College is over. I now have a blue plasti-leather cased blank sheet of paper they assure me is worth the $45,000 and the 3 years I spent to get it. And all so that I can work.

It was good though. The last INN and the last CCF were difficult. CCF may have been the best I've attended. The spirit was definitely present. At the end, we formed a sort of tunnel of people and everyone walked through and the people who made up the tunnel prayed for them. I was part of the tunnel. When there was no one left in line, the tunnel folded in on itself. Also, by that point in time, it had grown quite a bit, now including people who had already walked through.

The last INN almost brought me to tears. Isabelle and I shared a long hug, since we both were graduating. We'll keep in touch every now and then, I'm sure, but we'll still miss each other. Jamaica certainly brought us all close together.

Senior project ended well. We never had to pull the all-nighter I had anticipated. We spent most of our last few days at Lolbot's place, since his brother and roommate were gone for the weekend. On Monday we discovered that some code that wasn't ours actually performed differently on the emulator than on the phone, and so we only parsed the first returned element of any given query to the database on the phone, whereas the emulator acted as expected. At that point, I was pretty bummed, and had no more motivation to keep working. Curly persevered though and somehow made a workaround for the problem for the phone. What's odd is that the emulator kept working. Monday evening, after about 8 hours of work on it, he got it to work, and the people rejoiced. I set my facebook status to: "Jordan quotes Anakin saying, 'It's working... It's working!'" I'm a nerd like that.

Because of senior project, and because of overall exhaustion, and maybe because a bit of laziness, I didn't study for my databases final. I needed 1.6% to get a B in the class, and if I got 100%, I'd be at 89.8% overall, which is still a B. He said he would round up if people were close based on class attendance, and I hadn't missed a day except the two I was sick. Anyway, I knew that the highest I would probably get was 90% because he said he'd put a did you read the book question on there, and I knew I couldn't read all 8 chapters or whatever it was in a night, after finishing up senior project. There wasn't, however, a did you read the book problem, so maybe a little studying would have helped. It really doesn't matter now. I got a 63% on the final, leaving me with--you guessed it--a B.

The senior project presentations went well. Forty minutes prior, we were still fixing last minute bugs. We were sixth to present. The wireless in the building was going in and out every twenty minutes or so, and our project relied entirely on the internet, so we kind of freaked out when we were setting up our presentation and we had no internet connection. I prayed silently, and not a minute later had a connection on the phone. We then did our demonstration first, and our presentation second, just in case we lost internet again, which seemed likely. It worked out, and I think we got some pity points because of the technical difficulties beyond our control, and also because Tonics left our group halfway through the quarter, so it didn't matter that after our demonstration, the presentation was a little redundant. Reedy thought ours was among the top of the presentations, so that was cool. We had the most lines of code; that's for sure. Think we finished at about 8,000 lines that we wrote.

On Wednesday, Gaul and I spent about 4 hours studying for the Math 331 final with Bob in the Comm Facility. We got about halfway through the quarter's worth of material before tiring out. Bob stayed and studied though.

Besides being at 8am, Thursday's final was fun. There were 7 problems, plus an extra credit one. The last problem I left blank and it was worth 10/150 points. The extra credit one was really easy and worth 15, so I think that if I got all the questions right that I think I did, and then if he gives me all the partial credit I would have given me (also assuming those parts were right), I should end up with 149/150, which would bump me up to an A in the class. I expect As in Senior Project and Programming Workshop as well, so I might come out of college with close to a 3.6. It would be higher than that if they counted the 95 credits I earned in community college toward my GPA. It turns out I graduated with 222 credits earned -- just a little overkill.

After my final I hung out with Hime for a few hours. She had plans to hang out with Poppy or Joe (they share the same first name when not aliased, so I wasn't sure which), and she was leaving later that day for home so meeting with her in the evening wouldn't have worked, so she canceled with him, which made me feel a little selfish, but also very good. She didn't give me a choice in the matter either, so that alleviated some of the selfish feeling. I bought lunch at the Atrium, and we talked on the San Juans for about an hour and a half, just discussing life and its many difficulties. Honestly, I feel honored that she feels comfortable enough to confide so much in me.

