was as sick as me). Thursday I worked on my Matrix project on campus again, from 2:00 until about 11:00 at night. I got the project done, but was quite miserable by the end. I only got 4 hours of sleep. Friday I had to get up early, take my 14 day readings on my last batch of concrete at the lab, rush to a test in Plates and Shells, and turn in my Matrix project. That was the end of the incredible two weeks. Everything got turned in, though not all on time (which worked on my soul a little--I "failed" on the Matrix project--I had to ask for mercy).
Last evening, we celebrated Andrew's 16th birthday. It's hard to celebrate when everybody's in various stages of being sick or exhausted. Mostly sick. Andrew has the fever Dad and Philip and I had. Dad and I have been sick for a long while now, over a week. I have recovered quite a bit. The fever is long gone (I'm still on non stop Tylenol, though), the sore throat is mostly gone, and the congestion is clearing up (I'm on a decongestant/expectorant/cough suppressant). I'm also on antibiotics, and have been since Thursday. The antibiotics started the turn around, I think--I first started feeling a little better for a while on Thursday.
It was a pretty incredible two weeks. The Lord definitely was there. It was a struggle, though. A trial.
Now Thanksgiving break is coming up, and my birthday (I turn 22 on Thanksgiving). A short chance to relax before the stretch run--but I'm sure nothing could match these last two weeks on degree of difficulty. At least I hope not.
October 28, 2006: Here is a list of some software titles that are quite interesting. Some are already out and some are in development still:
- Europa Universalis III (Forum) (Being a history fan, this game will probably be the best game ever in my opinion. EUII occupies that spot right now.)
- Knights of Honor (Forum) (Has been out for a while, and needs patching. A fantastic medieval strategy game even so-I've played the demo)
- Victoria Revolutions (A game about the 19th century, up through World War I. Very economics based, about industrialization)
- Birth of America (Forums) (It is like a board game on computer, but interesting nonetheless. It covers an era largely neglected in computer gaming)
- Medieval 2 Total War (Looks like an excellent immersive medieval combat game. May be a bit too bloody)
- Sid Meier's Railroads (A strategy game, but looks nice too)
I'm keeping an eye out for a good hand held digital music recorder. The mp3 players have only voice-quality recording. The recorders I've seen so far are the Edirol r-09 and the Zoom H4 (Forum), which I am considering getting if it gets good reviews and the price comes down.
The Cardinals won! Wonderful. I, unlike my dad, do not get into baseball at all. I played a board game during most of the game last night.
Some books that look good that I don't own: My Amazon.com "wish"list
October 26, 2006: Lord willing, I will be defending my thesis on the Tuesday or Thursday after Thanksgiving. That means that I need to complete the thesis by about November 10th. After that, I will give the thesis to my committee and they will edit it, and discuss it with me at my defense. Hopefully, the two weeks after the defense will be enough time to make appropriate changes and to get the thesis printed and deposited in the library. I'm on the stretch run now...
After a few cool days, it has warmed up and is very nice outside. According to the internet weather report. I haven't actually been outside since I got to work early this morning. Too much to do!
The first round of tests in my classes is almost over; I have a matrix methods test tomorrow. So far the results have been satisfactory, I think.
The Cardinals have taken a 2-1 lead in the World Series, and their hottest pitcher is up tonight: Suppan has been doing very well this post-season. They just might win the series!
October 20, 2006: The Cardinals made the World Series! The only two teams my dad really roots for are the St. Louis Cardinals and the OU football team. He couldn't watch the 9th inning last night--kept flipping channels.
Some interesting quotes from Adrian Peterson following his broken collarbone:
On talking to his dad after his injury:
“It was crazy. When I first spoke to him I told him it was suppose to be a happy day and then I broke my collarbone. He told me, ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ So you have to take it for what it is and stay focused and keep praying to God. I have been staying positive and I am trying to move forward.”(This was the first time his dad had been able to see him in person since elementary school; he had been in prison.)On what was going through his mind after the game:
“A lot of different stuff was running through my head. They say everything happens for a reason and you really can’t question it. You really can’t question what God does. It was hard dealing with it. My dad would tell me all the time, ‘A life can be cut off just like that.’
