Cause and Effect

I really started thinking about the concept of God my first year at Wheaton, around 1996. It was a philosophy course that really started me thinking about it (I failed the course but that's another story). The concept is hard to get your head around until you start thinking about it differently, outside the box, then everything clicks into place. Unfortunately, to reach that step you either have to do some complicated mental gymnastics or bypass it entirely. I had to do it the hard way, which caused something of a mental meltdown that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Most people don't think about God very much, which is probably the best way to go if you want to stay healthy. Even those who claim to pray "without ceasing" like the Bible says don't really take the time to think about it. I have a problem, though: I think too much. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to know how things work. The universe is just another machine, another problem, another puzzle to be solved.

Any physicist will tell you that the universe we live in is a mechanistic one. Everything that happens, happens for a reason, effect follows cause, nothing is random, etc, etc. (I'm not going to get into the "spooky" things that happen at subatomic scales. Maybe I'll blog about it later. Moving on.) Where most people go wrong lies in the reversing of cause and effect which is only possible when you predict the future.

You and I are constantly making predictions about the future. We don't realize it because most of the time it happens automatically. Suppose you're a baseball player, an outfielder, and the opposing team's hitter hits a long fly ball to center field. A good outfielder will analyze the ball's trajectory and run to the exact spot he needs to be to catch the ball without even realizing he's made a prediction about the future. Let's do an interview with our imaginary outfielder:
Me: What caused you to run to Center Field?
OF: That was where the ball was going to be.
Me: So the ball's future position caused you to change your own?
OF: Exactly.
Of course, the whole story is a bit more complicated. It involves photons bouncing off objects and striking the retina which produces a series of electronic signals which are processed by the human brain which, based on experience, makes a prediction of where the ball is going to be. If the outfielder was less experienced, his predictions might be wrong. In any case, because of our intelligent brains, you and I are able to add a third stop on our cause-and-effect run around the bases: a goal.

So the sequence now runs: Cause-Effect-Goal. We, as intelligent beings who can predict the future, are capable of setting a goal and adjusting cause and effect in order to meet the goal. The outfielder can adjust his stride to run faster and in different directions. So even though Goal comes last in the sequence it actually gets evaluated first in the mind.

We humans are biased. We tend give human attributes to things around us because that's how we think. Even inanimate objects are not immune. If my car is unable to start one morning when it's too cold, I say "it doesn't want to start," as if it were a person or animal capable of having a goal. So here's the real question: does the universe have a goal, or are we humans assuming it has one because that's how we think?

Waiting To Die, Trying To Live

Starting in Middle School and then into High School, I spent so much time planning how I was going to die that I never really thought about how I was going to live. I grew up in a culture obsessed with death. Every Sunday they'd ask the same question: "If you were to die today..." Ok, here's a question: what if I don't die today? What if I don't die this year, or next year, or next decade? What if I live a long, healthy life? What then?

So much of my time was spent just waiting, I got really good at it. Most people hate waiting. They keep trying to take an active role in getting things to happen faster. When you're waiting on God, though, there's nothing you can do. So I learned to amuse myself for brief periods while I waited. Books and games that I didn't really care about but that could grab my attention for a little while. Unimportant things. I was taught that nothing on this earth is important. It's all smoke and vapor, a pale reflection of God's glory. So I made sure that nothing was important to me.

From about 6th grade on, I owned nothing that I couldn't part with. I was sure that if I valued anything it would be taken from me and that I would be left heartbroken. It had happened before, I was sure it would happen again. The only thing I could take with me into the afterlife, I was sure, was what I had learned. So I learned everything I could. I read as much as I could, the Bible most of all, because that was supposed to be the most important thing I could learn, possibly the only thing I could take with me into the afterlife.

For the same reason, I started holding people at arm's length. I was afraid to start any lasting friendships for fear they would be taken from me. I wanted to be able to leave whenever I wanted, no muss, no fuss. I didn't want anyone to remember me, to wonder where I had gone.

