SOS

I just spent the last half hour sorting emails into project directories. I still have over 700 emails to sort! Darn procrastination.

Mike

Limited Time Only

I don't usually post about sports related items - mostly because I'm not a huge sports fan. However...

I came across a news story about I man who was inspired by the incomparable Larry Bird (who am I kidding, it's probably 50/50 that if you asked me who larry Bird was I'd say I think he hangs out with Oscar the Grouch and Elmo).

Apparently this guy is such a fan of Larry Bird he asked to have an extra 3 years added on to his sentence so he could have his sentence match the number on Larry Bird's jersey. Good thing he wasn't an Isaac Bruce fan.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/basketball/nba/10/20/prison.bird.ap/

Yes. I was like 5 feet from the surgery. Yes, I felt a smidge light headed during the first of two surgeries, but never felt like I would actually get ill or pass out. 

Diagnosis: Confirmed Business Traveller

Well, if there was ever any doubt, I am now a confirmed business traveler.
Wednesday: DC, NY, VA
4:30am Washington, DC
9:00am New York, Laguardia
9:30am New York, 5th Avenue (Cerami NY office)
5:15pm New York, Laguardia
9:30pm STILL AT LAGUARDIA, stupid rain delays.
10:00pm Leave NY
11:30pm Arrive in Charlottesville, VA
12:30pm Check into Hotel

Thursday: VA
That was my schedule Wednesday. Unfortunately, the vibration testing I did Thursday during the day at the University of Virginia was in conclusive. I had to get the hotel for another day and stay for testing Friday.

Friday: VA, DC
5:30am wake up
6:30 “scub-in” and set up testing equipment in Operating Room
10:30 tear down equipment in Operating Room
11:30 leave for Charlottesville airport.
1:10 leave airport for Philadelphia.
-3 hour layover-
5:30 depart Philadelphia for DC
6:50 arrive back home in DC

Whew, hopefully all the rest of the stuff goes smoothly. I’m writing this from the airport in Charlottesville, which is courteous enough to have free wireless. The testing was interesting. I sat in the operating room on both a brain tumor surgery (Thur.) and an aneurism surgery(Friday). It was like a real life version of that Discovery or TLC show where they show the surgery right in front of you. The only difference was that while there were screens everywhere showing what was going on, there was also a patient and surgeon laying/standing 5 feet from me. It was intense, and I’m glad I’m not to squeamish, otherwise this would have been IMPOSSIBLE.

I have to go to catch my flight, I’ll post more including maybe a few photos later.

Peace.

I need...

A girl with a short skirt and a long sweater
A powerbook
A new 60gig ipod
Unlimited gift card to Borders
A Vespa
Autumn Home in Lawrence (others can use it when I'm not there).

I'm not sure about the order, but if anyone is trying to figure out what to get me for Christmas, those are good places to start.

Just for Fun. By the way I was reading my blog where people were like, "Hey you should cut your hair." Then I walked out of the office listening to Wesley Willis's song, "Cut the Mullet" (unintentionally) and I found myself thinking, "Yeah, you should just do it." So I walked into a salon on the way home and told them to cut my hair. It was nice. They shampoo'ed my hair, and dried it, and cut it, all for the (keep in mind I'm in the city) low low price of $25. Not too shabby. My stylist's name was Vincent and he was from Vietnam. He is married, has two kids, and has been doing hair for 8 years. 

There! Is this better? I hope you're all happy. I now officially have no super powers. *Snif* I hope you can love me for who I am. 

'ello Poppets!

Well, it's been awhile. Things here are hectic beyond description. Being one of two acoustical consultants trying to serve an entire market is a little disturbing, especially when you are a Junior Associate and there is no one above the position of Associate in your office for acoustics.

Having said that, I just went on a retreat through the church I'm attending, National Community Church (NCC). That went swimmingly. The conference sessions were good, the time on the beach was good, and meeting lots of people was very good.

I've included below some pictures, mostly from the retreat. Hopefully, even if only for a second, you will all be as jealous of me as I am of you each time I hear that you are all getting together for a barbeque or meal!

Anywhoo, I'm hoping everyone out there that I'm trying to keep up with is doing good.

Much love,

Mike

Myself infront of some guys that were doing New Orleans style jazz by Dupont circle. 

Out front of some really random music store. on the way to ocean city. I was talking to the owner to get directions when I said, "Did you know you have a praying mantis on your shoulder and he said, "No, but I was trying to catch one I found on the floor earlier and take it outside." So I had to tell him he had failed and it was now on his shoulder.

F/stop blues??? Wait, no...I just didn't have the white balance on my camera set (stupid manual mode!). 

A little self portraiture at the beach. 

