Totally uncalled for.

Okay. Here it is- my story of employment. About 3 billion years late in coming, I know...

I don't want to rehash anything much about the whole Agape thing, because really I can't say much and its all behind me now. But it is important to appreciate the full scope of the following stories impact that I simply remind you that I was pretty miserable for a bit after I left. Agape and its people mean alot to me. And so even though I decided to "make the best of it" and I trusted God would eventually birth something from this, I had absolutely no suggestions for him. I had screwed things up pretty badly.

To compensate academically, my parents and I eventually worked out a more aggressive education plan at home. This will probably prove to be another wondrous work of Gods will; I ended up getting more organized and completing school faster as a result of leaving one. Odd.

While doing school on a Tuesday, I got a call. I picked it up and my friend Tim C. who used to go to my church was on the other line. I talked to him for a bit asking him all sorts of questions- he had just got back from Peru and was engaged, so I had a few for him) but eventually he told me "Hey, Zeke- actually, thats not the reason I called you. You remember my brother, Mike?"

I told him of course I did. I had met him on occasion and thought he was cool, but I had never really been friends or known him very well. Tim continued,

"Well, he works for a company, [AwesomeCo]- not sure if you have heard of it- doing I.T. stuff there, and there is an opening in the company right now. He thought of you and asked me if I could touch base and see if you were interested. It pays around such and such a year and is a full time job. Its in Salem. Are you interested?"

I asked him a few more questions, but of course I conceded that I was indeed interested. He gave me his brother's email address and I dropped him a line with my resume attached.

Mikes reply was short:

Sounds good man, when can you come in for an Interview? Are you free tomorrow?

Let me know. What are you looking for as far as salary is concerned?

I was dumbfounded. I talked to my parents, and then got back to Mike and set a time and day for the interview. My dad was a bit skeptical at first- he is, wisely, concerned that about me being able to finish my education. But this job's hours were 2nd shift- 3pm to 11pm- which is ideal.

After my dad was on board, which didn't take to long, he suggested that I try to make the best impression possible. We literally went to JC Penny and invested in some nice clothes, including a suit jacket and a TIE. Yeah. It was pretty funny. For the first half of the shopping trip, I just couldn't take it. It was too foreign to me- I am a WalMart-by-choice shopper. I bawk at even the most severe of sales at JC Penny's. But in the end, my dad knew it was important and he was fronting the cost. It took me awhile to get over that and the general sticker shock and actually look for something. Once we did, it still took a bit to decide what I wanted. We were looking at ties for maybe 10 minutes, having a conversation between us and the sales guy that went something like this:

Dad: "But now does this color go with that shade of blue? It doesn't clash with this, does it?"
Me: "I like this cause it really makes the colors pop. But its so clear, it almost makes the outfit look top heavy..."

Then we looked at each other and gave out a nervous laugh before I finally yelled "What are we DOING??" It was a strange but hilarious moment.

I went to the job interview and learned more. The people there were really nice and I got to know a bit more about the company and what I would do. I went in with the mentality that I had to fight to convince them of my technical ability. We ended up, however, not focusing on that very much. They seemed confident in that (for what reason I do not know) and instead talked more about the hours, what I wanted out of this job and so forth. It was good; I informed them that 3 to 11 was fine, (ideal, actually) and let them know that I was interested in this job because it would be a steady income but still give me the opportunity to learn some new things.

Days passed and I came in for another interview. Long story short, they hired me.

Now sit back and look upon this for a second- God took me out from some amazing people for awhile to deal with some things. But it left a void of fellowship and other things. Not only did he fill it, he gave me a job that makes me more money a month then I did on my own self employment all of last year. There is no way I can boast in this. I didn't even look for it. It came to me. And the people here are really great, too. Its amazing. This blessing was totally uncalled for.

So that is that. I have a full time job. But what exactly do I do you ask? The official job title is Batch Production Controller. But what does that mean?

Well, to understand this in context you have to realize what [AwesomeCo] does. [AwesomeCo] is a huge company that was actually started by [Awesome Oil Co] during a slump in the oil market, but now it has grown into a company that manages 15 TRILLION dollars of assets. Our division is a big part of that.

We're called [AwesomeCo] finance and we are an acquisition. Formally called [JustAsAwesomerCo], the founders of this company (most of who are still working here) found a great niche market- the overnight accounting for the stock market, basically. Every night, companies drop files on our servers that have all their trading information for the day. Every night, we run it through our systems- over 20 top of the line Power Edge servers and a Tandem mainframe- and spit it back out to them before the market opens so that they can trade on it. Over 90% of the securities exchange market goes through us. We are a relatively little company with a huge impact- if we went down, so would the market the next day. Because of that we have totally redundant servers in a different part of New Hampshire that will take over in the event this one goes down- complete with battery and generator backup.

Because it is imperative that this data get out every morning, there is a night shift that exists to babysit the automated system. I am training with them right now- every night, they monitor the system and check everything. We actually have a checklist where we go down a list of commands that are supposed to be run and make sure they were. If any of them are held up, we find out why. Sometimes its because the client hasn't sent us their data. Sometimes its a server glitch. Whatever it is, if it goes wrong, we have to get on the phone and get it resolved.

Right now, the department I am in supports three or so different applications. Their is the main one I told you about that does the data for most of the market, another one that is just for broker/dealers, and a brand new one which has come about because of some new regulations for the industry. The company has another program they are rolling out soon that has to get approved by all the regulating bodies. Once thats done, I'll move from the night shift to my 3 to 11 position. Right now, I'm on the 10pm to 6am shift. I'm cross training on backups and some other stuff. After a week, I'll move to the 1am to 9am position and train there. By the years end, the new program should be rolled out hopefully, and I will head up supporting it on my own shift. I'm pretty excited. Its cool stuff.

The greatest thing about it here is the environment. Everyone has been really nice and its pretty laid back. They have catered food every day for the people on the more sane shifts, and because I'm working after that they slip an extra 8 dollars a day in the salary for meals. They also have those awesome little individual serving coffee machines and a huge plethora of roasts to choose from- including such amazing flavors as blueberry and my new personal favorite of the season, pumpkin spice.

You do work here, but there is alot of in-between time when your waiting for files or stuff just isn't breaking and there isn't much to do, and thats when you get to utilize the broadband and blazing fast computers. Intel and I have had our differences in the past, but I am happy with my Pentium 4 hyperthreading system with two- count 'em, two! gigabytes of memory.

There is quite a bit more about my job that I'm sure I've left unanswered. But you get the gist. I waited for a bit to post this anyway, because I wanted to get a good feeling for what I'll be doing, but I figured if I didn't post it soon it would be pointless. If you guys have any questions though, feel free to ask them in the comments. I'll probably blog more about work in the near future.

Till next time everyone!

Edit:

Self-censored content:
My apologies to my new employer [AwesomeCo], who is amazing. Three days after I posted this, they called me because their web-crawlers flagged it for getting to close to revealing operational stuff and the company by name. They were really nice about it and simply let me know what I needed to change. All is well that ends as such.

---Z

Poetic musings

Free Fall

Life starts in the womb
A tower so strong and so tall
And from birth to the tomb
We are all in free fall

We all fall different
And we all fall the same
We fall in unique and predictable ways

Depending on season
And our number of days
Sometimes our life falls together
Sometimes we fall away

But we all fall-
This is the one "Same"
Sometimes we think we are static
But it is never that way

-_---_-__-

Mental Vental Beta

A breather from the triumph
A lull in the break-neck pace
I need to take my doughy lumps
Less the soup be to sweet to the taste

But sour I can not make the soup taste
Even if I tried, I can't wipe this grin off my face
And no one would for this show me hate
But I shouldn't be reckless and cause an opposite state

I watch and read the lines alive
With unspoken meaning they ebb and dive
Like the waves of a dangerous ocean
Taming with meanings not yet spoken
A rough yet true field where hearts are broken
From nebulous meanings bestowed in token

Sit I there with a distracted concern
Not quite sure of what I've learned
But knowing still that trouble lies
In the admiration of innocent eyes

Sit I again with face aglow
From phosphorus light I do well know
Reading posts and drinking in
I feel attached but distant from my kin

Reading and weighing whats before me
I choose to pass on a possibility
A possibility to do good but with high risk
Of commiting greivous error if I miss

For my words are not arrows trimmed so well
They fumble in my hands my friends will tell
They sometimes maybe hit the mark
But but are dangerous enough to kill from afar

And this reason I choose to wait
And air my words at a later date.