She and I walked back to my apartment, so I could drop off my backpack. The bookstore had only bought two of my books back, and one of them was for $5. I donated my compilers book to Nelson, since I thought he said it was out of print at the beginning of the quarter, and the bookstore wasn't far-sighted enough to realize they need all the used copies they can get.

From there, she and I walked to her place, then drove to Target to get her a new AC adapter for her cellphone. She's not had the best luck, or shall I say appropriate finesse, with that cell phone... and its three replacement clones. There was something great about that time, even if we didn't really do anything that should have been fun. It's just good to hang out with your best friend doing life.

We got coffee, then I walked back to my room and played about twenty minutes of WoW, dying twice (one time was a gank by a 70 NE Rogue who one-hit crit ambushed me in TM -- that doesn't, doesn't count).

We cleaned up a bit as everyone's favorite roommate departed. I asked him, "Hey, before you leave would you mind cleaning the bathroom?" "The WHOLE thing?" "Umm, yeah...?" "Well, I'll clean part of it. I already vacuumed." He hasn't done squat for chores this year. I've done little, I'll admit, but I have cleaned the bathroom every time it was cleaned this year. I'd have gladly traded him vacuuming for cleaning the bathroom, if he thinks that's a fair trade. He ended up cleaning the sink area roughly, and made a single swipe with a cloth over the back of the toilet, between the seat and the tank, both of which required recleaning (though I never got around to the sink).

That evening Hime and I had a long talk. I did most of the talking, or typing rather. I was telling stories the way I used to with my ex-girlfriend. Those were probably the best times I had with her, and I realized that that's another thing I need in a girlfriend. Rule number 4: she has to enjoy and understand my stories. Hime and I talked long into the night and got interupted by sleepiness.

On Friday, I woke up late. It felt good. Gaul moved out, so Swood and I helped him pack. Swood left toward the beginning. Somehow, Gaul and I put everything he had, less four ankle weights and six hangers, into his car with pleanty of room to spare.

I met with Bill and Mark. Mark and I haven't really hung out since Jamaica, because he hasn't been to the INN very often, and as with most of the people, we just don't hang out on a one-on-one basis. It's not like that was intentional, but there's just not enough time in a day, especially spring quarter, especially senior year. The three of us went down to the INN office -- Bill and I drove; Mark raced us on his bike and tied -- and I said my goodbyes. I'll be back in a couple weeks for Rufus's wedding. From there we went to a smoothie place in Sehome Village. I wish I'd known about that place before. I would have spent more money there and less at the Starbuck's across the parking lot.

Speaking of which, have any of you ever noticed that the Starbuck's symbol is a bare-breasted, two-tailed mermaid?

Mark had to get back to somewhere by 5:15, so he left, then Bill and I went to his house. I happened to be wearing my "No, I will not fix your computer" shirt, so it was a little ironic I ended up reinstalling XP on his laptop. I left before it finished installing, but I think it worked. I was trying to save all his files, so I installed it to /Windows2/, and told him to back up all his information soon, and then reinstall a fresh copy, which his dad can do.

When I got back, Swood was back from wherever he went. We finished most of the "I'm only cleaning this because you threatened to charge us for it" cleaning. Then we tore apart or beds and put them back together. That took some considerable thought, because we're lazy and wanted to move the least amount of stuff. I made some pretty dumb errors, if I recall. I probably should have thought that through. I ended up with some smashed fingers, but oddly no bruises.

All that day people had been moving into Birnam Wood, of which a large proportion were Japanese foreign exchange students. At 4:30 in the morning a couple guys decided it'd be fun to knock on our door. Somehow Swood didn't hear it. I only had time for five hours of sleep as it was; to be interupted was most irritating.

Saturday morning, my mom and grandma got to our apartment around 7:30. My sister had to work, and neither of the family friends I invited could come, so I had two extra tickets. My mom gave me packages that had come in the mail, graduation gifts. A couple were just cards, which meant about the same to me as the gifts.

The four of us walked to Carver Gym. Swood was wearing niceness, so we took the paved paths rather than the scenic, slightly shorter route. We met Swood's uncle, whose name even he didn't know, outside and I gave him one of my tickets, so he didn't have to sit in the overflow room. Then Swood and I continued onto Red Square.

