Hybrid Hype
Mood:  don't ask
Today my parents decided to take a detour while we were all trapped in the car after church. My brother's turning 16 soon so he may be getting a car if I take mine away from home; thus we went to the car dealership. He gets to choose between a Honda Civic (my car) or a Toyota Corolla (my brother's car). Our first stop was the Honda dealership.

While we were there we decided to check out the hybrid Civic. This is its second year in production so the price wasn't too far from the gas only Civics. Since I'd been wanting to test drive one since they first came out, I got to test drive it. The main thing I wanted to test was the pickup because everyone always says that there's no way that a car like that can have the same pickup as a gas car. What's the verdict?

Basically, there are 3 things I didn't like about the car. I'll go from least important to most important, IMHO. First, there's less trunk space. Where did it go? To hold the HUGE battery that powers the car. Fortunately, Civics have huge trunks to begin with so the loss isn't so bad. Still, for someone like me who's even had to lower the seats to carry my DJ equipment, the loss is huge. Second, there's the fact that for some strange reason you can't hear or feel the gears change. I don't know enough about cars to know why this is the case, but yeah it's very weird to drive an automatic car where you don't hear the VROOOOM bam VROOOOM bam of the gears changing. (Perhaps bam isn't the right noise, but it something like that. Anyone who pays attention knows that I mean) Additionally, you can't feel the gears changing. That really throws off my driving. Finally, it didn't have any pickup. I mean, I was stepping on it to drive on the highway and I worried whether I'd get up to highway speed. Basically, hybrid cars really aren't ready to compete with their gasoline brethren. Not if the drivers want to have power and pickup. But, that's just my humble opinion.

A full day....
Today I woke up just seconds before my girlfriend called my cellphone. I was about to call her back on my house phone because we have free long distance when I got two back to back calls for my brothers who were still asleep. After fielding them and getting back to my girlfriend, my dad informed me that we'd be going to best buy to get his DVD player. He's been wanting to get one with component outputs and dolby connections.

So after I got off the phone with her we went to have lunch and then best buy. We spent about an hour there. We also picked up a DVD-Audio of Santana. If you don't know what that is, it's a brand new format: 1 of 2 that will replace CDs. In addition to songs that are in Dolby 5.1, they have lyrics, music videos and other special video features.

Then we spent the next 4 hours setting up the DVD player to properly connect to the receiver. It was a pain because the instructions weren't explicit. Therefore, we had to play with every single setting until it worked. At one point, we could hear everything except dialogue. But we finally got it to work.

Then we spent a few hours testing it with various movies.

Then I had to cook for the family since my mom's still only got one operational arm and I'm the only one that can cook.

That's why I couldn't work on the Ranma stuff or read.

I did it all for the wookie
For a fun little parody video check this out:
http://download.theforce.net/theater/wookie/wookie.mov

#160
So, I didn't write anything of substance yet because I'm only up due to insomnia. Trust me, you don't want me writing the fanfiction now.

So, I've noticed that whenever I'm on break I completely lose track of all sense of time. I think that my life is so structured and scheduled while I'm at the University that being here with nothing in particular due by any certain day completely throws me off. For example, New Year's Eve completely threw me off. I know that it comes 7 days after Christmas, but Christmas already seems like it's a millenium away. Wow, it really was only a week ago! And now it's 2004. Last semester was only a few weeks ago and it seems like forever since I took one. Same with my girlfriend, it'll only be two weeks until we go back to school, but I feel like we've been apart forever.

It's not just dates, but also days. I have to constantly ask people what day of the week it is. The fact that tomorrow is Friday thouroughly shocked me. I was like...did we just go through an entire week? What have I done? Surprisingly little. I mean, I *did* grow my city to 121k in sim city. We *do* have a 1/4 of a million people in the region now. But other than starting a couple of books that I haven't finished yet, what the heck have I been doing?