(The post is crud; I know it well
but please do not to the world this tell.)
---_--_-
Eighh... so the mental vental is just a sort of random thoughts and reflections on things thinly veiled in crude poetry with sloppy composition. It was fun to write though.

Free Fall was inspired basically from the talks around K's blog about the deep questions and what not, especially as I've felt a sort of subtle transicion myself as of late.

And yes all; I WILL blog about my new job soon. I kinda want to average out a few days of what its like so I can more accurately tell you what its all about. Its for the good of the content here, folks. Honest.

Heh.. maybe I do take these posts to seriously. Anyway... It is a fun job I'll let you know that and I love it so far, but it does keep me a bit busy. Allegedly though, when I get into the routine, it slows down quite often which means I might have actually MORE time to blog and what not. We shall see.

More later.

(And by later, I mean an undetermined, non-defined stretch of time.)

A neglected copper mine

This really looks unimpressive, but I swear its just a bad photo. Forgive the light quality, and trust me- this is actually very cool. React with oohs and ahhs accordingly.

So, as most readers of this site know by now, I currently going through a sort of scrap metal/capitalistic recycling phase right now. I dismantle and destroy things to sell their metal for money- especially copper and aluminum.

With this in mind, I have been trolling the nh.craigslist.com free ads for anything that might be fun and profitable. A while ago, I posted a listing in the "Wanted" section saying that I would pick up dead or dying UPS (Uninteruptable power supply systems... those things that power your computer and stuff when the power goes out). I advertised "dead battery, bad battery or no battery" because all I want from them is the copper in their large transformers. Maybe two or three pounds. A week went by, and all I got was someone asking $20 for a perfectly working unit. "I'm sorry, but thats not how we play this game" (I know only two people perhaps who read this will get the Paul Shanklin reference, but that's OK.)

Meanwhile, I answered a listing from someone who said they had a few monitors they wanted to get rid of. It was a phone number only listing. I called.

"Ages and stages?" The person said on the other line.

I was a bit confused, but I had the right number... Turns out, they asked for donated computer equipment for their preschool and they got more then they bargained for. Everyone dumped their computers on them. They kept the best and it looked like someone took most of the actual systems- but they had about 15 monitors left over. Most of them, as she told me were "still working as far as I can tell". I told her I'd take them all and that I'd call back shortly to arrange a pickup.

Meanwhile, sometime around the next day, someone finally answered my listing for old UPS systems:

"I have one ups system that I'm just waiting for the word to remove it. I think it was made in 1990 but I am not sure. It is BIG so you will need a pick up truck. Is this something you want?"

He said he was located around Exeter, which was a bit far for me but I conversed with him for a bit through email and he sent me some pictures of the beast that made me feel it was a reasonable risk to take. Plus, it wasn't very far from the monitors so I'd be combining the trips. I felt pretty good about it so I told him I'd pick up the unit and asked for the address and when I could pick it up. He wrote back:

"Hours of pick up are 08:00 to 14:00 ... My name is Sgt. Dave ..."

At this point my eyebrows were raised. Was this some military base I would be going to? I felt a bit nervous. I read on:

"...Upon your arrival you will need to call me a 2nd time so I can let security know. You will be going to a corrections center so NO firearms!!!"

A corrections facility? Wait isn't that like... *gulp* a prison??

Yup. Sure was.

Somehow I roped my good friend Jim into going with me. So here we are- two guys, driving up in a van loaded down with 15 computer monitors into a prison facility (complete with barbed wire fences stretching to the heavens), sitting in the parking lot by the sheriff's cars, suspiciously rocking the van back and forth, trying to get a cell signal to call the good Sargent out.

But it all turned out all right. In the end we made contact with him and he walked us to the loading dock (a secure facility mind you) whilst once making a joke about "not getting shot at". Which was great. Because even though we were honestly a bit concerned, having a guy be able to joke about it is fun. Anyways, if I did exit this life then, I would have wanted it to be while laughing. Sargent Dave was cool.

The Sargent called two guys from the maintenence team and together all four of us hoisted the big sucker into the van. It was ridiculously bottom heavy. Even with out the batteries.

Yeah, the batteries were gone. Luckily that wasn't our main focus anyway: Our main focus was the copper in the transformers. And... well, I'll let you decide:

This is a little more then half of the second smallest transformer windings. Yup, that is some fat PHAT copper wire of epic proportions. No, the picture doesn't do it justice. You have to examine this thing for yourself and feel the weight. Plus the low light conditions couldn't have helped.. This is the one Jim Sawed away at for about 40 minutes. The matching half to this- which is a bit smaller- is worth by itself 10 dollars. With that one transformer, we broke even. It will pay the gas money and then some. All together: Over 65 pounds of copper, as told by the bathroom scale in this picture:


I like this last picture; for some reason the copper stacked up like that makes me think of something out of a Doctor Who episode.

So... 65 pounds of copper times $2 per pound. I got $120 greenbacks in just copper, not counting the aluminum and wire (which I will also sale).

In the first picture, you'll notice behind the block of copper a big aluminum heat sink with several devices attached to it. These have copper inserts for getting rid of the heat. Copper then aluminum, smeared together with thermal paste. Whatever these were, they must have ran pretty hot. I was looking at the copper with a greedy eye. My dad stopped me.

"Before you cut into that thing for copper, let me look up the part number".

I shrugged and told him to go ahead. Dad was great. He kept coming in when our dismantling of doom was at full fury and impart small words of wisdom. He would say something like "This transformer here looks like the top has just been tack welded on... I'm willing to bet that if you could cut through that, the rest would chisel right off." Then he'd leave. And sure enough, it would be as he said and save us untold hours. Jim, who did basically did all the copper removal work (thanks Jim!) got really fast after using this method. He then used the blocks he removed as stands to elevate the transformer up as he pounded the copper out. He got pretty fast at it. The last few went by in probably less then 10 minutes a transformer- quite a feat.

Later my dad came down with the spec sheet for the chips he looked up.

"Guess how much each of those is worth."

"Five dollars?" I guessed.

"Twenty?" Jim chimed in.

"If you wanted to buy them online right now, they would cost you 320 bucks a pop."

So yeah... there were about 4 or 5 of those on one side. I doubt we can get that much for them, but they should be worth a bit more then their scrap value, thats for sure. I just have to get someone to buy 'em now.

Okay, lets see. I've told these stories so often I've gotten bored of them, heh... But. I didn't mention the 15 monitors. I got to utilize my handy dandy trusty wusty (sorry) Pocket PC:

I was pretty proud of this. It was raining very hard last Saturday, so I backed the van into the garage and threw a computer in the back and set it up as a test box. I then started taking the monitors and testing them one by one. I'd put a piece of tape on it, give it a number, then hook it up and see how high a resolutioun it would take, what size it was and how high the brightness and contrast had to be turned up to order to look good. I put in all this info in on the fly with my pocket PC. I felt very geekish. Thank you so very much Pip. This thing rocks.

Oh, and you have NO idea how hard it was to get that picture of the Pocket PC clear. I must have taken ten pictures of that thing. I'm almost more proud of that picture then I am of the whole copper thing. I'm not going to show you the monitors; you all should know what they look like and the shots were really low-light, ghetto quality anyway.

So I have 6 monitors left. If you want one, come and get it. I'm open to trade, cash or begging. I'm trying to sell them but monitors are a dime a dozen these days. Except for the 19 inch, $10 a piece is probably all I'll get for them. Which is fine.

All in all, this was a pretty encouraging Saturday for me, and I think for Jim too, who is also getting into the spirit of capitalistic recyling (busy though he be). This was certainly a high yield. Its funny; all this momentum in the scrapping business and I'm about to start a full time job. But I'm going to keep at the scrapping stuff. Its just to much fun. And I think there's a good business to be built around this.

"Whats that, Zeke? A full time job??" Yeah. I'll post about it later. Quite crazy, actually. Until then, have some more pictures.

Jim and Dad confer over a big HOG transformer that has just had its lid removed.

(Click to see full size and read text)
Imagine seeing the whole world like this; little mental price tags on everything. That's pretty much where I am right now... Twisted, I know.