There, we found people with tassels the same color as the ones we were wearing. Mine was gold; his was brown, so I didn't see him again until after the ceremony. I found my constituents, the CS majors, and we all got in line. There we waited about 45 minutes for professors to show up with our name cards, that we would later hand to the dean to have our names announced. Lolbot didn't have one in the pile the prof had, and then he disappeared.

Commencement was long and boring -- nothing like sticking with tradition. The speakers were okay, and I'm glad I could hear them, unlike at high school graduation. Lolbot was honored early and recognized as the best student in the CS major, which he definitely deserved. That was the reason he disappeared from the line of we mortals.

After the ceremony, my mom, Grandma, and I dropped off the camping gear they'd brought up for me at Nikkie's, then we went back to pack all my stuff into the back of the Jimmy. Swood left pretty quickly. We finished around 2:15 (we were due out at 2:00, but the guy at the counter looked around and then put his finger to his lips: "shhh").

The Jimmy was absolutely packed. We were pretty optimistic until we realized I had my computer chair, then we lost the rearview mirroring and the third seat. We went out to lunch at Boundary Bay (which is nearly identical to Silver City) but to get there, my grandma had to be on my lap. It was a little awkward to say the least. I couldn't decide whether it'd be more awkward to have a 20-year-old man on a 70-year-old woman's lap, even though I used to sit on her lap, or the other way around. It's probably best not to think about it too hard.

After lunch, they dropped me off at Nikkie's and headed south. I hung out for a while playing some Rock Band. For dinner, Rosa and I went out to eat, again at Boomer's, and for the second time, at Boulevard Park. There were a lot of people there for some benefit concert thingy, plus it was a gorgeous day. We talked, and walked on the dock, and it was pleasant, but I'm fairly certain now we're not as good a match as I had hoped. Maybe it was imagined, but it felt like the whole time she was worrying that she'd be late for something.

When I got home, Nikkie was at a friend's house playing Civ IV, so I talked to Karen and Curly online for a while, then went to sleep on Nikkie's couch.

In the morning, Nikkie, Jackson, Arth, and I got in two cars and drove to Lake Crescent. I was in Arth's car. He had classical and Weird Al. We had our fill of Mozart (I chose that first so I could get a little more sleep), and then popped in a couple of the Weird Al disks I'd not yet heard. There's a song called "Weasel Stomping Day," which is probably among his best until he took it a little overboard and had the sounds of weasels actually being stomped. It's about a day that's tradition and everyone enjoys it but no one knows why they have it. So from now on, whenever I reference Weasel Stomping Day, you will understand why. How does it feel to be enlightened?

We found a campsite right on the lake and pitched a tent not 6 feet from the water's edge. It was a great trip. No one really cared if we did anything so there was no pressure to not just relax, and yet we did do things, and had fun. We had very nerdy conversations about squirrels and chipmunks and polecules and camera lenses with worm holes and we're really just pointers to people objects. Every joke seemed to end up being referenced to complete other jokes.

Over the past quarter, I've been considering Genesis 1 (the story of Creation). Solomon said at Pizza Theology that Genesis 1 is poetry. Adam means "man" so it wasn't talking about a man, but mankind. I wouldn't say I'm completely convinced that evolution happened, but it allowed me to consider it more thoroughly. I'd always thought evolution had some pretty sound arguments, but had always been taught that passage to be taken literally, so I always felt bad about thinking about it. What's odd is, this has actually strengthened my faith. I have a deeper appreciation for nature now that it feels like God did more work in manipulation and playing with things, rather than merely saying a few words which feels more detached to me.

Anyway, I spent the whole trip thinking about evolution and wondering if I could make a monster game (Pokemon, Monster Ranchers, Dragon Warrior Monsters, etc) that could simulate it well, and what kind of data structures I would need for the DNA. I'm thinking each monster would almost have to have their own virtual machine, where the DNA served as assembly for that VM.

Thinking about biology often turned me to think about Hime, since she's in a bio major. She had gotten herself into a complicated mess with her boyfriend, but that's not really my story to tell. I spent a lot of the trip thinking about her and her circumstances though. It was hard.

On Monday I started this post using only the sun and no backlight in an attempt to stretch out the battery life of my laptop. When it got too dark to see, I put it down, and really didn't touch it again until tonight. We went swimming that day, which required a trip to Walmart so I could buy a swimsuit (we had other reasons to go, as well). On Tuesday it rained sporadically, so we spent the majority of the time in the tent playing Muchkin Impossible and Pinochle.

