School is great, life is good!

So we've decided to go camping at my family reunion this weekend, and I am still not very excited. For one thing I can expect that all of my cousins are just going to want to spend time with their spouses, like Amber will with me, but I just want to go and spend time with them. I'd rather listen to music (my kind, like Depeche Mode or Moby) and study all weekend for my class than go up there. I know I'm going to get lost too. I love driving, but then again I hate it, but I'd rather be driving than let Amber drive. Then I know I'm in control, but I know that Amber feels the same way, though she says she'd rather that I drive when we're driving in the canyons.

I finished up my exit interview today, and it was pretty easy and nothing to it. Just find out about my benefits and payout for Paid Time Off, and then get things signed off to ensure that I'm not taking anything. They're having a lunch in for my last day today.We're getting Mexican, Costa Vida, which is like Cafe Rio, only not quite as good, but less expensive, and I think they deliver here.

School is going well. I'm taking two classes this semester - one CS class, Computer Organization and Architecture, and an ART class, Web Design (with emphasis on Adobe Dream Weaver 8). The CS class is by far my favorite! I've been interested in the lowest level of computer since I was eight or nine years old. For some reason it is very fascinating to me, and I have some aptitude for understanding it. I'm just so excited that I finally get to take a class on it. Maybe I'll be able to pull something out of it and learn Assembly Language for the x686 or something. I feel so bored in my Web Design class, and I have a feeling that it's going to be that way during the entire semester. When I signed up for it I was expected a class that teaches layout and design elements of a web site, but it's turning out to be how to build (design) a web site using Dream Weaver as a tool. Oh well, I think it'll still be a fun class. Plus there are art students in the class, so maybe I'll get some layout ideas from them.

Job and reunion

Today I am feeling much more myself. I am a little bit relieved I guess because starting on a week from today, next Tuesday, I will be working for a new company. I will be working more in test automation and development for testing, which I believe will give me much more experience as I continue to pursue a degree in Computer Science and a career in the same field. I am very excited to start there, though I know that I'm going to experience a little bit of culture shock at first. Every sub culture in the software industry has it's own little quirks, and those are impossible to prepare for. Only the work-load is managable at first I think. Maybe I'll make new friends there or maybe somebody already works there who I really know. I won't find any of that out until Tuesday, but one very happy thing about the new job is that I'll be romping back in my old playground - Sugarhouse. I love moving around, but there are so many memories in the suburb of Salt Lake City, that I know I'll feel more at home working there. Also I don't get lost when I go to Sugarhouse. But for some reason I've been lost more than not in Draper, Sandy, and Taylorsville. I guess it's because that's not where I grew up.

I hope that maybe I'll see some people I know in the area, but there's a good chance that they've mostly moved out to other places of their own. At any rate, I know the people in Sugarhouse are nice, sociable people, so for as little time as I'll be spending there each day, I should have a great experience anyway.

Today at work we had a fire alarm, caused by a flume of smoke that came from a processor chip in a USB serial cable. Those things aren't supposed to do that. But the fire truck and ambulance came to make sure everything was okay and turn the alarm off. The only damage wasn't caused by a fire, but rather a short I suppose. Both the computer to which the cable was connected and the cable were damaged in the accident. I think the company will pay to have the computer fixed - I really hope so, since it was a personal computer that my coworker brought in to do work with.

Anything else going on right now? No, nothing really. I guess this weekend we're going to try and attend my Family Reunion in Mount Pleasant, Utah. As a kid that was probably my most favorite and looked forward to vacation of all, but now it's kind of dull, and it almost seems stupid. I'm not a kid anymore, but I want to be doing the stuff the kids get to do. Plus there is no lake or river up there, so fishing, boating, and swimming are all out - I know I used to look forward to that stuff. I guess I'll make do with what I have. Amber wants to go, but I don't. I'll be happy though. It can't hurt. *sigh*

Friends

My third start today. Sometimes I think to myself, why do I blog? I never have before, so why do I now? The only answer I can find is that I want to be cool. And why would blogging make me cool? Because I know a few people who blog, who I think are cool. But I don't think that anyone really looks at my blog. It's uninteresting, maybe I don't know how to blog really. Maybe it's too confusing. Maybe I just say too many stupid things. What is needed to get a response? There is one person who is amazing to me - we used to hang out sometimes. She has a brilliant life. Is it because she's single, hard working? I have held her as a friend for a long time, even if she doesn't me. I don't exactly know what she thinks or has ever thought of me. I read in her blog that she didn't used to tell people how she felt, and one time she watched a boy she liked end up with another girl (that's sort of what she wrote) because she never told him she liked him. Of course I don't know that I ever took the time to ask her what she thought of me either. I liked her a lot and tried to show her, but I also must admit, I never told her exactly how I felt either. I just always assumed that she would be somewhere in my life.