Small disappointments

Well, my last entry or two have been all about happyish things. So I figured I'd pop the collective cheerful outlook balloon now, and metaphorically rain on any parades that might be passing. Ladies and gents, with out further ado- a list of things I am disappointed in.

First, lets deal with things close to home. I am disappointed, not only with myself but in all of you for not realizing for over a stinking YEAR that I spelled "Reepicheep" incorrectly with as "Repicheep".

A) To say I am a Narnia fan is an understatement close in kin to saying that "the Beatles were stars" or "Being dipped in hot oil stings a little". So I should know these things. Furthermore, Reepicheep is one of my favorite characters in all the series if not THE favorite character. How could I do this to such an honerable beast?
B) I am literate for crying out loud!

In my defense (for what its worth) my first instinct was to go for "Reepicheep". But something gave me pause, and I SWEAR I rememer looking it up somewhere online and thought that I was wrong, and therefore thought I was correct in spelling it "Repicheep".

And now I have had this name for about a year or more on blogger. Flash forward to about a week ago- I went to a surprise party for Jim (which, I must say , pWnd! Props to you, Steph. and fam for pulling it off). The person's house who hosted the party also had FIOS (which is an amazing high speed internet running on fiber all the way to the house, but thats a topic too happy for this post). So to try it out, and for a little shameless self-promotion, I go to this very website. Right away Steph says "Thats great, but you've spelled Reepicheep wrong". To which I get all defensive and say "no no no, I thought so too but look it up" and I triumphantly bring up wikipedia....and fall flat on my proverbial face.

So that was rant number 1. Its fixed now, but I can't believe I went so long with out knowing my error and I am saddened at heart to know that no one else corrected me.

While I am still complaining about this community, it also saddens me that no one got the obvious coded message in the previous post. What do you all have, lives or something?

Thats actually about all I can manage to be dismal about. I'll tell you one thing I am NOT dismal about right now: GreenDragonRider's upcoming story about What happened to Susan. I am so excited about this project you have no idea. Everyone go over there and show her love in the comments so she gets encouragement and all that stuff.

Oh, and here are the only two photo's from the computer smashing party that wasn't:

Shinyish pile of metal and wire on the end of the table closest to camera is copper. Its a bad picture; I know. You see it was stuck on Black and white and I couldn't fix it, and on top of that the memory card filled up after I took two pictures. Bummer.

From left to right: Mr. Sledgehammer, partly concealed by Mr. Dead and Dying Monitor Tube. Far right and off picture: Mister and Misses Plastic monitor shell and their two kids.

"Who are you guys?" and more scrap stories

The last post really seemed to bring some readers out of the woodwork. Thank you all for reading, I appreciate it oodles! But- who are you guys? I think I've identified most of you by now through tedious deduction and case files, but there are a few of you whom I have only cold leads. I would never demand a full name from anyone, but if you could give me a name- even if its a first name, a fake name that sounds like your name, an inside joke- anything! I'd be a much happier person.

Not to say that I am not a happy person normally. I must say; as of late God has been spinning my story in positive ways I could not have imagined. Even reading Book the 13th in A Series Of Unfortunate Events didn't bring me down more then it intrigued me. In fact, in honor of this fact, I was seriously contemplating doing this post entireyly in the Sebald code. But that woold take to long, and there are probably better means for such ends as a codud messages.

So I had an awesome idea: I would make going through computer scrap into a party. A computer and other electronics destruction party- or CAOEHDP, I suppose. Anyway, I figured afficiency would go up since we could invent a sort of disassembly line, and I figured it would be a lot of fun, because, come on- who wouldn't vant to tear apart and smash computers with heavy tools? The idea of putting a sledegehammer through a screen alone has had strange effects on all my friends. I can understtand it.

I had this idea floating around my head for awhile, and I wanted to get moving on it before the snow ruined everything. Soo after I got the idea cleared with the parents, I sent out an email to my geek friends and told others that I forgot wherever I could. But I only gave them 2 days notice. Yeah, I don't kmow what I was thinking.

Anyway, some people wunted an update and wanted pictucres. Basically, I had a fun time, but it was just me and Anders. For awhile. Then we picked up N and that was fun too, but we only went through 3 monitors and a scanner.

On the way back home after picking up Noah, we passed the American legion building. Outside was a sign that said "Free yard sale". I had never heard of such a thing, but instantly I knew it was for me. I pulled into the nearest place I coulhd do a U-turn and checked it out. Apparently they decided that since thteir yard sale fundraising thing was over, everyone could just take what they wanted for free. Being in a scrap mood, I looked around. I saw a table saw. It would have been to heavy for me to get in the van probably. I saw a miicrowave. I took it. Microwaves are high in copper and low in fat. This one especially, because it was ventilmated which means there is a deceent size motor spinning the fans. w00t! While looading it I met a guy who has been in the scrap businness for 17 years. He was a colorful fellow full of merriment and boisterous swearing. He had seen this place and pulled in, but he had onlyy his car with him and so could take only smaller things. He did have his trusty crow bar with him, so he toook what he could. What he could was the cast aluminum in a propane grill. "Here, do you want the rest of this f___n grill? I'd take it myself man, but I've dun't have the f___n truck. But there's some aluminum here, this might be steel but it could be aluminum, got some wire here for the igniter- the fittings are all f___n brass. Here, take it!" It was a genrerous gift. I threw it in the back, too.

I carried in the microwave like a slain beast I brought to a facilhitate a table of plenty. I dropped it on the ground dramataically.

"What have you got there?" my dad asked, and I told him.
"Wait wait wait- before you take an axe to that thning see if it works."

The thing had no proper cord- just three wires coming out. It was apparently the type you install in your kitchen. I didn't think it would work, but I shrugged. Why not? I pulled the power cord out from a monitor and plugged the wires into it. The unit's clock came on.

Well, so far so good. After fiddling around with the menu, we got it to try and cook. The light turned on and it sounded like it was running. "How can we be sure?" someone asked. "Get some water" my dad said, "Get some popcorn!" others chimed in. I ran into the housse and grabbed some grapes. We threw them into the nuke and turned it on. They sparked and popped- it worked! We later proved that the motors worked too. This is all cool, but we don't need another microwave. And even though its outside dimensions are bigger, its pretty small inside. Does anyone out there want a microwave? If so then thats cool, I have an extra. But otherwise its going down. To much copper to just have it sit there, all intact like but not doing anything.

Oh- one more thing. Remember the table saw I saw? Well I planned on telling my dad about it to see if we should go get it later. But I forgot. Sunday I remembered, I think during our youth group thing- we all went to Macks Apples and made pies from picking to baking. It was a lot of fun. But on the way back home, dad asked me where I saw the table saw. We pulled in, and sure enough, it was still there. We decided to take the sucker home. That was a challenge. That sucker is HEAVY. Once we finally got it in the house though, we surveyed what we had found. On one hand, their is probably 70 pounds of steel on that thing and a good deal of copper in the massive motor, so if it didn't work, its no problem. But having a working table saw would be awesome. While plugging it in, we discovered the cable was badly damaged. We plugged it in and- nothing. After looking all over for the switch, we found it. The machine roared to a life. Dad and I started laughing the almost evil type of laugh when you get something very good that by all accounts you shouldn't have got. I turned the device off and quickly fetched a face shield and a scrap two by four. I spun the beast up once more and fed the board through. It cut like butter.

I'm pretty psyched about it. The blade is even in good condition! Soon, I hope to buy a cut-off blade to cut through the iron surrounding the copper wire in the transformers. Should make the work a lot easier.

Thanks for reading- and those of you who comment, remember to tell me who you are! :D

Free flowing mind patty melt

Hi everyone.

First of all, I'm so happy (blessed?) to have a few cool friends care about if I post or don't. The truth is, I just haven't been in the mood to blog recently. On the one hand, I really wanted to have a nice big and really good piece for the next post. But on the other hand, like Kiaya said, it doesn't have to be profound. But you see I was (am) on the verge of such a great topic. I am on the verge of a potentially major-life-style-changing sort of post, and so I wanted to see if that pans out. I'll probably know in a week or two. Then I'll really have a post. Or not. We'll see.

But as for this one, I think I'll just do a rambling/stream of conscious cop out. Forgive me, for I have no creativity and am slightly cranky right now. Here goes:

I had ALOT of fun at the hike. What can I say, I just LOVE the crazy cool ilk that Agape seems to attract. I had some great conversation and alot of fun times.