"So I had to think back to some of the things that I have been saying and have to realize that life switches off just like that. What are you going to do about it? Hold your head down or help your team out and keep your head up and move forward? It was just a lot of different things to think about.”
It's good to see him mention God.
The website for Europa Universalis III has been launched. It looks very nice.
October 18, 2006: We just had our first really strong cold front come through today. The temperature has been falling through the day so far, down to around 50 right now. The winds are gusty from the north. Many of the trees have suddenly decided that fall is here, and that their leaves need to turn and fall.
My thesis is starting to round into shape. I've only got a few more weeks before I need to submit it to my committee for editing.
October 6, 2006: This week I finally got around to batching the four "lost batches" from my thesis research. I lost the data from those four batches between last February and August; where it went, nobody knows. It would have saved me a lot of time had the data been found... I spent about 30 hours at the lab this week, and got some serious exercise. And a few blisters. Shoveling 1400 pounds of aggregate and weighing it into 50 pound buckets and hauling those buckets around by hand can take its toll. But it is done now. I hopefully will never batch any more concrete at the lab. It's hard work--makes one appreciate an engineering degree. Working in engineering is not back-breaking.
Now it's time to work on the thesis in earnest. I have less than two months, I expect, before I have to defend it. It ain't done, that's for sure. Long enough, but not done. I've got some 180 pages right now, but plenty of work before I feel that it is polished enough for (*gulp*) publication. Of course, the classes are starting to get harder as well. Good thing the batching is out of the way. There was no other place to fit it into the schedule, so I see the Lord's hand in the timing.
The OU-Texas game is tomorrow, a chance for validation for one of the two teams. I think that the Sooners will win the game, though it will be a close, fairly high-scoring affair. Adrian Peterson is just too good to stop. I pick OU, 31 to 24.
I played in the ASCE-OU 3rd annual golf scramble last week. I helped organize it the first year of its existence. It was really a fun time--my boss (Chris) paid my way, so it was really a nice time. (Maybe I am too concerned with saving money). Anyway, I was on a team with one other student and two people from Star Buildings. The two from Star were not particularly skilled golfers: one played once a year, and the other, though showing remarkable talent, started last month. The student was named Mark. He is in his 30s, and was a greenskeeper for a while, and used to play every day. The OU course was playing about 6600 yards, and the wind was 20+ mph out of the south. We started on the 10th, and it took a while to get going. After 7 holes, we were even (!) after 1 birdie and 1 bogey (on a par 5, no less). Then we started getting things going. We proceeded to birdie 6 of the next 8. Mark and I accounted for all but 1 stroke. One of the guys from Star holed a key birdie put. I played about my best golf ever in that streak. I hit an 8 iron to 6'7" on a 150 yard par 3. Unfortunately, the closest to the pin was 6'6". I failed to win the hybrid : (. Then, on a 220 yard par 3 (downwind, though the wind had fallen) I hit a perfect 3 iron to 2'6", and made the put. Possibly one of the best shots I've ever hit.
Anyway, we finished with a 65 and third place, with a 30 on our back nine. Had I been playing alone, I estimate I would have shot a between 77 and 80, which would have easily been my best there. From the sooner tees, which we were playing, the course rates 72.2. I'm glad I've never had to play from the tips: 7200 yards with a 74.9 rating.
September 23, 2006: The career fair went well; I handed out a number of resumes, and have some interviews. Here's what I've been doing recently:
- Going to classes
- Homework for classes (a lot of theory in the classes this year)
- Working on my thesis (not a whole lot of time after doing the homework)
- Working on my resume (before the career fair)
- Playing sports with my brothers (since my knee recovered from the nasty fall I took several weeks ago)
- Designing/redesigning some of my board games (primarily After the Flood, also The Civil War). After the Flood is the only of my games that compares favorably with most of the released games.
- Playing a couple of new board games I bought: Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride
- and so forth
Let's see--I wanted to list the links that I most commonly use right now:
- Europa Universalis III Forums -- I actually stopped playing computer games early last spring, but I keep up with EUIII's development. I considered EUII far and away the best game ever made. I made several mods for EUII.