This permanently set up carnival area was closed, but they didn't exactly have the best security. 

Time Flies

The last couple of weeks have been rather hectic and I apologize for the shortage of updates. Our office has changed locations from 1250 Connecticut to 2025 M street. Thankfully this is only about 2 blocks away. I’m still able to walk to work and have access to most of the cool restaurants I found during the time I worked at 1250 with RTKL.

The move was interesting to say the least. While ostensibly a handful of people from our company were constantly busy with arrangements when the day before our move came it was apparent that many things had been overlooked, little things like what we were going to pack stuff into. All of this was compounded by the fact that each of the groups we contracted with to perform services with us were incompetent. Our furniture did not arrive until after we had been in our office for 3 days and our copier is still not hooked up to the network. Our computers are hacked together because we still don’t have a full scale firewall. The refrigerator is here but we don’t have a microwave. We can’t order new business cards or send out flyers announcing our move because we still don’t have a permanent fax number. Did I mention we moved ourselves?

On the whole though it is very nice to have our own space. It was great to meet the people I got to work with at RTKL and the offices there were spectacular, but it was frustrating not having our own work area. We now have sufficient space though and there is a lot to be said for that. As soon as I have the necessary software installed on this computer I’ll try and get some pictures posted.

Call to arms, er...blogs

After being more than mildly disappointed by my very genuine plea for other people’s personal dealings with the Church vs. State blog (I really want to know how others are making these decisions), I have decided to make write another blog. This one has nothing to do with the last blog, I simply wanted to tell anyone who may actually check in here how disappointed by the lack of response I am. (You can email me if you don’t want to post it up for just everyone to see.)

SO, on with the new posting. This blog is where I want to plea to certain people to either start blogging, or blog more.

Molly and Stephen. I know I haven’t kept up very well with you all and I really feel bad about it. Do you both still have the same cell phone numbers? I so I want to call you. However, in addition to that I would love to beg you guys to start you own blog about being newly married, sort of a “Newlyweds” blog where neither of the people are stupid enough to ask questions about Buffalo wings.

Tim and Rochelle. Same as above.

Cory Kramer. I’d love to hear what Cory might be able to come up with to say on a periodic basis. Could be interesting.

Kaleigh. Do I really need to elaborate on this one? Kaleigh is probably my favorite person that I didn’t get to know enough while I was in Lawrence. I blame this on her being an over-achiever and always being busy saving the world. As a result of that vast intelligence though, I imagine she would have some wonderfully entertaining things to say. Could be a lot of fun.

PT. I know Phuong would never do a blog, because he would be above the concept of a blog ;) However, it would be nice to know if he has a newly updated webpage. It does seem like the sort of thing a person who works with computers should have.

So if any of you already have a blog, then send an email my way with the address I can check it at. If not, then seriously consider it.

Church and State

I have started working on a personal or exploratory essay, for my own sake. The impetus for this little essay (essay-ito?) was Missy’s little blog question about homosexuality and women’s suffrage. It certainly isn’t finished yet, however for now I want to hear other people’s opinions on a certain question.

How have you dealt with the issue of religion in your life, the separation of church and state as a policy, and the urge to vote and participate in government? This is a question I have faced the last two elections and I have been so torn I haven’t voted. I fully realize how inappropriate this is as a way to deal with the situation, hence my exploring this issue so I will be better prepared to vote next time around.

So, how have you dealt with this? I would be interested in hearing others contribution about how you have or have not incorporated your religious convictions into your political stances. If you feel it might be too inflammatory a response you are always welcome to just email me. I’m not looking to start a big political argument here, just to hear what your personal take is on this issue. I know that steak, grant and alex will definitely have opinions, and I’m guessing that several others may as well, so please – let me hear.

Technology

I’m puzzled. I don’t know what to make of this article on ipodlounge.com. They have a review for a non apple music player (oddity), they actually recommend it over the shuffle (second oddity), and the actual product itself has me confused. I’ll stop being vague at this point and elaborate.

The product they review is called the cube. Not THAT creative of a name when you find out that it’s a flash based mp3 player 512 or 1 gig, that is shaped like a cube or dice and is the size of quarter on each side. That’s right. It’s tiny. The first thought I had was that this was a joke, along the same lines as the iflea steak posted about a little while back. Then I determined, nope I think this is for real. It gets even funnier when you picture someone actually having a set of headphones plugged into this thing the size of a good sized dice hanging from their neck. It’s a funny image that brings up a good point.

When is technology TOO small? Would I want a camera the size of a postage stamp? How about a cell phone as big as a grain of rice? An mp3 player the size of a quarter? One of the most obvious concerns is interface. But even if I can fully interface with a cell phone the size of a grain of rice, would I want it??? I have a hard enough time finding my cell phone some days as it is. I don’t want to worry about stepping on it because it is slipped under the rug and I couldn’t tell. I don’t want to put my cup down on my digital camera because I couldn’t see it.