Some times in the past, things I'd see around me would lower my hope for humanity and dreams I'd see inside of me would raise them. Now, things I see in people around me raise my hopes and respect for humanity, and things I see within myself lower them. I don't know exactly how to take it. Its not a witty nugget of wisdom; its just a reflection.

Salvation- once saved, always saved vs. Worked out by faith debate. Ageless, endless and yet ever so pressing. This topic came up at the dinner table strangely enough, and I avoided answering for awhile, mainly because I disagreed with myself. By my sense of justice, I would say that certain people shouldn't be forgiven, or that at least, if they were forgiven and then got worse later the grace that was extended to them would seem to be void. For example, I can grasp God ransoming someone who killed others, I can understand that person being reformed and forgiven (Like Paul), but someone being ransomed by God and then going out and killing, I just sort of have this kneejerk gut reaction against them being still "saved". Not that my instincts make it right.

Perhaps it makes sense to think of the free gift of salvation as not a one time use gift- maybe something like a beverage. Maybe an antidote; yes that works. So if you accept this antidote for a year or two for free, you're great. But you can take the gift and then not use it for awhile, at point your in trouble. In this way of looking at it, it is simply a matter of USING the free gift.

I know, there were zilch scripture references in that, which I suppose makes it a large bunch of pointless speculation. Very well, treat it as such. I really am just wondering things out loud.

Uhh, what else.... I have discovered some music recently that I really don't like. That, no matter how much I try to find the cool artistic intent behind it, I can't think of anything good to say. Yes, it was on the radio.

Cliche ahead warning: When God shuts a door, he really does open another. Its almost like he's trying to lead me somewhere (Mock sarcasm: NO! rEEALY?). But its true. The Agape thing (disclaimer: even though basically my fault) really broke me for a bit, but I bounced back from it for the better. I hope that all can do the same. Its ironically enough gotten me on a better path for finishing up my education and POSSIBLY even- oh right, that I was going to save for later if it panned out.

Uhh... Speaking of pans. Bed pans make me think of oil pans, or actually vice versa.

I think we should turn some of our frickin huge amounts of coal into artificial Gasoline and stick it to our enemies over in good ol' midEa. Having your enema hold the purse strings to your economy is basically stupid. If you allow major opportunities to regain control of the purse strings, possibly even treasonous.

I do believe in Bigelow- I do, I DO!

Is

Update:I just posted this by accident. I think it was a sign. I am tired, I am through. I am tired, how bout you?

You want a post, wise guy?

Zeke is not dead.

---Someone who should know

P.S.: More at eleven*.


*does not guarantee or designate actual time.

A short scene from my life

So my mum brought the mail addressed to me down to my lab... I look through it- Credit Card offer, personal note and an army recruiting brochure.

Me: The army wants me, mum
Mum: Oh?
Me: Yup... and they say they'll give me this great gift- a messenger bag.
Mum: *laughs* For what? Signing up?
Me: No, dying.

At this point, my Mum stares at me with strange expression for an uncomfortable second or two.

Mum: Well... I could really use that messenger bag...

Of ROC, humanity and suprisingly light metal

I think I am lowering my standards, and allowing my blog posts to wander and ramble to topics completely unrelated. So litigate me.

Its time to ROC
Everyone! I can not believe I have been this slow in telling you all. I have a new blog that I am doing with a couple other friends. Its all about Random Obscure Culture- and ergo, is called SpreadROC.blogspot.com. I encourage all of you to check it out, look around and comment. Suggestions, criticism, rotten tomatoes- whatever you got. Oh, and be sure to read my proudest of stories: English Jack- a hermit who lived in the white mountains. Now you don't want to miss that, do you? So quick! Head on over!

Very light iron
Recall this pile of computer carcasses?

All the stripped cases (the big metal things on the back) are gone now. I took them to a scrap metal dealer. I had to get rid of a fridge... and due to very troublesome freon issues, I couldn't take the scrap copper (I approximated $30 dollars worth) out and sell it myself. We had to pay them 20 dollars to take it... Its frustrating, but its the cheapest option. The Londonderry dump will take it for 50 dollars. I could have an HVAC guy come and "reclaim" the Freon with special equipment, but that's $79 per hour. In the end, I just had to admit defeat and let the scrap yard get all the profit.

Because of the computer recycling project, I've been calling around a whole bunch of scrap metal buyers and checking rates. They weren't the best deal on anything but the fridge, but they were close, so I took the steel computer cases there. This grade of steel is called "light iron" for some reason. Perhaps its because you get so little for it. I turned those cases into $1.75. Yeesss!!!

One of the workers just told me I was "all set, you can go now." But I protested- I wanted my money. He must of thought I was daft, but dang it, that's the hardest buck seventy-five I've ever earned.

The scrap yard itself was really huge and impressive. I think everyone should see it- its that cool. Definitely my little bro will have to- he would go bonkers.

There are HUGE piles of metal everywhere, separated by large dirty gravelish roads. When you drop off stuff, you're actually right in the thick of huge dump trucks, little Bobcat vehicles scampering everywhere and huge, two story clawed juggernauts on wheels. I actually had to stop to let this giant CAT claw-mobil pass me. Another one was crunching up metal in the distance. Its so active, so abuzz with activity and alot of man power. It struck me as a kind of outside factory- metals in various states of sort and crush, people moving about, heavy machinery everywhere. Words don't do the fun it was justice.

Seemingly deep random thinkings:
Humans are so frail. We think we aren't, but our lives teeter on edges never seen until it is to late. Amazingly small things can trigger horrible events. People can ruin lives by a few ill planned words. No matter who you are, no matter what you've done, your life is delicate and can be de-railed. As sad as it is, it is profound:

"...All the tears we cry tell us were made the same... We build our different lives, but they all break the same." ---Mute Math

It is truth.

Incredible video
Okay, on to quite probably less deep thoughts. I've found out how to embed video and I have to show it off with this absolutely amazing animation for a song by a band called "The Real Tuesday Weld". No, serious.

The Real Tuesday Weld - Bathtime In Clerkenwell

Mah tooph ith out

Before I get on to this post, I just have to say a few words of thanks.

I have amazing friends that I don't deserve. Everyone has been so kind to me. To everyone who IM'd me, left me notes on my blog or expressed their sympathy and best wishes in some way or another, thank you SO much. Really, I am humbled. Thank you, you guys are "pretty much awesome". You've been so kind that it hurts.

Okay, now to the post. I just got back from camping/little family vactation and its pretty fun stuff, so I'll probably post about about it next. But I was almost done with this story about my tooth getting pulled out, so its first up to bat.

Friday I went in for a tooth extraction- well, more like whats-left-a-tooth extraction. Yeah, I might as well level with you all: My dental health ain't exactly going to win me any Crest scholarships. I basiclly had a muller that had rotted so badly that it broke once upon a peanut M&M about, oh, I'd say a month ago. I fetched the tooth out and kept it around for a little while, hoping that (since it was in two peices) I could con the tooth fairy into giving me double, but instead I got nothing. Apparently shes a pretty smart dame or she stopped making house calls , but thats another story.

Back to the extraction. So, we've recently changed dentists. And man, I'm a generally easy going guy and don't readily fault professionals but now that I've been with the new people (Aspen dental, if you'd like to know) I can see how much better they were then our old dentists. These guys are actually FRIENDLY.

These are all the pre-concieved notions I have going into the dentist's today. With all that being said though, I was a little nervous once I started watching the oral surgeon who was going to pull the roots out from underneath my tooth. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

He was an older gentelman- a nice fellow. He made friendly banter while going briefly going over my file. At one point, he stopped his activity behind the operating chair and turned back to me. He had noticed the Sarcoma in my health record. He asked me about the details. I told him my story.

"Your very lucky... very lucky. Sarcoma is a pretty bad dissease."

I could tell that he had a story. I was curious, but I stopped myself from asking any questions.

"Your very lucky." he echoed again.

Then he went ahead and shot me up with novocaine. He told me his name I'm sure, and of course I forgot it. But it doesn't matter- I know his name. His name is Shaky.

Probably not the best nickname for a dentist, but its true. His hands were shaking. This is what gave me second thoughts. Watching him work was akin to the scene in Toy Story 2 where the toy doctor fixed up woody. The old man could get the small stitches into woody-he just had to time his moves against his shaking hands. I'm guessing this is how it was for my surgeon, Mr. Shaky.