I'd always admired Arth and thought he was a good programmer, but we'd never really hung out. I enjoyed getting to know him. Sounds like he's a pretty mature Christian too, though he and I have not yet talked about it. We both know Jackson and Nikkie don't particularly enjoy religion, and I, at least, didn't want to alienate them.

Tuesday night, or more likely Wednesday morning, I had a dream about a girl named Calloh. I remember it pretty vividly. She was a girl who was kind of scoffing at me because I was a Christian and figured me for the stereotype, but we got to talking and we ended up liking each other (somehow it turned out her parents were pretty religious, and she followed Christ but disliked dogma). Then some weird stuff happened, she ended up getting critically injured, and they copied her brain into an advanced neural network in a robot, and she was having troubles adjusting to her plastic, though very nearly human body. Meanwhile, this other idiotic guy was trying to impress her, or really her parents by acting like a Christian, which to me looked more like mocking. It was a strange dream to be sure, but I can't help but think the name Calloh has some significance, though I'm fine with discarding the rest of the dream. I think I might name one of my cats Calloh. I like the sound of it, even if it is gibberish and weird. The only other time I can think of where I might have heard that name is Calo Nord in KotOR, but the way it was in the dream, the name had a distinctly softer sound, and it took me a long time to make the connection at all.

We packed up and headed homeward that day. Arth had parked at Nikkie's grandmother's house so we wouldn't have to pay for an extra camping spot, so they went to get that car while Jackson and I packed up the tent and other things, then spent an hour just talking, mostly about entanglement theory and its implications. While we were packing, the squirrels, well, one squirrel in particular, was trying to get the food on the table, no matter how much we batted it off. I'm glad I put a glove on, because it didn't scare as easily as you might imagine, and it actually jumped and latched onto my middle finger before I threw it off. A trip to the hospital and rabies shots just would not be the best ending to a trip like this. Despite our efforts, one did end up in the hot chocolate powder for quite some time.

The trip home was nice. They dropped me off at my house in Port Orchard along with all the camping gear. I checked my grades -- A- in math; boo --took my badly needed shower, and then my mom and Jack took me to test drive a car they'd found, or rather a friend who owns a used car dealership had found for me. It's a 2000 Nissan Altima with 88,500 miles on it. I drove it around town, and a bit on the freeway. It has decent pickup and gets 31mpg on the freeway, so I decided it'd be a good car to have for a while. Eventually I want to get a Prius but I don't yet have money for that, and I'd rather not pay any interest. I didn't actually buy it that day. I sort of just reserved it until my grandpa's check made it here. From there we went to the M's game. We lost in the third inning. For most of the trip to the game, I was txting Hime about her boy circumstances.

I think she knows that it's hard for me, her falling in love with a guy. She's been really ... I don't even know what the word is. Considerate, certainly, but more than that. And 'nice' doesn't capture it either. I guess really she's been extra friendly to me lately, making sure I know I'm loved by her, and doing and saying things she knows mean a lot to me, like bugging me to finish this post so she can read it.

On Thursday I went to actually go get my car, and hand over a check (which he would hold until I cashed my grandpa's loan). From there I was supposed to get a haircut, but decided against it. I honestly can't remember what I did the rest of the day. It's a good bet to guess WoW was played.

I was supposed to have dinner with my dad on Thursday. On Saturday morning (right after graduation) he called me, since I had called him the night before to see if he had wanted to see me graduate since I had the extra tickets. I had just gotten to the point that I was willing to see him again, and not an hour later, my mom told me that he had coerced my sister into meeting his mistress. My sister and her boyfriend had gone on a break or possibly broken up for good, which meant that he wasn't going to take care of her dog anymore, and my sister had nowhere to house him, so my dad offered on the condition that she met the woman. That was underhanded. That was proof he's not changed. He's called me twice now, but I let it go to voicemail and have not yet listened to them. My sister said he was going on a trip on Friday.