For years and years, as long as I’ve been alive the technology race has included two principal factors: 1) Make it Faster and 2) Make it Smaller. Computers have shrunk from the size of a large room, down to a small room, onto desks, into briefcase size packages, onto our laps, and now into our hands. All the while their speeds have increased at a rate that made their shrinking look like it was happening on the same time table as tectonic drift. It really is astounding. But I think we are finally reaching the limit of how small these things can get. I have no doubt that in 5 years the most advanced desk-top computer today could be built, for enough money, to fit in a pda. Maybe that’s stretching it, but I’m not sure.

I don’t really know how to end this post because I’m not sure what the point should be. To a certain extent it all seems like an exercise in futility any way since it’s mostly about making things so people will buy them and keep the economy going. Ah capitalism. But at the same time, many of these miniaturizations have lead to better life saving products. All I know is that the idea of a giant library of records or 8 tracks being able to hang from someone’s neck in a package that could EASILY get lost in a gumball machine just seems almost silly.

changes

I thought due to recent events, that even if I didn’t have time to do a super elaborate entry I should add something. The “recent” event I’m speaking of is my mentor Sara leaving the company I work for. This is relatively significant since 1) She was the last person to be here from when I was hired (Jason moved to London and Dominic opened a restaurant with his wife) and 2) Being the most senior person she was the one who had been managing all of our projects. The end result of all this is that our office has been rather chaotic over the last week and a half. Things are slowly starting to straighten back out but if we don’t get a permanent replacement I’m not really certain what is going to happen.

Word to your Mother.

Specter Getz

If you don't like it, tough. I wrote it at Luna cafe at like 11pm over the best plate of portabella mushrooms and ravioli I have ever had. The sauce alone likely took 2 years off my life, but added in quality what it had to have taken in quantity.

For so long my times of contemplation always had a specter drifting about, sometimes fading in and out, others crystal clear. This specter was birthed by having come across a quote from jazz musician Stan Getz, “My Life is Music…at the cost of everything else.”

So I went on agonizing, “Is my life Christ at the cost of ANYTHING else?” And this one specter haunted me for years always challenging me to identify one thing I had really given up for Christ; it told me I had to flee everything and everyone but Christ to be as devoted as it had been to its master. And as I failed to give up everything I began to fret.

As I sit pondering this conflict again I am brought to look at this question in a new way. I imagine Specter Getz once again walking up to challenge me just as he has successfully done dozens of times before.

I can see the complacent look on his aged face. He wears his devotion to his craft on his lips as the Pharisees wore their devotion around their necks. And so he stops in front of me, not really bothering to look at me, more looking through me, as though he’s already working out the next dissonant progression of notes he’s going to puff out, and he says, “My Life is music at the cost of everything else. Is your Life Christ at the cost of everything else?”

In my mind Getz hesitates for a moment, as if out of courtesy, then starts to walk back into the shadows. Like a nervous school boy, excited to try his hand at answering the teacher yet afraid he is wrong, I finally get out my response, “My Life is Christ to the salvation of everything else.”

In a voice that betrays years of sitting in smoky bars and lounges until too early in the morning he simply says, “Yeah?”

Then in as much an effort to explain myself to him as to work it out for myself I continue, “You always tell me that music cost you everything else and at first I thought Christ was suppose to cost me everything as well, because he says he does. But I never saw how it was different until now.”

“The things I lose to Christ I lose in the same way as trading a painting of a field for a chance to lie in it, to stare up at the clouds and feel the same wind on my skin that is making the clouds above sail slowly by. The things I give up were never really mine, never even real, just phantoms of what they could be, only a hint. But by giving them to Him they are infused with new power, with new significance, true beauty, deeper magic.”

“The master you serve called you to forsake all else, and now your life is occupied by something that can never fulfill you. My Master calls me to forsake all else so that it may be put in its proper place, transformed, and work to bring Him glory and me joy.”

“Yours is about how much you have lost, mine is about how much I give and what I do with what I get in return,” I finish. Stan doesn’t say anything as he starts walking away for what I can only assume is the last time. I want to call after him and ask if this is what he had been waiting for me to say. “Have you been trying to teach me this, or are you just bored with our little game?” “Were you truly trying to torment me, or was this all a big game?”

I don’t bother to say any of these things, and somehow they don’t seem all that important. Not in light of my new thought to ponder.

Brief Poll

Wow, it's been 9 days since I last posted. Terrible, just terrible. I'll have some fun stuff up here soon, but until then a brief poll...

Should I get a scooter? Why?