I kept telling myself that they wouldn't have let him work if he had lost his ability. And lo and behold, he hadn't. His hands moved like mine after 5 big mugs of coffee, but he had some mad dentistry skillz. The pain when the needle for the novocaine went in was very minor. This guy was good- but he wasted no time. He was one of the fastest dentists I've been underneath. And man, I am so glad for novocaine- all i could feel was the tension on my mouth, but I could tell that he was really REALLY torqing my mouth. It was kinda scary. It took him a long time to pull the roots out, then he had me bite down on some gauze and told me to keep it there for the next hour. He gave me a perscription for a speacial kind of pain killer that actually binds to the pain receptors... pretty crazy stuff. Then he looked at me and said very seriously

"Make sure you take the first pill BEFORE your novocaine wears out."

He didn't have to tell me why. I had felt the raw force he had used in prying the roots out of my mouth. Even with the novocaine it still hurt a little.

On the way home, it started to hurt more, but I had to keep gauze on the part of my mouth sence it was bleeding slightly- which meant that I couldn't swallow the pain meds till I was finnished with the gauze. The first day hurt pretty bad, but I took me a nap and later that evening we headed out for a vacation. All in all the surgery went probably as good as could be expected...my only regret was that I didn't get to see the mangled tooth they had pulled out.

More stuff later.

BTW today is my birthday, or so they tell me. I don't really remember it.

Circumstances make me a liar.

Well... this will probably be the hardest situation I have ever faced.

I have to work through some things and I can no longer take regular classes at Agape. There is the remotest of possibilities that I can rejoin in a few weeks time, but I have convinced myself not to hope against hope as it has proven to me in the last week to be a fool's strategy.

Forgive me- I told you all so optimistically how much I looked forward to seeing you every week. It was true, and I wish I could. But these circumstances- curse them! They make me a liar. Forgive me.

Harder still is that the total reason can not be disclosed, much to my dismay. I feel I owe it to you all, my core of friends at Agape that visit this site frequently and many of you who don't. You ARE my friends, don't I owe you a simple or at least clear reason? Know this: its not my decision that these things remain totally concealed. I have done the only thing I could: make a stance to at least tell no tinted half-truths (which has been suggested), convenient as they may be. I owe you all better, even if it means leaving more questions then answers. At least the answers won't be some rot I can't live with.

I have the strangest urge to tell the truth. Though I perhaps would loose a few friends and I most certainly would not come out unscathed, I feel that the Truth, or heck- even just a small dose of simplified truth- is the only thing that can make this finished.

"...and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free." -John 8:32

I'm not saying I would be vindicated or proven clean or anything- there would be no clear cut victory; for the blame for this situation follows a winding trail that has entry ramps at my door- but at least it would be over. The knot in my stomach would be able to die. However, that's not how people are telling me to play it- and I understand there reasons. They aren't even necessarily wrong. Its just....URGH.... This whole situation has frustrated me to know end.

I love you guys. Everyone at Agape- from the toddlers to the teachers. It really felt like one big family.

I suppose this is it. I wish everyone at Agape the best- and I mean that. Every single family- I leave with no grudges. Just a large knot in my stomach and some regrets.

I'll see you all around.

Long live Mrs. Woodman!
Long live Agape!

...Z..ek..e..

(..Wanderer...)

My next hair brained business plan. Or: an unlikely gold mine

Okay, now for a real life post: no this is not a dream. I suppose I should apologize for that last one, but hoho baby, I am not sorry. That worked even better then I thought. And honestly! It was a real dream, haha... suuckaahs!

So... what have I been up to?

Life for me has been louder- the highs are higher and lows lower, so that the contrast is much sharper and abrupt sometimes. This is life more, well, lifelike. If I had to choose between extremes and a dull semi eventless life, I do think I would choose the extremes. Not that I enjoy my mistakes...bah, but enough of theory. Lets get into it, shall we?

Here's an outline:
I went to soulfest and it was great
BTW my birthday is coming up
Heres my wishlist, fam.
I like various music
I'm sort of on a diet
My little bro is cool and I have gold-fever.

(some items removed for brevity's sake)
(Update- and since I know some of you have short attention spans, I'll put the topic in bold so you can skip right to the one you care about. There, ya happy?)

I went to soulfest and it was great
It was an amazing event, but by now I've told some of these stories so many times that it seems stale to re-hash them so maybe I'll take this a different route and focus on the volunteering.

This year, I volunteered part time at the festival in order to get a discount ticket. I got there under the assumption that I was going to work in IT (information technology- computers, networking, etc.) because, well...thats what I was told I would be working in. Instead, the scene I arrived at was something like this:

Everyone was friendly, but everyone was busy. They were understaffed by about 200 hundred volunteers and no one knew what I.T. was. Finally a light bulb came on in the leader of volunteer's face and she said "Oh! I know where you go!" or something to that affect and much merriment was partaken of by all.

Until I got there, and the leader was utterly confused.

"Uhh, no the networks... the network was set up like, 2 weeks ago... were good- but thanks! Thank you for singing up, we uhh- if anything goes wrong, we know where you are!"

Hah, I got it. Someone made a booboo. I'm okay with that- they didn't need me there, but they DID need someone at the yurt.

"What is the yurt!?"

Well, since you asked...

The yurt was a special dome that was set up inside of the backstage/secured area. But when I say secured, I use the term lightly. Even with the shortages, there were about 350 volunteers or so and almost all of them could get backstage.

Anyway, the yurt was basically mission command- the temporary office of all divisions. The leaders all had their seats in their: Two people who basically ran soulfest this year, EMT, gunstock staff, people who coordinated transportation for all the artists, drivers, security, etc.

My job was sort of half secretary, half bouncer. I checked in and out radios, charged batteries and guarded the gates with my life from unauthorized personal. It wasn't bad- I enjoyed it actually. There was one other girl on shift with me, Priscilla (I recall this because I think it was the coolest name I heard at the festival) and the lady in charge...whom, lord forgive me, I cannot recall the name of. It went pretty good and even had it's emergencies to keep everything fun- there were not enough radios to go around, and we had to allocate them and try and make all the departments happy. On top of that, some were malfunctioning. On top of that, we had the weather to deal with- someone was tracking it on radar and was letting us know how many minutes off it looked as the staff tried to call when to shut down certain things and when to keep going.

One of the most exciting things to happen at me during the festival occurred right in the middle of all this: an environmentalists guy jumped the chain and tried to confront the girl who was heading up the festival on them not having recylable bins out everywhere yet. I was still new and he just came in like he owned the place and got past me. Luckily, the lady was a tough chick and firmly, but as kind as possible under those circumstances, escorted him out the door.

Yeah...Uhh, sorry- oops.

Well, you know I said I wasn't going to talk about soulfest much, but hah! yes I did! Hopefully it was a story you hadn't heard yet.

BTW my birthday is coming up
So... My birthday is coming up. That's cool, I guess. But I'll be honest. I don't want to be 20 right now. In a year or two, I'd be fine with it. But not right now. It scares me. I never planned on being in school right now... I forget what wonder job I was going to have, but I recall that I had planned I was going to graduate at 16 and basically get out and start adventuring from a converted van. Such is not my life as of yet.

My little bro is cool...
Let me just brag on my little brother here for a second. This kid I think must be like what my dad was at 7. He's more technically intuitive than I will ever be and shall easily surpass my skill in things tech, quite possibly before he turns 16. Some kids bug their older brothers about getting a toy or giving them the bigger piece of something. Littleman bugs me to help build a computer.

He came up the other day with everything he figured he needed to start off with: a case, a keyboard, tape, and a remote control tank. He taped the case onto the tank so he could drive it around. Alas, it was to heavy but it is the thought that counts. I mean, that's an awesome idea, isn't it? It's like the ultimate computer couch potato. You don't even have to go to the PC, the PC can come to you!

Anyway, he had asked me questions a few weeks back about how computers worked and this kid sat through me explaining everything I could on a very technical level of how the hardware works to do things, and I daresay, I think he retained over half of it. He keeps coming up to me and saying

"I have the, uhh, RAMs, the muvverboard, the disk drive and the- whats-it-called? Professor?"

"processor?"

"Yeah, wight."