On Friday, my mom and I drove out to look at various apartments. That must have been what I did on Thursday night, do some research on apartments.com. We had addresses for 13 of them and the matching floor plans for the rooms we'd be looking at, and ended up visiting 9 of those. All but one were in the Mill Creek area. The nicest one was a place in Mill Creek, and I would have taken it, but my aunt and uncle both said that the commute would be terrible, upwards of 90 minutes. So, the one I took, which had the second nicest interior and probably third nicest looking community, was in Redmond, the last one we looked at. I think it's about a 10 minute commute to Microsoft's campus, and it's the only apartment complex in Redmond that allows cats, has washer and dryer inside the room, and is less than $1400. In all, my rent will be something like $1259 a month for a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment. I don't intend to find a roommate, but the second room will be nice if someone wants to sleep over or visit, plus I could use it as an office. We'll see how it all works when I move in. The room won't be ready until the 12th, so I'll be living with my sister for the first week I'm working.

Everything feels like it's moving so fast. I graduated. I got a car. I got an apartment. All in the span of a week, and I don't know if I made the right choices on them, because no one can know if I did or not, so I'm a little stressed about things I can't control. I know this is one of those times I should just trust in God, as simple as that sounds (and has difficult as it is), but I've never had to trust him for such things before. For me it's always been getting into school, getting a job, personal safety for as long as he wants me on earth. Somehow living situations and cars don't fit that category, maybe because they're financial choices I'm making rather than are being made for me.

On Saturday morning I met with Eowyn for coffee. The original purpose of the meeting was for me to give her two monitors for the computer I gave her in January, which she apparently still hasn't turned on. (The third roommate had left an old CRT of his in the apartment so I adopted it for Eowyn.) The meeting turned into one of our normal coffee dates, which we hadn't had since December, so it was nice to catch up. Her life is pretty difficult right now. Again, that's not really my story to tell, but it's what's been on my mind lately. She's moving out because she can't stand living with her dad, who has done immature things like making her buy her own violin from him. Now she's working two jobs (one of which she loves and will prepare her for a career down the road) and is hoping for a third, and taking a class or two. I can't say I'm envying her life right now. One thing we didn't talk about, that we usually do, is our spiritual lives. We plan to meet again in the next week or two to discuss such things.

That night I went to Swood's parents' place and played some Smash Bros with him. We beat Subspace Emissary for him and got all but three characters: Jigglypuff, Toon Link, and Wolf. After that, we played some normal matches, and he owned me every time. He's gotten good, I've gotten bad, or it just wasn't my night. I don't know which.

I enjoy having a car, even if it does mean high gas prices. It's nice to not have to ask my mom if she's going anywhere later, or drive her to work early in the morning so I can have the car the rest of the day. It's not been terribly inconvenient to do those things, but it's just a nice freedom.

Yesterday's sermon was difficult for me. It was week four of five in a series on anger. It's no big secret that I'm angry at my dad. One thing I've always hated about sermons that discuss things like this is that they always use the same phrases. "Give it over to God." "Let God heal you." That sounds like Python to me. It works automagically. Unfortunately, I'm the machine without the underlying assembly, and I have no idea how to do things like that. To be fair, while he did use those phrases, he also gave a couple practical ideas, like journaling and counseling, both of which I've done a bit.

There was a girl who was kind of cute at Church that I've not met, so after the service, I went to say hi to John who was talking to her. I never did catch her name, but I caught that she was going to Challenge, which means that at the oldest, she's just graduating high school. Too young. Oh well.

My mom, Jack, and I went to see Get Smart that afternoon. It had poor reviews, but I thought it was funny and entertaining. I didn't go into it expecting a masterpiece. It was silly, and it achieved silly. I think it was funnier to the two of them because they'd seen the TV show growing up. After the movie we had dinner at The Hat. I tried what my mom always orders, Chicken Toquitos, rather than getting what I always get, number 5, two with ground beef, one with shredded. I was disappointed. So very bland. The food tastes white, and this is coming from someone who eats turkey, cream cheese, and mayonnaise sandwiches. It seems like my mom and Jack have a similar relationship as Stephen and I do in the sense that I never believe Stephen when he's telling the truth and hang on every word of a fib. Of course, he'll say now that he never lies, but don't believe him. Or should you?

Today I played a lot of WoW. Also, I watched the first two episodes of Last Comic Standing. At the same time. Ah, dual screens: how important you are. Seriously, how did we survive before with just WoW or just TV?