- ESPN.com College Football -- I'm from Norman--what do you expect? Hockey?
- OUinsider Forums -- I follow the basketball more than the football forums, because people get really angry over on the football forums, and they tend to start cursing. I did go over there to see the reactions and video feeds after the Oregon debacle. It really was a blown call, blown just about every way it could be blown.
- WorldNetDaily -- News with a Republican bias. Not that I agree with all of their takes at all; I wouldn't even call myself a Republican exactly. I don't think my views fit in a party. Content can be PG, so watch out.
- AllEmpires.com Military History Forum -- I copiled a list of the Top 100 generals of all time with the help of the users on this forum. Michael Lee Lanning's Military 100 is an absolutely awful list in my opinion.
- Norman, OK Enhanced Weather Page -- This is my first source for weather on the internet. Always up to date.
- Dr. Jeff Master's WunderBlog -- My second source for weather, primarily tropical.
- Amazon.com and Ebay.com -- Shopping.
- Gutenberg.org -- Thousands of classic books online.
- BoardGameGeek.com -- Though I don't come close to qualifying for that moniker, I found this a useful site for choosing those two board games I recently purchased.
Now for a review of those new games:
Ticket to Ride is the best board game I have ever played. It was released in 2004 by Alan Moon. The game is really elegant in design, but very deep. I have the original version, while the Europe and Marklin editions add some tweaks to the game play and new maps to play on.
The simple objective is to collect matching sets of cards to claim routes of the same color. These routes are railways linking cities on a map of the United States. Destination cards give you your mission on what cities you try to link. Unfortunately, there are limited locations for tracks, so you must choose wisely what to claim when. There is a large opening for blocking opponents' moves; so far we've played "nice."
I have never played another game approaching it on simplicity, elegance, and strategic and tactical depth. Until I played...
The Settlers of Catan -- Considered one of the best games ever made, this revolutionized the gaming industry when it came out in 1995. The premise is that the players are colonizing a newly-discovered island. I can't go into the game play, as it is too complex for a discussion here, but suffice it to say that there are many paths to victory, and there is plenty of interaction between the players, even though there is no conflict on the board. Tons of trading resources, etc. Read a review elsewhere for a deeper discussion.
We played this last night for the first time (Michael, Andrew, Philip, and me) last night. We expected a 60 to 90 minute game. However, due to our lack of skill, it took us fully 3 hours to play it. Interestingly, when Michael won I would have won on my next turn, and Andrew could have won on his previous turn, had he known what was in our hands. It is remarkably balanced. There is a bit too much angst for my taste, however, and it took a little to long. The game should take less time with experienced players, however.
September 18, 2006: Several things are coming up soon: the career fair is on Thursday, so I've got to get my resume brushed up. I got the necessary fly ash for rebatching the concrete batches that I lost the data for, so I must prepare for that as well. In addition, I should continue writing on my thesis when I have time. On the good side, I have no homework due this week. (Yes!)
Last Saturday's OU - Oregon football game illustrates the folly of putting ones emotions into a game. First of all, the game has no bearing whatever on my life. Second, even if it did bear on my life, I have no influence on the outcome anyway, and thus should not allow my emotions to be effected. What actually happened in that game reminds me of Ecclesiastes 9:11: "I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all." This is absolutely true of the vain pursuits of the world. One has no control over what happens. In the Kingdom, however, we can pray to the One who makes time and chance do His will.
Yesterday my family and most of the fellowship went to the hospital's lunch and carnival, which was great fun despite the rain and mud. And more mud. There was a wide selection of rides and other fun stuff. The rock-climbing wall was very difficult, as the holds were covered in mud and water. I almost managed the intermediate level. Joseph finished the intermediate. The overall champion from the fellowship was Peter, who actually touched the button on the advanced climb. Uriah came within a few inches as well. There was an arcade with foosball, basketball, and a hockey game. I did very well with the basketball (that's my game) but lost at foosball. Dad and Tommy beat Andrew and me. Dad really like the hockey; his brother used to have one long ago. There were many other rides there (like the bungee/trampoline thing and the bull ride). We really had a great time there for some 4 hours.