I'm just geeking out about it. My friend Jim was over the other day and prophetically declared that "He's going to pwn us all. He'll be a crazy modder- he's going to pwn. You better keep an eye on him." I told him that so far I'm on his good side and I plan to keep him there. So that's what I'm going to do: I'm going to help him build his own computer from spare parts, and I'm seriously thinking about teaching him the command prompt. I think he's ready. He shall be the smallest hacker ever, migets aside. (Are there midget hackers?)

...and I have gold-fever.
And now for the content that the title teased: My hair brained gold exploiting business idea... No, a new one!

Those of you who have been to my lab know that I have ALOT of computer stuff. Most of it pretty much junk. I mean there is spare parts, but you only need so many pentium pro's with 64 mb of ram. If you think I'm bad, you have no idea.

A long time ago (perhaps 6 months- probably closer to 2 years ago) I decided to totally clean out the basement. What better way, said I, then to remove everything from it, resort, then replace? And so, I hauled out one weekend, about half the contents of the basement outside. I placed it on palates and sorted stuff in the basement. Come dusk, my dad warns me:

"You better put those in plastic bags and put a tarp over them, just in case you don't get them done soon and it rains."

Oh shoo, I think to myself, I'm going to be done tomorrow. But I obeyed anyway. Ha, glad I did.

Dad and I just took the tarp off yesterday and started going through. I had 16 computers in there.


Read that: 16 MORE computers then the ones in my basement. Some of them are a bit rusted, as you can see. Some are a lot rusted:

I've never had a rusted screw holding back an expansion card before, so this has been an interesting life first for me. I encountered these on occasion while sifting through the hardware and pulling things of any value (PCI video and network cards, etc.)

After I had vultured over them myself, I called my friend Jim. I had two questions for him.

"So, I have these systems over here and I know you like shiny coiled wire for your crazy projects. Want to see what you can get out of these power supplies?"

...to which he replied "Sure." and came over. My other question was

"So Jim...how up are you on your alchemy?"

To which he actually knew what I was talking about. You see, a while ago while he was in high school chem, he was talking to me about the process for extracting medals out chemically and electro-chemically. (I might have just invented that last word up, but its cool and makes sense so lay off) People do it for gold recovery from plated jewelry. They also do it to recover gold from computers.

Gold is a really good conductor. It doesn't corrode either. And so things that are important are plated with it- CPU's, motherboard pins, connectors for expansion cards, etc. If you can pull it out, its worth alot in the right volume. An old 486 chip has about 0.015 ounces of gold. Not much, say ye, right? Well, do you know what that's worth right now?

$9.36. Gold is floating around $620 an ounce right now. Newer chips have less gold, but they have it. And the beauty is this: Supply.

Computers are rarely recycled. Some companies are just now starting to begin programs to recycle them, but they cost money for the consumer ($30 shipping for HP's, which is the most successful large recycler). You really shouldn't just throw them away- they do contain some chemicals that hurt the environment, but none the less, some landfills are filling up with them. They call it e-waste.

Now you know I'm not the bleeding heart save the world type. I'm the free market lets make some money type. But it seems here that we have a beautiful synergy of the two here- or at least, a very good marketing ploy for all those bleeding heart types to give me money. I won't complain.

And it's not just gold. Silver is used in chips as well and hard drive platters nowadays are coated with a cobalt-platinum alloy. Then there are the non precious metals: casings of drives are often aluminum, and the case is steel (sometimes covered in plastic). Those won't fetch much, but they will fetch something. And so it has begun- my little brother and I spent today taking this:


And turning it into this:

Little man was a huge help with me on today's project... he got right in there with his screwdriver and helped me rip out power supplies, drives, LED's, plastic shells and everything else.

We stripped these computers down further then I have ever before. I basically reduced the cases to about 80 pounds of steel (which I plan on selling) and the useless plastic inserts and such. I removed every motherboard (which is quite a chore on some of the boxes) and tried to "leave not a rack behind." They are clean. After we were done, the pieces were a mess and so we had to resort them. Littleman is amazing at this sort of thing:

Behold his handy work. I came to him with another power supply while he was sorting them and he said "Oh, phew! Good. Now I will not have to make three stacks with one more in the middle then on the sides cause I can just do two piles of six. Thanks!" I told you this kid was good.

So now the next step is to call scrap yards and get the per pound rate on steel. That should be easy. It might be $5 for all of it, but hey, its something. Some of the small stuff like LED, switches, cables and system speakers I might try to sale in a big grab bag type of lot(s) on ebay. "Here! Its a lot of crap- theres nothing good, but theres lots of it so that should make up for it!" I think maybe that's the exact wording I'll use.

Then...and heres the fun part... Jim and I get together and start mixing chemicals and electricity like mad scientists. The idea is that we are "reverse electroplating"- in other words, we "plate" our anode with the medals were extracting. This is way 1 of 2- the other one involves just using chemicals. We will probably experiment with both of them.

I'll keep you guys posted.

(To long, I know. But understand this: I cut out three things or so from this blog to make it shorter. No, seriously).

The most exciting day of my life so far

So I don’t have too much time to post right now, but I just had the craziest day ever and I know a lot of people are asking me to blog, so here you are. Perhaps I’ll get around to the soulfest stuff later, or maybe I’ll just merge it into another post. Or maybe not. But anyway, here goes. I think after you read it you’ll certainly agree that it's worth it. (Or you’ll just read about it in the papers, heh.)

I was at the Mall shopping around (which I rarely do, but that’s another story) and suddenly who else but dX walks up to me! Yes, for those of you who are paying attention, that’s the same one who went on the bike trip with me and the same one who should be in Kansas!

So apparently he was going to surprise me or something, but decided to blow it by coming up just like we had been hanging out all day and show me his new paintball gun. It was a really really REALLY nice one- I seriously don’t think I’ve seen a sweeter looking gun- and so to try and beat him at his own game I answered him just as matter of factly as if I was in on everything-

“Wow… that is…really nice. But dude, how much money you going to spend on that? Don’t you need it for some other stuff?”

Apparently not. Anyway, it was sweet. So what if he had to eat ramen for the rest of the month?

We went around the mall for awhile… not much I really remember as extremely special- well okay, I knocked over some stuff cause I’m such a klutz…. But I have an excuse. Occasionally I had the weirdest sensation. It was as if everything was going at a slower frame rate, and my vision emphasized the edges of everything I saw. It was like a filter for a weird music video. I know I was moving in real time but it felt slower- its hard to describe. At first I just wrote it off but I couldn’t ignore it when it went on for like 5 minutes. Finally I told dX about it.

“Dude its so weird…its like, playing a game on really old hardware or…slow motion or something.”

He just gave me that trademark dX expression of “ooooookaay” and I said “Well anyway it stopped now” and that was the end of the conversation. It happened about twice after that only for about 5 seconds at the most. It was starting to weird me out though.

We decided to splurge and get some sorta expensive mall food- I was getting Japanese of course. Right before it was my turn to order, I heard some commotion behind me. A guy was going around to people, and everyone was trying to discreetly get away from him. It was odd- the line behind me just started emptying out.

“Come on, you… you seem to have enough money for food yourself… I need some food..”

He came up to a guy who must have just ordered from a Boston market type of place:

“Come on! You just bought a rotisserie chicken… like you can’t afford to get me some food.”

He was getting closer to me. I got that feeling when you see a homeless person coming up to you- half danger, half pity, 100 percent uncomfortable. But now as I turned around and saw him I realized he was young (teens/early 20s), well dressed and didn’t look in desperate health at all. And he was headed towards me.

Dang it… what am I going to say?

Then I got the sense that something was odd. Something wasn’t right- he was coming towards me at an unhealthy speed and he had his hand in his pocket. Then suddenly it happened again: everything got real slow. I honestly think I experienced one of those moments you read about- were adrenaline kicks in and gives you perfect clarity.

He started to lean into my direction and I stepped a little to the side. It seemed to take forever. Then he shifted his weight to try and catch me- I started freaking out and used my arm to push him back. He resisted hard and there was a bit of a struggle while I pushed him until finally I sort of rolled him off my arm and then pinned him down. I was right. He had a knife. Then I recognized his face.

I had seen him around the mall all day. Most of the time were when things got slow for me- so that was it. I have no idea how I knew he was dangerous, but I must have. My mind turned back to one time in specific- when I knocked over stuff and ticked off that guy behind me. It was the same guy. WHOA- just, WOAH. I was freaked.