This leads us to two rants. The first is that we have a universal remote and Jack ALWAYS turns off the cable box, but not the TV leaving a high-pitched noise and wasting a lot of electricity. Every time I walk by I hear it and am like, "Is that on?" I press the power button and the screen flashes off. It's just irritating and wasteful.

The other is that NBC hasn't put their episodes of LCS on their website. Episodes four and five are there, but not the first three, nor are they on hulu, though it sounds like they might be next week. If they don't want us to pirate material that was displayed for free in the first place, they should offer it to us for free online. I have no issue watching on their website and watching the thirty second ads, but I wasn't given the opportunity.

A third rant, which has nothing to do with TV, and I had been planning for about an hour now, and is not so much a rant as a comment, but followed the first two so I thought I might as well call it a rant, but now that I've fully explained what it is, I've kind of wasted a lot of your time, is that I'm a little disappointed that it's so clichéd to identify with a good song. Since I've been home and been driving around without a Zune-ready radio, I've been listening to Spirit lately, and Newsboys just released a new song called Stay Strong. Who knows how recently that was. That station claims songs 5 years old are new. Anyway, at first I like it just for the sound, then I started to catch some of the lyrics, particularly the chorus and liked those. Then I downloaded it (bought it, thank you very much) and read the lyrics on a lyrics site. The verses remind me a lot of how I'm feeling right now. It sort of goes back to that trusting God thing.

Well, it's 1am now. I should probably get to bed. But who am I kidding? I'm still going to be up a couple more hours. I've got Eragon to re-read, WoT to read (more than halfway through book 5, but it's taking me a while -- so... much... girls' point of views), and of course WoW to play. I think one of my favorite things in WoW now is to play the markets. Silk was doing well yesterday at over a gold and dropped to 35s tonight, whereas wool went from 4g to 6g. A couple people tried to sell wool at a reasonable price, but I caught it early enough to buy them out and made money reselling their wool. I do wish I was better at PvP with a pally though. That's definitely the best part of WoW in my opinion.

Right. So bed. Yeah.

Shall I try it? No. Considering how long it has taking me to type these sentences, using Dvorak would significantly cut down on my post length, and really, who wants that?

Much better. I think that paragraph took me four minutes to type. At least I know where all the Dvorak keys are now, and I think if I got used to using it, I could get quite a bit faster -- it does feel more natural -- but that just takes time I don't really have, especially right now.

I should be in bed. I should have gone to bed at 11, 11:30 the last four nights in a row, but I've been stupid and stayed up. Now I am fried.

We have five days until our Senior Project is due. Where did all the time go? Curly and Lolbot are a little more optimistic than I am, but I think we hit the actual half-way point yesterday. We are making definite progress, but we've also put off the hardest parts. We did the medium ones first, because they were easy enough and yet interesting. Then we did the easy, monotonous ones. Now we have the hard and the weird parts. Also, I found out today that our software won't get directions from cellphone A to cellphone B; it will merely plot all the cellphones' locations on a map. There will be no lines connecting them. Static Google maps aren't the most robust of APIs. In my opinion that cut our shiny factor by half, but we'll see.

We've been working the last four to seven days, hard. I picked up working the GUI because most of the database work is done. Every now and then I still have to write a stored procedure, and every now and then we still have to write some back-end functions to support the front end, but most of the work now is getting J2ME Polish to work. It's actually a really nice package, but no package is without it's quirks. For instance, you can't add a command listener to a tree. Any other item, and it works, but not a tree.

I will be so relieved when this is all over. We're planning an all-nighter on Saturday night, which will be the second for Lolbot this week. He has compilers due on Friday, so he'll spend all of Thursday night (tomorrow night, I suppose) on it. I am so very glad that I got sick for that week, all but forcing me to drop the class. I'd be so incredibly overwhelmed if I hadn't.