If I couldn't be a martyr, I wanted to crawl off into the wilderness and starve to death. Let God kill me in His own way.

The only thing that really got in the way of this was my own family. They had always known me and always would. Truthfully, I didn't really want to die, I wanted to never have been born. If I could have taken a time machine and prevented my birth, I would have. I didn't want anyone mourning me, eulogizing me, remembering me. I wanted to cease to exist, forever and always. I could have had my wish, If I'd thought about it, but I never considered the possibility that there was no Heaven, no soul, that the end of life is the end of existence.

So here I find myself now trying to pull myself back together, to gain some semblance of life. After spending most of my childhood learning to die, now I find myself having to learn how to live. Believing that life is something worth striving for is not an idea that I am used to. But I'm trying.

Empathy

So here I am again wondering what to write about next. It's not that I have no ideas, it's more that I have too many ideas struggling with each other to get out next. "Write what you know," they say. Well, I know about myself, but I've already said everything about myself that I care to right now. I know about computers, but this is the internet and there's an abundance of experts who would be glad to share with you everything you might care to learn. There's one other thing I know about: religious fanaticism. I may not have done a study on the concept, I may not have a degree, but I know about it intimately because I was one, and because I came out the other side.

In the Fall of 2001 I had decided to take an art class. So I was sitting with a dozen other students sketching away when the professor walked in a with a little portable radio and plugged it in. The voice from the little box was speculating wildly about the plane that had hit the WTC tower. No one was sure if it was on purpose or an accident until the second plane hit, then everyone stopped drawing and crowded around.

One of the reasons I dropped out of acting was because I wear my heart on my sleeve. I can't make myself feel emotions the way other people do. I was stunned when I heard the news, but it wasn't out of empathy for the thousands who died in the two flaming towers. Nor did I feel for the millions who had relatives and acquaintances inside. I couldn't make myself feel for them and didn't try to. I was too busy feeling for the bombers.

A similar thing happened a few years earlier when I heard about the Columbine shooting. Everyone was running around saying "What if something like that had happened in my high school? Where would I hide? How could I defend myself?" My heart didn't go out to the victims or their families. I heard about the shooters and thought, "There but by the grace of God go I."

I know all about wanting to die for a cause because I know all about wanting to die. I saw the world in very similar terms while I was growing up. I saw all those rich, decadent people in positions of power, positions they hadn't earned, and wanted to tear them down from their high pedestals. I would have gladly sacrificed myself to do it rather than spend a lifetime in thrall to their regime. As long as civilization continues on its path, there will always be suicide bombers, for several reasons:

1. The Dead are Glorified
No one ever speaks badly of the dead. It may be for superstitious reasons or just political ones but when someone dies they were suddenly the most wonderful, misunderstood person on earth. Coffins get draped with flags and flowers, thousands gather for funerals. Even moreso if you can die accomplishing something noble. Then there's the heaven myth. If the afterlife is so much better than life on earth, why not blow yourself up?


2. Reproductive Restrictions
This deserves an entire blog entry for itself. It's the sole reason so many suicide bombers come out of muslim countries but we in American are not immune to it. If those boys in Columbine had had girlfriends, they never would have done what they did. In Muslim countries, where wives are purchased like slaves, only wealthy men can afford wives, usually at least two or three. Many rich heads of families have extensive harems, and when it comes time for the sons to marry, only the eldest are so favored because of the cost. What does this mean for the younger sons who will never marry? While many deny it, any honest man will tell you that the primary reason we men do anything is because of sex. Throughout history, most soldiers have been single men. We go to war, we innovate, we struggle to obtain sex. Men who get all the sex they want attain very little because they have no reason to. What does this mean in a culture where thousands of young men must go through life unmarried because young women are valuable commodities bought and sold by old, rich, powerful men?