Last night I had a dream. There were a bunch of people in it, and I had the feeling that I knew them all - that they were a part of my life somehow. It was different though, it felt like we were all still friends. Like "close" friends though, not like the song goes, "Friends get scattered by the wind, tossed upon the waves, lost for years on end, friends, slowly drift apart, they give away their heart, maybe call you now and then, but you want to be just friends." I guess that is true, though that wasn't how I dreamt it with these few. The setting was unusual and the circumstances were unclear. We were all at my Mom's house, except instead of a street where we lived, basically everything east of my Mom's house was an abyss. Like a giant sinkhole, and nearly everyone was looking into it with awe. I went to go inside, and my friend was standing on the porch. I opened the screen door but she was standing in the way of it, so it wouldn't open enough for me to go in the house.

She asked, "Do you want me to move for you?" (it was pleasant the way she said it)
"Not unless you want me to go inside," I replied.
"Come stand with me on the porch," she said back.

So we stood on the porch to my Mom's house as we put our arms around each other and watched our friends walk slowly back to the house from the great hole in the ground, that had consumed everything up to that point. I was sad when I woke up. I know I miss my friends. I also know that at this point I don't know (that's funny I know that I don't know) if I can even see them, but I have this to give to them. I think of them often, Andrew, Melissa, Katie, David, David, Mark, Jason, Daren, Sierra, Karen, Melissa, Julie, Shasta, Crystal, Virginia, Vanessa, David, and so many more that naming them all would continue to look like I'm naming the same person multiple times over and over again.

Do I think about the past too much? I think about the future quite often too. Do I dwell on what could've been and am I ungrateful of what is? So much change has happened in my life, and now I just want things to stop and just be the same as the were, but it appears too late for me. I wish someone would catch me up and help me realize that my friends think of me as much as I think of them.

Thank you for being a part of my life, even if only as memories.

Communication and Marriage

Once a week. I have come to the conclusion that I can accomplish this goal. Some days I want to write fluidly and other days I find my pen frozen like a block of granite. If I don't, then my life is a waste. If I do and do it well, then my life is extended by the words on my paper. As it is I use neither a pen nor paper as it once was known. The age of electrons has taken that need over. For my self I need but a portable electronic library, and I will be happy. If I could write this log of my life while riding in intercity express trains or flying machines or submerged boats, then I would. I do not go always where the wind takes me. Often I find myself not too far from where I started. Sometimes I wonder if I don't take the road less traveled out of plain contentedness. Contentedness can be good for some things, but it should be avoided for others. And then there are even other things for which man should be neither content nor dissatisfied. You may ask what else is there? What sort of feeling is neither content nor dissatisfied? I'm not sure I can really answer that myself. It's not that it sounded good to put such a paradigm in my journal, it's more that I could imagine it and I know there is something there.

Perhaps one such thing might be a testimony of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. One should not be content that he thinks he knows everything, after all then if such could ever really occur, then what purpose does God have for his Prophet here on Earth? I know that the Prophet is called of God to serve and to lead His Church on Earth until He comes again. Therefore, if one is not content with his testimony, should he be dissatisfied with it? No, I don't think so. That doesn't apply either. One should be axiously engaged in learning the Gospel and dissatisfaction towards the Gospel might be the result of not understanding it by the Spirit. That of course is prerequisite to gaining a true testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