We got our MFT results back today. The tradition continues: no one from our school failed. The scale is from 120 to 200, and 140 is passing. The lowest was a 145, and the top score was between 195 and 198. Whether I think highly of my skills in computer science or not, I got a 192, the second highest. It helped that I took software testing, artificial intelligence, and database theory. I'm not sure anyone else who took the MFT this quarter has taken all three of those, and there were questions regarding each, so I was at a bit of an advantage. I hope I don't come off as arrogant. I don't feel like I look down on people. I'm just excited I did as well as I did, though I was a little overly curious as to who got the highest score. I did find out. It was a kid I don't know very well, but have been hanging out with in the labs the last few nights. He seems pretty cool, and apparently is pretty bright when it comes to CS. He was looking for a job at MS, so I gave him the email address of my recruiter. I hope that was alright.

Alexander finished the first draft of his story. It was short compared to what I was expecting. It's still more than the chapter I've written of mine, but it was still shorter than the novel I expected. The story is 19 chapters long, each chapter averaging 7,500 words. That's about 190 pages in word, or about 350 pages (give or take) in your average novel-sized softcover. Still, it begs a sequel. Things happened really quickly, at least compared to Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, or Inheritance. I liked it though. That's really the point I was getting at. I wanted more of it.

On Sunday I went to FPC for the third time. One of the congregation was a former pastor and he gave the message. I really liked him. He was very different from Doug, the head pastor at the church -- a refreshing change, even if it was only my third time there. I'd heard Doug speak several times at the INN as well. They have this LCD in the corner that has three 7-segment displays on it. The numbers light up indicating that a parent is needed of child number ### in the nursery. There were quite a few numbers that went up during the service, and my first thought was, "I wonder if they're staging a coo." It was almost as bad as the time I dreamt up a pun I didn't get in the dream, but when I woke up, it was pretty bad. ("Who would name their girl 'Anna May'?")

Monday night I sinned. Of course I sin every day, but this was the whole, I know I shouldn't be doing this; I should stop this; I'm still doing this type of sin, a full-fledged giving into temptation. Swood gets on 4chan pretty often to download anime wallpapers. The ones he downloads are pretty harmless -- pictures from animes he's watched and so he knows the characters and they mean something to him. I got in the habit of looking over his shoulder, and there are several pictures of girls with questionable amounts of clothing in the pictures he doesn't download. They were all clothed though -- nude pictures, I gather, aren't allowed on /w/ -- so that was the subconscious justification I gave myself for something I knew I shouldn't have been doing in the first place. Two nights ago, though, I was drained, and I was stressed. Swood was just closing one of the drawings he'd clicked on, apparently a long time before, and I wanted to see it, so I went to /w/. I know it had been a while before because it wasn't still on any of the pages. Feeling a little depraved, I went to konachan which I know logs all the pictures off /w/. What I didn't know was they store a LOT of hentai (anime porn basically). At that point I slipped, if I hadn't already, and spent maybe a half hour browsing that site. When my eyes had had their share, I began Windows Update to Vista SP1, and tried to sleep. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was stuff I ought not to have, including images I didn't see on the web. My imagination is "strong" that way.

I broke down. I prayed and prayed. I confessed to God, prayed for healing, prayed for purity. And it came. Suddenly those images were gone. I was given grace. I wasn't completely healed of lustful desires, but it's like the state of those things was reverted to that of several months ago. I am so glad of that.

Yesterday Lulu talked at the INN. She talked about a passage in Luke 9. It's about three men. Jesus is walking toward Jerusalem, on a pretty long trek, so I understood. The first man walks up to Jesus and says, "I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus replies, "Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to rest his head." This passage is one I've never really understood. I mean, I know what all those words are -- they're not difficult words -- and I know that "the Son of Man" refers to Christ, but it's such a strange response, and all I could get out of it was that he turned the man away. Why would Christ turn someone away, especially after the person just said he'd follow him wherever he went? Basically what Christ was saying to the man was that the man didn't know yet what he was getting into, and he didn't want the man to be disappointed. Christ had been doing some pretty amazing things, and this guy had just seen the glory and the hype, but following Christ is deeper and harder than that, and he didn't want this man to be tricked. Something that comes to mind, though, is that Lulu said that in Matthew 8, the first guy is titled a scribe, or a teacher of the Law. Scribes, to my understanding, were up there with Pharisees and Sagisees. He should have known that God was not all about glamor, or maybe the Law was just something he thought was cool, a way of power, and that's what he saw in Christ. I shall ask Lulu about that later.

