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Month: February 2003

i have hearing loss

Well, it doesn’t seem like it’s normal hearing loss but in some form I have some hearing loss. It really sucks. I’ve known about hearing loss for a while but haven’t really paid attention to it until recently. Until I began studying it. Now I know too much for my good. I have to actually pay attention to the fact that I might go deaf if I’m not careful. In fact, history is against me in this case.

Just a few minutes ago, my GameCube was playing a disc that is on pause with my game Metroid Prime. Anywho, while I type here on the computer my left ear can hear the disc spinning at high speed very easily. I then turned my head and my right ear doesn’t hear the spining as well. I can hear something happening but not as much rotation happening as I can hear in my left ear.

Another test I put upon myself was to listen to a white noise generator. At normal levels, I can only hear up to about 10-11kHz in my right ear and about 13-15kHz in my left ear. The normal range of human hearing, well, at least at infancy the normal range of human hearing is 20Hz-20kHz. I don’t think I should be extremely but I should be conscious about listening to loud sounds.

The reason history is against me is because on both sides of my family, there are hearing aids and bad tinnitus. If you don’t know what tinnitus is, you’re lucky. Or you’re ignorant! Go find out here.

It’s interesting how I’m possibly going to enter into a world of music and the music industry and I’m getting less and less able to hear. Argh.

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blah

After a nice, long lock-in last night, I come home to sleep a little. When I wake up, I feel like yuck. I don’t know if it’s a fever or cold or what, but it’s not fun. Blowing your nose a million times, not having the desire to do anything, and now I’m hungry and don’t wanna fix something. I think I might just go to the grocery to pick up a little food but that means I’d have to get dressed!

Is your mind playing tricks on you?

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Student Suspended over Suspected Use of PHP

This is freakin’ hilarious. If you’re a computer geek, you should at least get some kind of chuckle out of this. If not, trust me, it’s hilarious. Don’t mess with PHP It’s dangerous!

I am still single

I remember all those years in public school when we would acknowledge Valentine’s Day. In elementary, it was having a little envelope or box to put your valentine cards in. Intermediate was so . . . uh . . . I can’t remember intermediate anymore. High school was more of a time to either love or hate the day. There was one Valentine’s Day where I and a few friends wore all black. Pathetic but it was my feeling.

So what happens to that day today? I didn’t even think about it. It doesn’t even matter to me. What’s sad is someday I’m going to be in a relationship and all of a sudden it’s going to matter more. Why is that? Why should it matter more than the rest of the days? Maybe I should go do some research on what Valentine’s Day really signifies because I’m not really in love with the commercialism that must be celebrated with it.

Plus, those chalky candies that we all used to eat; thank God those things aren’t popular with older people. Or maybe it’s just me?!

So now that I’m done indirectly stating that I’m single, it’s been a long day. I went to Boulder for a few . . . no, many hours. I was there for almost 8 hours trying to fix the mixer (sound board). What does fixing it mean? Taking it apart, cleaning it and putting it back together, all with much in between. So it took way longer than I intended but no pain, no gain. What sucks is even though I did plenty to it, nothing really changed. The same channel that was broken before is still broken. It’s just a little cleaner and hopefully works a tad more efficiently.

So guess that I’m doing this coming Friday? I’m going to a lock-in. A what? A LOCK-IN! Haven’t been to a real lock-in in, oh, about 6 or more years. It’s with the worship team and we’re gonna just relax and have fun and practice and whatever else. Should be one memorable night.

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music for the soul

You wanna know what makes writing a 1.5 hour e-mail so easy? Listening to Rachmaninov’s 2nd and 3rd piano concertos. It took me this long to e-mail the worship team about a meeting we had today and the whole time I was listening to Rach’s concertos. I think that music makes me work more efficiently and effectively. If you haven’t heard either concerto, go now and listen. You won’t regret it.

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new bg pic

Like the new background picture? It’s one that I took this weekend. It’s been touched up with Photoshop but just colorwise. I’m gonna try and find a random picture display so I can rotate between some of my pictures up in the title.

I also fixed the vote button so that ALL people can vote, not just registered people. Maybe I’ll get more responses? I think voting is cool. GO VOTE. Where is it you ask? Look to your right, now scroll down below all of those links and you’ll see the voting. Have fun.

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retreat

I got back at 2pm from a retreat I took with the UCF group. I basically didn’t get as much relaxing as I thought I would but didn’t have to think about the real life and school. There were some panel discussions and seminars that we all went to, and I took some really cool outside picture shots. I’ll try to post some of the photos as soon as I can.

Tonight, I got to chat with my friend Justin who is attending school at the Naval Academy. He’s gonna be there through his sophomore year then to transfer out to another school. Why you ask? He went to the Navy right out of high school for about three solid years. Now that there’s so much uncertainty about war and having served for those years, he’s ready to get out and become a civilian.