On the one hand, I don't care. This is what a true vacation is all about. It's supposed to be a release from schedules and assignments and everything that brings stress into my life. But dang it, I had goals for break! I wanted to read all of my books and write about them in the blog.

Well, I guess that I did meet one of my goals. I have blogged daily since break started. That's pretty neat. Still!

Well, maybe tomorrow I'll get some of it done. Also, I have to finally watch LOTR 2 so that I can go see 3 with my family. But that's 3 freakin' hours! Do I want to sit for 3 hours for something I'm not really into? I mean, 3 hours of matrix, ok! But 3 hours of LOTR?!? To then allow me to see another 3 hours! I don't know about that...Maybe I'll wait to see it with my girlfriend because she's already seen it so we can talk during the boring parts.

I usually don't do that during a movie at all, but I'm not really into the fantasy genre. I'm just seeing it so that I can be part of the LOTR pop culture movement. It's kinda the same reason why I saw Casablanca and Gone with the Wind. Just because they're movies that you have to see if you live in the US. Casablance turned out to be pretty decent. Gone with the wind was so boring that I chatted on AIM through a good portion of it.

Hmm....well, now that I've gotten that out of my system, perhaps I can get to bed.

ok...ok....just one more day
I hope that the first day of 2004 went well for everyone.

Well, I had to spend part of the day cleaning for guests and the other part of the day with them. Therefore, not only did nothing worth writing about happen, I wasn't able to write anything like the next Ranma episode. I hope to be able to remedy that tomorrow. My brothers should be off to the beach leaving my father and I here alone. My dad will probably go read one of his books and that'll give me ample time to write. At least, that's the plan. We'll see what goes down tomorrow.

Upcoming Posts
Finally, the second ep to the Ranma fanfic

Why am I not on the most recently updated list when I've had several posts every day for the past 2 wks

And just maybe the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

(Sleep procrastination again....I have absolutely no idea why I do it)

Hebrews Chap 4-6
Mood:  bright
The usual disclaimer: if this doesn't float your boat, just read the other stuff or wait for another post
----------------

Chapter 4
The big point here is that the only way to reach a true state of rest (and I think they mean something deeper than mere physical rest) is through God. Basically, we're unable to do it otherwise because that's how we were designed. It's as if completing a puzzle and, as we all know, only once piece fits correctly into the right slot.

The second part which overlaps with Chapter 5 is about how, by becoming Jesus, God is able to know what it's like to be tempted. There were times when his body wanted to be a glutton or have extra-marital sex or anything else like that. So it's not like he doesn't know what we're going through. On the contrary, this is practically the whole reason for the incarnation.

Chapter 5
Chapter 5 merely completes the picture with an analogy. Look at the High Priests. In Hebrew society this was like a bishop in the Catholic church today. I mean, this is no small potatoes job. But they were chosen from amongst the lower rabbis and they were to be the role models. They had the unique ability to be able to forgive someone for acting foolishly because they themselves being only human might sin too.

This argument can be used today against people with "Holier Than Thou" syndrome. These are the ones who people love to see fall because they act as if they were better than all. Yet, they should rather help to teach others to improve without being arrogant so that when they mess up, instead of cheering for them to fall, others will help them get back up.

Back to the High Priest analogy, it applies to Jesus in that he is also a chosen one and he knows what it feels like to be human.

The chapter ends with an insult at the Hebrews who are apparently not doing well in their spiritual growth.

Chapter 6
This continues the insults from chapter 5. Additionally, it talk a little bit about Abraham. This is a forshadowing of the talk of faith that will come in chapter 11 and begins with Abraham. So since there's nothing big here, I won't make a big deal of it.

...may old acquaintance be forgot :: mumble mumble ::
Mood:  chillin'
A few quick things:
Check out my brother David's blog (link is on the left towards the bottom)

Any of my friends who actually read my blog, I hope you had a great New Year. Some of you got to kiss your significant others at midnight. Lucky you! I'm jealous, I really miss my girlfriend the most at moments like this. Also when I see people holding hands out there....so everyone in Tampa, stop holding hands! Hehe, but I hope you guys all had a great beginning to this year.