The second guy Jesus approaches and says, "Follow me." From the sounds of it, Jesus knew this man well enough, or he wouldn't have asked it of the man. The man replied, "First let me go bury my father." Jesus answered, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but you go and proclaim the Kingdom of God." It sounds like Jesus is telling him not to attend his father's funeral, but in Jewish culture, they buried their dead within 24 hours, as quickly as possible. If the man's father had been dead that day, he wouldn't have been walking with Jesus on the way to Jerusalem. What the man was actually saying was, "My father is old; let me wait for him to die and then I'll come follow you." So what the guy was basically saying was, "Let me get some of my ducks in a row; let me follow you when the circumstances in my life are right."

The third man says, "Let me first go and say goodbye to my family." This seems like another simple request, but Jesus responds, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God." Here, the man is looking back at his family, is looking at all the losses, all the changes he'll have to make in order to follow Christ. He's wondering what his life would be like if he hadn't followed Christ and all the supposed freedoms and luxuries he'd be giving up. He's distracted. Jesus says that Jesus would have to be first in the mans life, would have to be focused on whole-mindedly, undividedly.

Honestly, none of the three men described here rang a bell with my current person. However, it did make me think back to September 2005. It was right after the CCF move-in Sunday donut get-together, and I realized that I had been thinking up to that point that I would be putting God on hold until I was out of college, and then I could focus on him. And during that night, I decided that was foolish, and wondered what better time to start focusing on God. So I made a conscious decision that night to devote my time at college to God.

As I was sitting there during the last couple songs at the INN, I started thinking of how much change I'd gone through here at Western. I've grown so much in my faith that it's overwhelming. I've been so very blessed. I began to sob.

When I got back, I started to read blog posts from that time. I thought that I had made that decision after my first time at CCF on a Friday night, not at the donut thing, so I started reading the post after the one I was looking for, and read a few of them. It was about the time I started "dating" Louise (who lives in Australia). I was really funny back then. There was actually a very subtle pun I threw in there that I read over the first time and didn't notice. The sentence it was in was immediately followed by "(Did you catch it?)" so I went back and read it. I think I always seem more clever in hindsight. It's unfortunate that I don't feel clever in the now. It might help my self esteem, though, I have kind of been getting the feeling this post seems arrogant somehow, so maybe I don't need that boost.

In the last post I had time to read before 1:30, it mentioned that Louise had said "I love you" for the first time. It actually quoted StarWars Ep II, casting her as Padme and me as Anakin, which I know didn't happen, so I wanted to read it again for myself. When we weren't being ridiculously sappy (which was more of a joke than serious most of the time), we had really good conversations. After all, I was in a relationship with her for a couple months, and all we had to go on was conversation, so I should hope they were good. But I miss them. Since she's graduated from high school and left her parents' house, she's not had time to be online, especially since the house she was living in didn't have internet access for a while. I wrote her a pretty long facebook message that actually included much of this post and went to bed.

Tonight was our Casa's last hurrah. We went to Rudy's Pizzeria. I don't usually like flat crust pizza, but this was pretty good. I wish I'd been more talkative, that is, had more to say, but I'm just beat. I've never worked this hard for this long on a program. All the programs I did for classes I was able to do in my spare time, really. I certainly had to work hard on them, and when I procrastinated, I worked hard for a night to finish them, but that was never for several days straight.

This program has also taken a toll on my life in my room. Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean, I haven't been able to work out at the gym with Gaul, or play Smash with my roommates, or watch 21 with Swood. I did get to watch Bleach with him today, but still. We used to talk a lot more. Leaving will be so weird.

Rosa and I have another dinner planned for the Friday of finals week. We should both be stress free on that day, so I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully I won't be having an off day like I did the last time we had dinner together. I am so determined to make things awkward. I just hate it.

Dreams are just dreams, but a few nights ago I dreamt that Rosa and I started dating and shared the best, simple, innocent peck on the lips. It was preceded by some witty banter. Basically it was the most pleasant situation I could imagine, I think. Honestly I don't read anything into that, but it was a nice memory I wanted to preserve. Now I just hope she doesn't read this post if it would result in more awkwardness. That'd be the one disadvantage to the public blog. Well, one of them.

I have again succeeded in staying up until 2:00. Again I have been stupid. Let us all congratulate me! Good night.