At that point I was sort of shaken, and I really don’t recall what happened exactly in what order. But at some time I remember seeing none other then my friend Dan M in the mall as well and the guy started to attack him! I started to run towards him but I knew I wasn’t going to get there in time.

“Oh God… please help him hold him off till I can get there.”

I was about 8, maybe 10 feet out and the attacker had a razor blade of some sort and started to raise a blow. But suddenly Dan pulled out this crazy thing I had never seen before- it was like a stinking energy weapon. It looked like a high-tech cattle prod. He activated it and the guy was shocked, but amazingly wasn’t down. He tried to grab him and got shocked again. I could actually see the sparks…. By then I got there and I helped wrestle him to the floor. I don’t remember if we killed him or not, but I looked back at the energy weapon just as he retracted it back into….or, no, wait.. Oh man- Shoot! Maybe this was a dream. Ehh, never mind guys.

And out of the rubble of the new world order it appeared: A new post

It has occurred to me that a casual observer of my blog to whom other knowledge was not available might conclude that the world indeed had come to an end, or at least, that my life had. The rumors of my death, blah blah mark twain reference blah.

I don't like this post so far. It doesn't taste good. It tastes sort of off-the-cuff and un thought out. This has a lot to to with the above statement's striking resemblance to reality.

I suppose I should dedicate this post, in all its horrendous..ness? To those of you who asked me to update. And actually, jibbing aside, alot of you did. Thanks, your cool.

Okay- so the main reason (read:excuse) for me not updating is all Gwyns fault. Yah, that's right. Basically, Gwyn, my sister and I all went to have a swell old time at the mouth of Port. Since Gwyn and Abi are the artsy type and are into photography, they took nice pictures on nice cameras. Since I'm "funny-pathetic" (as opposed to "funny-haha") I brought my camera.

This is Gwyn literally laughing out loud at my shabby excuse for a camera:

(Note my finger partially in shot, wrong date stamped on the picture, and the world being unusually distorted... like I said, "funny-pathetic")

But I'm okay with it now. I just try and think of it more as a prop for humorous scenarios then a real camera, and suddenly my qualms subside.

All in all, it was a fun trip. It was a very very wet trip though. So how does this relate to my diliqent posting? Patience, Iago. I am getting there. You see, Gwyn sort of off handedly said something about all of us blogging this together. We sort of all off-handedly agreed. So there- I couldn't blog until I could blog about this....though Gwyn seems to have no moral attachement to her own word, but thats another story. Here is a cool shot that possibly you will see from two additional angles if the other parties get there act together:

As you can see here, I'm taking a picture as my sis is professionally snapping a shot of Gwyn and Gwyn herself is cleverly shooting at me from the hip.

Heres another shot- one of the few that are not distorted from my weird camera:

Gwyn and my sister, but not in that order, display the classic "too cool to look at the camera" pose.

The day eventually got so wet we decided to go watch POTC 2- but not before we saw a small water fall forming underneath a gutter and decided unanimously to all rush it and take a split second bath. The water was a lot of fun, but it led me to have to iron my shorts, underwear and socks before we could go see the movie...and reports indicate that Gwyn's car finally dried out last week.

Good times! But is that all that happend since I last posted? Goodness no! I also went to Soulfest 06...yes yes, quite the time there. However, I have opted to go ahead and post this to get it off of my metaphorical chest, which, by the way, really sounds weird to me.

Catch you all later,

....M.e...

What world?

Just thought you'd all like to know- the world is coming to an end, just FYI.

Heres what I know- I'm trying to stay up on things, but I don't know everything, so feel free to correct or add something in the comments.

Hamas captured two Israeli soldiers and demands they be negociated for Palestine prisoners of war (AKA Terrorists/suspected terrorists). Israel of course says something to the effect of "like heck we will" and says that it will only accept no-condition release of their prisoners. Hamas keeps trying to talk about a deal, but apparently Israel has stopped listening:

And started bombing. If theirs one thing that I admire about Israel, its that, holy cow, they don't mess around when it comes to standing up for themselves. They hit a bunch of Hamas, Hezbollah and Lebanese targets including crucial structures like bridges and the runways:


My dad works for an company that has a lot of people in Israel and he said that they can't reach most of them because the reserves are being called up. He's heard that Israel claims they will take Lebanon back 20 years. It appears that they are well on their way- They took out an airport and allegedly Lebanon has no fixed-wing aircraft left. But that hasn't stopped them from retaliating:


Lebanon has been firing missiles over the border into Israeli towns all day, including one that has made it all the way to the coastal town of Haifa- no one died in this particular hit (though several were injured badly) but apparently it is a big deal- its the farthest rockets have ever gone from Lebanon.

Israel of course has only increased their attacks and their scope. Today they came back to the airport and shot missiles and machine gun fire into the fuel tanks to finish it off:
Things are getting very serious. Israel has says it is a war (key word) that they did not want to start, but that they will finish. They have cut off Lebanese ships in the ports and isolated Gaza, which means they basically can't get supplies in and out. Israeli aircraft have dropped leaflets all round Lebanon telling citizens that it is in their best interest to get as far away from Hezbollah people and buildings as possible. Over 120 rockets and mortars have been fired from Hezbollah into Israeli towns. The Lebanese continue to protest and say that they can't be held responsible for Hezbollah because politically it is to hard to crack down on them and to dangerous. Israel of course basically doesn't care about how hard it is, they (along with the US) just want them to do everything they can to shut the terrorists down.

Of course, this is not even looking at Iran or N. Korea's situations... My, what exciting times we live in!

And I know I have some readers who aren't that political, but this affects us directly in a way everyone can relate to: the black gold we all have come to know and love, Oil. It is going up, up and up. I predict prices will be probably at least $3.20 by tomarrow, maybe higher. The whole bombing thing really effects the supply side of things.

(BTW I'm not depressed or anything, I'm just fascinated. And I am gratefull to everyone for your comments in the previous post; my chin is indeed "up" and I am doing fine. :) Thanks!)

Not at world view

Hey everyone, not much to say right now except that I am not at world view as my previous post would indicate...

I don't want to fib, so theres not much I can say except that I somewhat anticpated this might happen... basically there were some things happening that might have made it better for me not to be there this year, and I had thought of withdrawing earlier- but of course we didn't decide until the absoloute last second. There was a small meeting with top World View brass, including Randy Sims (who, btw is still the man) and we all decided that the wisest thing for me to do was to return home. The rest of my fam. is of course still there.

Don't know exactly what I'm going to do this week, but I'm going to try and commit it to the Lord in some way... maybe a bike-retreat, I dunno. And speakin of bikes, I just learned that I am worse then broke because of my last bike trip- a 5 dollar package of Ace bandages I forgot to calculate caused me to go into overdraft and incur fees. I would put some money in to solve it, but I can't because I don't have any. The only money I was anticpating called in sick.

Just not my week, I guess.

World view

Hey everyone, I'm off to World View academy. Should be fun- I'll be sentient enough to talk sometime saturday morningish. Until then, here, have some random pictures!


Here is us setting up ourselves to leave from the Kittery Trading post.... last minute checks, etc.




dX getting trying to fight insanity from the bugs while I tell him to stop so I can take a picture...


This is about where I discovered my wheel wasn't in that hott of shape...


Some mandatory down time, courtesy of dX's ankle...

Proof that we did indeed go Kayaking... (M. Fam, you are seriously the best!)

"Four Winds", the RV we stayed in...
(The camera is weird and distorted the image; it wasn't really bent like that...)

...aaand last but not least, dX (who henceforth wants to be called "ghost") sitting in the front seat of CJ's car shortly before deciding to chuck the directions.

Thats all folks, have a good week!

Night 4 and day 5- Concert and church

Greetings everyone, from Londondenderry NH! The trip is complete; we have returned to our respective drop off points and I for one miss it allready.

I posted Day 4 a bit early since I didn't know what was going to happen that night. Well, enough happend to warrant disclosure on this here blog. Note: I still don't have my USB cable, so I will have to upload pictures later. Possibly tonight, when I can put my SD card into my Dad's camera.

Shortly after posting the last blog, dX got off of the phone with his friend CJ. He said CJ was going to a show in Epping, and he could take us. Epping... we drove through there on the first day of our trip! Since biking was out of the question, the hudson home was kind enough to let us leave our bikes with them and pick them up later.