September 9, 2006: School is getting into full swing now. I turned in a 22 page homework set for Matrix Methods yesterday. Advanced Finite has a very scary set coming up next Wednesday; it is theory and derivations--not my cup of tea. Then on Friday, the first Plates and Shells homework is due.
Fair report: my photos got a second place and two honorable mentions-approximately comparable to last year's results. The competition in photography is pretty fierce. Sarah won quite a few ribbons from her twelve entries; this was her last year in the children's sections. The competition is weaker there, but the categories are far more limited. Andrew got a first and two seconds for his three entries: a drawing, a painting, and a sculpture. Joseph got a couple of third place ribbons. The McCormick clan absolutely cleaned up the fair. I would guess something on the order of 60 ribbons. It was amazing walking around and finding entry after entry with ribbon after ribbon. I'd bet that there was no other clan with anything like that many ribbons.
I have updated the sports page somewhat, but it is still in process. I found out how to put RSS from other sites onto these pages--an example is to the right.
September 4, 2006: Labor Day, a welcome break from the build-up of school, has arrived. The nice weather has held; it is only going to be around 80 today. We're having the Roswurms over this afternoon. That means football, and lots of it. Touch, of course--we don't want anyone injured.
The big thing happening this week is the Cleveland County Fair. I'm entering ten different photos (all in different categories). Last year I got 1 blue ribbon and a couple of honorable mentions. Check out this year's fair entries here. Sarah is entering something like 15 different things. She's got 2 reserve grand champion ribbons so far... Ashley and Amy probably will have many entries as well.
OU won their first game--barely. They'll get better.
I have updated much of the site, particularly the hobbies page and the photography pages. I also have my new résumé up. I have deleted the comments page to reduce spam, and to email me you'll have to find my email address through the search.ou.edu people search. I have added a page on web design as well.
August 29, 2006: It was a hectic first week.
- On Monday, I got my prospectus signed and submitted. Most of my family went up to the city to pick up Mom's new glasses, and then some of them went shopping in the evening.
- On Tuesday, I worked on the fears.ou.edu website, and we had singer's meeting in the evening.
- On Wednesday, I had class, and Dad and Mom had a meeting in the evening, so it was another evening out of the ordinary.
- On Thursday, Dad, Mom, and Sarah took over a meal to the Keiths. (Timothy is doing well; they brought him to meeting on Sunday. He isn't sleeping long at night, though; only an hour or two at a time.)
- On Friday, the OEC had the annual meeting, and some of the family went to that. All in all, a very abnormal first week.
And I still haven't found the missing batch sheets...
However, the heat has FINALLY broken. After 38 days this summer over 100, and days as hot as 105 last week, the rains and cold front hit on Saturday. We got over an inch of rain, while other areas got far more. And, wonder of wonders, the temperature outside right now (11:00 AM) is 71 degrees!! Praise the Lord. It is wonderful.
August 23, 2006: School has just started up again, and I'm rather swamped. Since I hadn't updated this site for a while, I thought I might as well try to fit it into my schedule as well. Right now I am:
- Writing my thesis on fiber reinforced concrete and bridge deck cracking, with the objective of finishing it in time to defend at the end of this Fall semester.
- Taking 3 classes in graduate school: Advanced Finite Element Analysis (which should be hard), Mechanics of Plates and Shells (which will be pretty strenuous), and Matrix Methods for Structural Analysis (I haven't had a class yet--but it sure sounds scary).
- In the midst of creating a website for the research lab where I work: Fears Structural Engineering Laboratory (fears.ou.edu is the site).
- Wondering what happened to my data sheets for 4 concrete batches of my Master's research, which I completed last winter. If they don't turn up, I'll have to redo that part of the research.
- Catching up on things after a long trip to New York. It's amazing what can happen while you're gone. I hope to have a few pictures up of the trip when I'm done updating this site.
I have already updated the Family page with a new photo of my family that was taken on the trip to New York.