What I didn’t realize is his free time only occurs on Saturdays for 12 hours. On the other days, they have set schedules for just about everything and he spends Sundays trying to catch up on homework he wasn’t able to make time for. Besides that, all first year midshipmen have to take a course load of no less than about 20 hours.

They are forced to participate in extracurricular activities such as sports that usually run right into dinner. So that pretty much takes his time up during the year. During the summer, he has to go to sea and train to live like a sailor. Probably he’ll have only one free week the whole time. And then it’s back to more drone-like school.

What really amazed me is if he were to stay in through his Junior or Senior year, he would have to commit to another 5-7 years of service after graduation. Because he’s planning on transferring before his Junior year, he will be free from all those burdens. It’s simply amazing to know what other people have to go through in life. And I thought I had a difficult life . . .

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when hell freezes over . . .

Not really hell frozen over, but cold as hell. It’s gonna be not only freezing, not only in the single digits, but in the NEGATIVE single digits. Yes, it’s projected to get around -4 degrees. I’ve never had to sustain weather that reached the negatives so this will be a first. It wasn’t very fun to drive the streets today, yet I had a worse time last year.

It was a Tuesday and my lab group had planned on meeting during the afternoon. Well, it was gonna be snowing pretty heavily but not as heavily as it actually snowed. When I got to school, it was snowing dime to quarter sized flakes. Me being “Mr. Always Go To Class”, I was the only one who showed up. I should have just stayed home like I figured they would have. So after about 30 minutes to an hour, I made my way home. By that time it had already snowed a few inches in just a few hours. Making it home took about 1.5-2 hours when it usually takes 15-20 minutes. So that was my worst snow experience so far.

Onto other news, seems that my website has been a pretty good success so far. It’s not overwhelmingly a hit, but hey, it is a step up from my previous design. It’s here for anyone to get information so that’s why it’s here. I’d like to devote it more to a cause at some point but don’t know what yet. I gotz plenty of time.

I’ll probably be gone this weekend on a retreat so no update until at least Sunday. The UCF is having their spring retreat and I’ll be helping as much as I can with the sound/music stuff. Hopefully there’ll be plenty of time to discuss music for the worship service.

Be sure to tell me what I can do to improve the site.

new look

WELCOME! I have been slaving this past weekend for hours on end trying to code and prepare this new format of the website. It’s very simple and to the point, but I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s SO much easier for me to update now because it’s template based.

I am able to make this website into a LOT more than it was in the past. I hope you feel free to join the community that I’ve provided to be involved. There’s so much I can do with this place so make suggestions!!

Something that I may have varying comments about is my top background picture of NYC and the WTC towers. Believe it or not, this is a photoshop edited picture that I took in March of 2000 when I visited with Jonathan. I’m surprised that it worked so well but I want it to be my homage to NYC. If I get an overwhelming response to remove it, I certainly will.

Please feel free to visit often. Some things I’m thinking about adding:

  • photoalbum
  • random quotes

Let me know if there’s something else you think I should add.

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waking up to a dream, turning into a nightmare

I remember thinking it was unbelievable. Someone who I cared about, who made me happy, had been killed. I was amazed to think that he wasn’t going to be around anymore. I felt as though I’d have to sorta pick up where he left off, compensate for that which he couldn’t carry out.

I went to a church service where, I guess at the time, I thought he was a member. They didn’t even speak of his name. So I went back to my church where they had already discussed the matter. It was a car wreck and he was the victim. All that talent, all those songs which he wrote, now part of his legacy cut short. What was I to do?

I then remember hearing another friend of mine was killed. Next thing I knew I was standing on the road side, seems like it was somewhere along I-45 north of Houston. I remember seeing a cross and her picture. Such a young life taken and so much potential lingering. What was I gonna tell her father? How could I face her family?

It was then I woke up. This all seemed so real. I could swear everything had happened. Before I woke up, I remember visiting a website where it shared how he died. There was a link below his usual information and said he had been killed. That was so weird. But it wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been.

Just to prove my mind was playing tricks on me, I immediately got online like I usually do after waking up. My homepage is set to the Houston Chronicle and that’s the first page I saw. It was approximately 12:07pm MST. The spaceship Columbia had blown up, it went through the sky like a fallen star, all passengers aboard were dead.

I was startled when I read this. I immediately turned my TV on to CNN to check and see what happened. I saw the reruns of amateur videos of the spacecraft falling apart in the sky over North Texas. That was so unreal; visions of the Challenger exploding entered my mind.

Now knowing that something tragic had actually happened, I had to go verify my thoughts about my two friends who I dreamed were killed. I visited the same website that I visited in my dream. No sign of anything bad. What a relief.

My imagination led me to believe something that wasn’t real, but my mind wanted me to feel it to be too real. It was ironic to have such a dream on such a morning where such tragedy happens. I usually don’t remember many of my dreams, but one conclusion that I’ve discovered is that my dreams usually are the opposite of reality. So basically, those two people who were killed should be fine. If I ever have one of my dreams come true, I would pee my pants.