After waiting a long long time, CJ finally found us and picked us up. We threw our packs in the back seat and drove off... CJ and dX go back along way and were talking about the old days while I sorta chilled in the back seat. It was funny just to listen to their conversation. Eventually dX told CJ to take a left at exit seven, meaning to take a left after pulling off the highway. But CJ interperted it as "exit 7 will be on the left". So we missed that road. He decided to get off on the next exit, but it wasn't the right highway. They puzzled over the map just a bit and then CJ looked at dX and said

"Dude, do you want to find this the like we used to back in the day?"
"I'm game."

With that, CJ took the directions and crumpled them up into a ball, then threw them into the backseat.

"You must swear to not open and offer advice from those directions."

"Upon my honor." I replied.

We pulled out in the general direction of the concert laughing and having a good time, deciding that getting unlost could be just as much fun as the concert, but actually we found it very fast. We had pulled over to get gas and CJ chanced to ask where the venue was. The girl gave him a weird look and pointed out the window and said "Right across the street." We got there in time to still see 3 or 4 opening bands, though one of the bands that CJ had freinds in had allready played.

I was going to try and describe what the concert was like, but it was so huge, I think I will save it for another post. I'll just go into a little detail this time:

Okay, the music. I will be honest- Hardcore can be somewhat of an aquried taste, and even for me, I am not always in the mood for it. Its got alot of energy though and there really is alot of talent to be heard in it. The first band that played was "Our last night". They were a 5 peice band- drummer, guitarist, a singer who I think played guitar as well, a screamer and bass player. The unusual thing was that the screamer was 13. But he was incredible.

Trevor, the lead screamer of Our Last Night, in all his adolesent glory

He was having so much fun, jumping around, interacting with the crowd- the band was AWESOME. He got the crowd going, too. The other band that I thought was really good was Sparks the Rescue- they had two guitarists and a bass player and an amazing drummer. They played what I've heard reffered to as "fantasy guitar" though I'm not sure if that is the proper name- its the kind of almost cheesy sounding guitar sound used alot in the 80s. But it really sounds cool with these guys, and they are REALLY REALLY tallented. They kept doing call and answer stuff back and forth with the guitars really fast- playing a riff partly on one guitar, then on the other, then back on the first one all within a second or two, then playing the chords together in perferct sync- very technical and really impressive sounding. They did this all while jumping around and dancing all over the stage, just short of hitting eachother. I'm not sure if this does the music justice, I suppose you just would have to be there.

The dancing was inSANE.... but I will leave that and my analyztion of it for another post.

After the show we went back to CJ's house in Wilton and crashed there. His room was so crowded with music stuff- guitars, drum kits and cymbol peices everywhere, a keyboard, a piano, sheet music- it was ridiculous. The room was small too- there were two futons, but both were full of stuff. They basically just started grabbing stuff off of it and throwing it in corners and under the beds- wherever they would fit. I got the floor, but I had to twist my self into unatural shapes even to fit on that. It was cool though.

The next morning was Sunday, and we went to dX's old church. He suprised alot of people by showing up, and it was neat to see so many people thrilled to see him. He caught up with alot of people briefly and then we left since CJ had to drive us back to Hudson to pick up our bikes before he went to work. We had accepted an offer for Lunch at someone's hosue in Merrimack but we called back to cancel since it would have meant putting at least 20 more miles into our trip and by this time we were needing to get home.

We arrived back in Hudson got our bikes out, thanked the family again for their awesomeness, and headed off. We made good time, though we got sore quicker then usual and took a breather. I had a peice of jerky and a crumbled poptart, but it occured to me that dX hadn't had any breakfast at all. He was feeling it I think. We got back on our bikes though, and I even pushed mine to 25 to say that I did it.

Somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00 we rolled back into our home turf and let oursleves in. It was a good feeling, though no one else was back from Church yet.

So thats it- the trip is over! It was alot of fun and yet it seemed shorter then expected. We learned alot. The tone of the trip was totally different then we had thought orginally. At first, we thought there was going to be alot more camping, but it turned out to feel only like a bike trip when we were on the road- we had so much fun with everyone at our host homes that when we were off the road it only felt like hanging out with our friends- which is fine, I assure you. dX kept mentioning how amazed he was at how nice all my friends were that we stopped at.

Though sometimes it seemed taxing while we were on the trip, we know we didn't ride nearly as much as we could have. Next time I do this I plan on doing something bigger.

All in all, we traveled 99.6 miles or so according to my calculations. I might as well say that we biked 100 because I'm sure some of the unrecorded stuff totals .4 miles easy.

100 miles in 4.5 days. Not bad at all. But it has only wet my appetite- I know I can do more. I mean, we didn't even get to make our smores or light a fire outside for crying out loud- we went house to house so quick there was no camping needed. Next time I think, I want to use the tent or loose the tent- poor dX carried that and a blanket- I only carried a blanket- that we ended up never using. We ate the ramen only at our host homes. Same with the hersheys. It was really fun, but in retrospect it seems a pity we packed that much stuff we didn't need. Of course, on a longer trip with out such cool friends we would need it... but I am rambling. In the end, it was an amazing experience and I got to have fun not only with dX but with everyone that I hung out with- I really feel blessed that I got to get to know so many awesome people better.

To everyone who helped us out on the trip: Thank you so much!! You made our trip go waaayyy better then either of us planned for. You were all so wonderfully nice, and I think I got to know all of you better. Sharing your home with someone you know for a day is awesome enough, but sharing it for two vegabonds is incredible. I dedicate this trip (is that possible?) to you guys.

Until next post everyone... thanks for reading.

Day 4- Best coffee EVER

Greetings all- this is an early post for me, as the day isn't really over yet and I'm still in Hudson. But I don't know exactly when I will get to a computer next, so I figured it would be good to post the happenings of the day here.

Last night we slept in an awesome camper- very very comfortable. The family was going to a party from 11 to 1ish, but they said if we wanted to come back after that we could go Kayaking (sp?) with them in a local pond. We of course, agreed to the arrangment.

Before we went down to the water though, we had some time to kill. So we decided to head over to Nashua to check out some trails that our hosts told us about. After making a short stop at Showtime computers, we ended up at Mines Falls. It was pretty neat- a few nice wide easy going trails and alot of water. After that we decided to just sort of chill and talk by the river for a while.

Then came one of the coolest discoveries to come out of this trip: Riverwalk Cakery & Coffee House. They are in Nashua- 35 Railroad Square, to be exact. dX saw the words coffee shop and he suggested we check it out. I was game, so we locked up our bikes and went in.

The second we got through the doors, everything screamed CLASS at us. The colors, the chairs and tables- imported, the lot of it as we later learned, from all across Europe. dX got a chia latte and I got a Irish cream iced latte. The coffee was unbelivable. It was strong, but not acidic. It was bloody perfect- the only words I can think of to describe it. I also got a expresso brownie and we sat down and talked for a bit in the shop. I noticed that it had its own blends, and that there was a large obscure and expensive looking machine in the far end of the room. I asked him about it-

"Oh, that is the roasting machine."

So yeah- he roasts his own coffee. This got me interested, and I started talking with the owner who was the only person on staff at that hour. The shop has been here only 5 months and he says he allready has regulars. Its not hard to see why- he knows coffee. He buys his own beans still 'green'-and he buys them straight from importers he knows in New York and Boston. He makes his own blends by knowing the crop they came from and using different beans to counteract eachothers weaknesses and compliment their strength. He's from Germany and hes awesome. I now know an awesome place to go for coffee- and if I ever have to impress some girl by buying a 5 dollar 59 cent peice of cake I know where to do that to.

After that we went Kayaking- wow, sooo much fun. It was dX, Lyndsi and I in occean Kayak vessels across the lake. When dX heard that they we could go Kayaking he said "dude, you'll love it. Kayaks are like the moter cycles of cannoes." Boy, we he right. We went so much faster then in our big cannoe and we had a ton of fun- though apparently biking endurance does nothing for the upper body strength it takes to Kayak. Lyndsi pWnd! us- and she said she only went once, bah! All in all it was a great day.

Right now I am waiting for dX to see if he has enough money to cover us going to a show. If he does, were going to the show then going home. If not, we'll just be going home.

I'd post some pictures of the mobile homes and of the Kayaks but sadly I seemed to have misplace my USB cable.

Well, thank you all for reading. Have a great one!