3. Envy and Greed
Here's another one that deserves it's own blog entry. People are animals. We have the same drives as any other animal in nature. One of these drives is the struggle for territory. It's in our nature to want to take what others have. If my neighbor has a nice new car, I want it. Exodus tells us not to covet, but that's one commandment we cannot obey. We have to covet, it's in our nature. In a culture where so many poor are surrounded so few rich and powerful, we all covet wealth and power. If we feel we cannot achieve it through peaceful means we will use violent means instead.


4. The Power of Myth
Growing up, I used to think I was still living in biblical times. That those times never really existed in the first place is beside the issue. I wanted to live in a time of miracles, where God answered prayer by bringing rival nations to their knees with natural disasters. In the Middle East where the stories arose, it must be even harder to live in the present. You want to believe that the stories are relevant today. A muslim looking at pictures of New York must have seen two great towers of Babel reaching for the sky. Pentagons conjure up similar images. Who wouldn't want to try to gain God's favor by destroying those symbols?


5. Hero Tales
Every culture has its heroes: those who braved great odds to achieve the impossible. In reality such individuals rarely act without huge support networks but in the stories they always act alone. We all want to emulate our heroes, to achieve what they achieved, and the myth of the lone gunslinger who accomplishes so much working alone will never go away.

These are some of the reasons I identified more with the bombers than with the victims. I felt the same drives. If I had grown up in a culture like theirs, I would have acted the same way. The dead feel nothing: they're dead.

The Pitfalls of Self Deprecation

People were always telling me to cheer up.  It got pretty annoying.  "Smile, God loves you," they'd say, as if I didn't already know that.  I didn't see anything in the Bible about facial expressions.  The only other people I knew of who seemed to smile all the time were cultists and people who were trying to get me to like them, like salesmen and politicians.

Maybe I should back up a little.  There's a saying: "Actions speak louder than words."  I had decided at one point that because I wasn't so good at words that I would let my actions speak for me.  It's particularly hard when you're growing up in a society of preachers, who practice the exact opposite: distract people with your words and you they won't notice your actions.  It fits in with the Biblical notion that Christians should be humble: another concept every preacher I'd ever met seemed to have a problem with.  Really, if you read the gospels, it's like every other verse is about humility, but I never seemed to see it in any of the Christians I went to church with.  They never stopped talking, always trying to be the center of attention.  I spoke only to communicate, and then only when I had to.  I always tried for the most humble spot: the foot of the table as it were.  I let other people lead, let them stand in the spotlight.

Then, there's the sense of humor issue.  I read an article that says that we are the same people we were at age 7.  In other words, all our personality traits are set by that age.  I grew up with a set of heroes that influenced my sense of humor toward the dark and self-disparaging.  Charlie Brown was probably the first, along with Winnie-the-Pooh's Eeyore and MGM's Droopy cartoons.  So early on, I developed this "woe is me" demeanor that was supposed to be funny but it never really worked that way.  People seemed to think that I really was depressed and tried to cheer me up.  This led to my actually being depressed because no one thought I was funny.

So here I am in a job situation that relies almost completely on self-promotion.  Career advisers talk about things like self marketing and getting noticed.  Here I am, trying to let my actions speak for themselves and what have I really accomplished?  I'm a thinker, not a talker, and I really do value actions over words.  I just wish others would do the same.

On The Run

When I was about 7 or 8 I read a book about a boy who ran away from home and lived in the woods in a hollow tree.  The book was all about how he taught himself to survive in the wilderness and ever since then I had been fascinated with the idea of running away, living on my own, discovering for myself the tricks I needed to survive.

I should have stayed in cub scouts, and then joined the boy scouts.  I remember really liking my first year but I quit because my brother, David, quit.  He was a webelos, the last cub scout rank before joining the boy scouts and he didn't want to go on, I never learned why.  Anyway, I was completely unprepared for the real prospect of living on my own in the wilderness.  I didn't know how.

The truth of the matter is that the American wilderness is completely changed from the frontier I was raised to expect.  There's too many people now, too many cities, and the land between is crisscrossed by roads.  Even the most barren patch of wilderness is owned by somebody.  You can't go off and live in the woods anymore, you'd be trespassing..  So much for my romantic notion of striking off on my own.