Some people who didn't have such an awesome New Year are my girlfriend's cousins. One of my her aunts died on 30 dec. That really stinks cuz her oldest of three kids is only 10. Again, if you have some kind of faith that has supplications in it, please pray for her family. If you have some kind of belief system where you will things into being, then please will her family to have the positive feeling that she's no longer suffering with the horrid cancer treatments. Anyway, I didn't want to put a downer on your New Year, but just wanted some help with that. Thanks a lot!

May America have another great year and may we remain free of attacks. Hopefully, we'll, in turn, stop being such jerks to the world. In short, may there be as much peace as is humanly possible in 2004!

Happy New Year!
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Old Ang Lyde
Happy New Year!!

It's now 2004 now on the east coast of the United States of America!

This is quite a cool year. Stuff happening this year:

Feb has 29 days
My brother's graduating HS
Summer Olympics in Athens
Presidential Election

It's pretty awesome. This year's celebration was pretty low key. We stayed at home and watched the stuff on Tv. When the New Year rang in I had some French Champagne and 12 grapes. Not bad. It was quite comfy staying at home, I actually celebrated the New Year in my PJs.

Awesome!

A Theory as to why All Religions seem to lead to the same place
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: "Losing my Religion" - can't remember
Topic: General Religion
People often quip, "how can religion x claim to be the only way to Heaven, Nirvana, etc? They all seem to say the same thing." You'll presently see that I have a very simple answer to the reason why people say this. You see, I feel that there is really only one way to do things most efficiently and so that they provide the most happiness. This is not to say that there aren't many ways to reach the same goals, but to paraphrase Chris Rock, "You can drive a car with your feet if you want to, but it ain't a f*cking good idea." Let me begin and I think that things will be much clearer.

Let's take a simple example. You live in Florida or another warm place and have an outdoor swimming pool. The tiles on such a pool tend to full of algea. There are two ways to clean it. You can use a large brush or you can use a toothbrush. Both will get the job done. In the end your pool will be clean, but clearly there's only one quick and efficient way to do it.

This is very similar to the way life works. There are people who sell drugs for a living and people who have a nine to five. They will both allow a person to have a pension plan, but one will end up in jail a lot more often.

Ok, so you get the point now. Basically I feel that it's the same way with religions. Think about the things that religions ask you to do and see if any of them do not lead to a better and more efficient outcome:
do not kill
do not steal
don't sleep with your neighbor's wife
live a life of peace with others
all creatures are a reflection of God
you are loved
you have a purpose
etc

How many of those tasks are evil or shouldn't be practiced? None of them. Therefore all religions make society a better place (when they aren't fighting with each other).

So where do we go from here? Basically, I believe that God designed certain rules to the universe including the way life and society should best work. However, it doesn't take a direct command from God to tell you how things are supposed to work. It's just obviously. Therefore people are able to independently able to come up with the same rules.

As an example: I may be wrong, but I don't think that Confucious and King Solomon were contemporaries. What's more, I don't think that the Chinese were too keen on Jewish religion when trade went on. Thus, it's pretty interesting that the proverbs of these great men contain quite a bit of overlapping. That's because proverbs are meant to be easy to remember lessons about how society should be.

Again, it doesn't take God telling you that you should be killing each other for you to realize that it's counter-productive to society. With the Jewish people I just believe that he picked a group of people to share his rules with. Kinda like he allowed them to see his hacker sheet of the way the "system" really works. Other groups had to figure it out on their own.

As a final cause for thought here. The diet prescibed by God to the Jewish nation, known to us as a Kosher meal, has been recognized by scientists as one of the healthiest diets in the world. I don't think that's an accident and at the same time I doubt that those who wrote the original scolls were nutritionists. Thus God gave them the secret of a great diet whereas other countries had to figure that out too. (As America is still doing)