"Verily I say unto you, he that is ordained of me and sent forth to preach the word of truth by the Comforter, in the Spirit of truth, doth he preach it by the Spirit of truth or some other way?
"And if it be by some other way it is not of God.
"And again, he that receiveth the word of truth, doth he receive it by the Spirit of truth or some other way?
"If it be some other way it is not of God.
"Therefore, why is it that ye cannot understand and know, that he that receiveth the word by the Spirit of truth receiveth it as it is preached by the Spirit of truth?
"Wherefore, he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together." (D&C 50:17-22)

In Priesthood yesterday we talked about Marriage. The talk that the lesson was based on was one from last General Conference called Nurturing Marriage. That was also the driving theme for the class. Since I met Maria Jarvis while working at Hogi Yogi (Mar 2002-Mar 2003), I have become even more fascinated by Marriage and the Lord's teachings on it. Maria was studying marriage sciences at BYU at the time I met her. Since I have been marriage to my beautiful wife (Nov 2003) Amber I have come to find many of the things I have learned to be very applicable to my everyday situation.

Recently my wife, and consequently I, learned that our friends were struggling in their marriage. In several attempts to help them in passing, we decided to start reading a book called And They Were Not Ashamed. My wife and I also since then made several purchases pertaining to strengthening marriage in the form of books from Deseret Book. I don't remember all of the titles, and it seems like the one I just mentioned was one of those. At any rate I have come to realize in my studies on Marriage, and other things, that one principal exists which binds every relationship among living beings and that is communication.

At a low level if communication didn't exist or were mediocre at best, then even the subsystems of the human or animal body would cease to function. In their relationship, they must communicate in order to perform everyday tasks, many of which we take for granted as we are allowed to. In effect communication keeps the realtionship between those subsystems going. Another example this time on a supersystematic relationship is our relationship with Heavenly Father. If we don't pray often to Him then our relationship with him becomes weakened. If we stop praying then Heavenly Father stops sending us guidance as often, because we are not asking for it or striving to follow the guidance he has already given us. This relationship may be more comparable to that of marriage in that we are communicating to someone whose nature is similar to ours. We both have free agency, we both have a body of flesh and bone, and we both are personages of intelligence.

Anyway the point I am trying to make by all of this is that constant, clear and open communication with your spouse readily solves at least 90% of all problems in marriage. Those problems would otherwise worsen and then cause marrital decay. One way that Amber and I have found to communicate is by reading together. Bishop Johnson (our current Bishop in Bennion Ward) suggested that we read a few articles together. The articles he gave us were of a spiritual nature and often their topic was of relationships and how to improve them, however I noticed that more than the content, the questions that arose while we were reading were what got us communicating again, and I know that reading together has brought us closer together in our marriage.

I'm tired

For approximately the last three years I have been involved in technology for work. I wanted to get in so badly, that I would only apply at technology companies when I was first looking for more permanent work. At my last job I survived two layoffs, and that scared me enough to change jobs. I now work in a company where the investors play a huge role in who gets hired and who gets fired! I can't say if that's any better than only having one customer and if they downsize, then we downsize - that was what happened at my last job.

Anyway, I work in Software Quality Assurance, but my real passion is programming, and as such there is not much opportunity to really program in QA. I guess that really depends on what you're doing, but for the most part that is true. So for the last month or so I've been really down. I've mostly forgotten how to program, or at least I haven't experienced any good programming sessions lately. I want to put together a web site using HTML and PHP, so I got myself a host, and a subdomain name, and now all I need is to actually put something on it.

I kinda miss the good old days too, when everyone had to figure everything out themselves. I did a lot of Assembly programming back then, and now we get to use APIs for the same thing. I'm really not complaining, but it was kind of exciting to figure things out for yourself. With all of the options now, I have my doubts that I'll ever really learn an API very well. Otherwise I program in Java, which is a good end-all be-all resolution. It's very simple to use and understand. You can't really get into trouble with it. And it takes care of a lot of things, like the event loop problem of C/C++.

So I'm looking for opportunities to get some programming experience. I'm involved in two projects at java.net, one called PIEOS and the other called JCards. I'm hoping that these two will help me gain more confidence in myself again. I also have a lot of backburner projects that I've been working on, but not developing, like a new lite-weight cash register, and a recipe book. I just don't think in data structures like a good programmer does, and I probably need to take a review. Hopefully my personal web site will shed some light on my talents and abilities. I need this, I need experience, for myself and for my future.