There's A Lot of "There" Out There

In January of 1998, I got in my car and drove to Chicago.  I had already dropped out of Wheaton, so the trip was just a formality.  I had things to pick up from my dorm room and a few friends to say goodbye to.  Chicago is pretty cold that time of year, I know from firsthand.  I slept in my car in the smallest of the student parking lots, where I knew I wouldn't be disturbed, and left the engine off for as long as I could stand it.  I was snowed under in no time and had to start the engine up for heat.  Exhaust was pouring out when the snow crew came by in their little snowplow thing to dig me out, but no one tapped on my window to see if I was alright.  I guess that wasn't their job.

I spent two nights in Wheaton pretending to be a student before my friend Dan finally arrived.  He was the only one I cared to tell what was going on.  I spent one night in a movie theater, two in my car, and one in Dan's apartment, then I took off.  Too much post-apocalyptic literature and I had convinced myself that American civilization would crash on the night of December 31 1999.  I was determined to survive the crash and even come out on top.  Also, I was looking for God.

My car was a white Dodge Omni, I forget the year.  It was a gift from my uncle, who used to use it to commute to his job before he retired and he and Aunt Gertrude bought an RV to go on the road with.  My first stop was Cedar Rapids Iowa.  There was a girl I wanted to meet, but she didn't want to meet me.  We had met via an old fashioned dial-up computer bulletin board.  It was her idea to go on the road first, but then she backed out of it and I had to go it alone.  I went to Cedar Rapids to try to run into her anyway, but I had no idea how to locate her and it was probably for the best that we never met in person.  I slept in my car in a church parking lot.

My car took me as far as Iowa City (I wanted to head down south New Orleans way), when I ran over a box in the middle of the road and started leaking fluids.  I managed to get as far as a service station, then a tow to a Dodge dealership, then a bus to St. Louis and I was already running low on cash.  No problem, I thought, I expected this to happen.  Took a Bi-State to my parents house to see if a paycheck I was supposed to receive had come in.  It had.  My mom had hidden it.  By then, they had figured out that I was missing and thought I might come back for it.  I chalked it down as another loss, shouldered my backpack and mail satchel I had picked up from an army surplus store and walked to the interstate offramp.  I expected to do a lot of walking where I was going.

I soon found out why people don't hitchhike anymore.  For one thing, it's illegal to do it on the interstate.  I should have found a state highway instead.  For another thing, once you get out of the city, nobody stops.  I had believed the myth about truck drivers stopping for rides, but they're not allowed to pick up hitchers anymore.

Though I did manage to find a few rides, I walked a long way that day, the coldest day of the year so far.  The first rest stop out of St. Louis is 50 miles south, and that's where I found myself.  I thought it would be a nice, warm place to spend the night, but the only place to sleep was the hard tile floor and it's not well heated at all.  I couldn't stop shivering.  Motorists came and went, but I was mostly too shy to try to bug them for rides.  Shy beggars (that's what I was at this point) don't get very far.

When my dad picked me up he said that I was running from God.  Funny, I thought I was running to Him.  It occurred to me later that this was a dream come true for my parents.  They wanted me to be a prodigal son.  They wanted to go to church the next Sunday and brag about how I had come home and they had taken me in.  But the prodigal son was a sinner.  What had I done wrong?  Separated myself from the hypocrites at church and school?  I had cast myself into the arms of God and relied on Him alone to guide me.  I had committed no crime, save breaking an ordinance.  My only sin was not informing my parents of where I was going.  This led to a new realization about God.  He doesn't exist if other people aren't around to talk to about Him.  He's a god of society, of civilization.  In short, God is a meme.

The Official Count

258 trick-or-treaters last night before we ran out of candy, and they were still swarming the street at 7:30 pm while we were packing up and going inside  According to Melissa's mom and dad it's the most they've seen for several years, though they would regularly see 300 or more back in the day.  I handed out candy last year at my parents' house and I only saw 3 all evening.