And now it's August...Autumn will be upon us...then what will you do?

Well, the summer has come and gone. It has happened in a wrinkle of time, with but the blink of a babe's eyes. I don't suppose this blog has done anyone any good, least of all me. I build up frustrations only to let them waste. Trains of thought longer than I could have ever imagined have crossed the country of my mind in an unusually busy manner these last few weeks. I have had my deepest downs and the current of hope and faith have lifted me above the atmosphere recently, and now I feel myself coming to a landing once again on that plateau of contentedness. I cannot even pierce the surface of what changes I may have gone through in recent hours of the days past, but I want to tell the world. I feel like my imagination has returned to me in some epithetic fashion, and yet I know that so much more awaits me, that I must continue to climb up a wall, as it were, of fantastical images and solitary thoughts - those that have evaded me, that was years ago.

I want to be me again. I knew I had lost myself, and at a high cost - if I hadn't brought myself to be so conscious of the loss, it never would have been so bad, and so I found parts of me too quickly afterward. This has made my life a bit of a mess, and I have more desire now than even the fullest desires I have previously desired to desire, that I may become the me that the Lord would mold of this material. I make myself raw. I fear that I have strayed from that path far too long. I have let what is be, and have not tried to find favor in His sight.

At my age one would think nothing of these sorts. He would be content on doing his own thing, taking life in strides, reacting to the hills and bumps and relaxing in the valleys, even though they're quite unclean. I can't. I won't. Actually I just don't want to. I want to grow, rise above the world and stand in holy places. I want to be a Witness of Jesus Christ. I have been strengthened by them whose testimonies I have heard, read or otherwise consumed. Thank you for that. And thanks to this beautiful Earth. The weather is an amazing force that causes so many anomalous occurrences and yet it is apparent that it is organized. The plants seem to grow every which way, but even at the most microscopic level, they pieces fit together perfectly. How can I doubt? I have no fear for the things of this world, for I know that God is with me. Who's on the Lord's side who? I am. He is my Rock and my Salvation. I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Not Giving Up...

Last night I took my third of four tests in my Summer Calculus 2 class, and I realized that even though I had taken very good notes and had attempted the homework, I knew almost nothing that was on either side of the two black and white pages before me. Pen in hand, I took a whirl. Out of about fifteen or so problems I completed only six, and I'm not even sure of whether or not I got through them correctly. Today I'm going in to drop the course. I can't get any money back for doing so, and I can't even get a W (for withdraw) anymore. I know that I'll have to live with an I (for incomplete), but I would rather have that than the pending E or F I might achieve at this point. Either way I'll receive zero credit for this class this semester. I'm not giving up though, and it's not over yet. I'll retake the class at some point, then I'll show everyone that I am able to do it.

Also last night I called my Mom, my brother has been in town for several days and I was wondering if there might be an opportune moment I might come by and visit with him. I didn't even have to say anything and my Mom burst in with, "Your brother is leaving tonight..." What was I supposed to say, "Oh." is what came out. By the time I was finished talking to my Mom on the phone I had the time and address for a really old friend's wedding reception tonight, and I had a chance to sort of chat with my bro. Very disappointed and on the verge of tears I said good-night and hung the phone up carefully. I have the strangest feeling that I'm not going to really get to hang out with my brother and sister again for a very long time. My brother lives in Washington and my sister lives in Oregon, both on their own, while I'm stuck here in Utah with little likelihood that I'll be visiting either of those seemingly distant countries anytime soon, or in my life for that matter. Sorry, I didn't mean that - it's just that I'm a little frustrated with my whole situation.

. . . sometimes I feel like I want to keep it out, then I'm am full of light, and other times I just want to take a glimpse of the darkness. It's not so much that I want to know what it's like - it's more that I want to know what I would be fighting. As a young teenager after all, knowing full well my path in life, I once quoted a commercial saying, "Nobody ever says they want to be a junkie when they grow up..." then I refuted, "But I say I want to be a hacker when I grow up!" Where am I? Am I anywhere near the mark? Am I pursuing my life-long goals? Have I cut myself short? So many times I have wanted to let go, but I am always stopped short of getting in the zone. It's not my conscience...it's not my will. I just wish I could live my life again.