Growing up, Halloween was my favorite holiday, not because of the candy but because of the costumes.  I can't eat candy anymore.  Not diabetic yet, but I've developed enough insulin resistance that any sugar at all makes me drowsy.  Makes me wish I had enjoyed it more at the age when I could enjoy it.

I can still enjoy the costumes, though.  Next year I think I'll try dressing up myself.  Why should the kids have all the fun?

Looking for "The End"

So everyone's wondering what happened next.  I had all these plans, this whole grand delusion about what was going to happen, what God's plan was for me.  And I really, really, wanted it to happen.  Well, several things did happen.

First of all, I realized that my delusion was just that, a delusion.  But I couldn't shake the idea that I was meant for something.  I thought I might become a writer.  However, I was also realizing that writers need something to write about.  I was a science fiction fan, but science fiction writers have always tried to predict the future.  I was a Christian, so there was only one future I could go with.  Also, the conflict between science and religion was starting to wear at me.  I had met some Christians who also happened to be science majors, who completely rejected the whole Creation Science doctrine.  My whole worldview was starting to collapse.

I haven't written much about politics yet, but it's my firm belief that most people are shortsighted when it comes to politics.  They don't think much about where the current policies are going to go in the next, say, hundred years or so.  Both liberals and conservatives are basically trying to preserve the status quo in a world that has already moved far beyond both of them.  I needed something big to happen, so I latched on to the first hope available to me.

Nobody really talks about the Y2K bug anymore, and why should they?  After all, nothing happened.  On January 1st 2000, a few cash registers displayed 19100 or maybe 20100 in the year field of their register tapes, and that was all.  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.  Of course, who knows what might have happened if not for the tireless efforts of thousands of engineers and programmers working behind the scenes to make sure that's all that happened?

The point, however, is what might have happened, what many millions of people were afraid would happen.  The country in chaos?  All the computerized institutions we rely on deleting all their records?  Massive reprisals against all the computer scientists in the world?  All of us with imaginations were afraid.  I was afraid too, but I also saw massive opportunities.  It was a good time to get out of technology.  I would go on the road, observe the aftermath, and write about it.

I grew up on apocalyptic scenarios.  Those in the Christian community who don't know their history think that the book of Revelation is some kind of prophecy about the End Times instead of a heretical work about the Church itself during the time when it was written..  During my four years of high school, I was subjected to no more than three seminars about the End Times.  I was assured constantly that Jesus was coming back someday.  I knew all about the Tribulation, the time during which all True Believers would be prosecuted.  Of course, as a Fundie Christian, I knew that the Rapture would happen first and I would be pulled bodily up to Heaven, but I also  feared, and hoped, that the translations were wrong and that I would be left behind.  What better time, I thought, to prove my faith than during the End Times.  "Pack Your Bags: Jesus is Coming," exclaimed one seminar I attended.  I was sure the time was coming soon.

Knowing what I know now, the thought was pretty ridiculous.  Most of the students I went to school with thought it was ridiculous, too.  My parents thought it should all be taken with a grain of salt.  I, however, was a believer.  I was sure that Y2K would be The End, or at least close enough that civilization would have to be rebuilt from scratch.  I wanted to be there, at the beginning.  I wanted my words, my observations, my insights, to mean something.

I love America.  I think this is the greatest country the world has ever seen.  That being said, though, America is not without its flaws.  I wanted to help correct some of those flaws.  For one thing, the Rich are far too powerful in this country.  But that's a blog for another day.  I wanted to be there to start the country over from scratch.  I wanted to influence the next generation with my insights.

So in the winter of 1998, I quit school.  It's a long story.  A lot of factors came into play.  I wanted so many things for myself.  Most of all, I wanted life experience.  I wanted something to write about.  I wanted to be there, on the outskirts, when it all went down.

Back in the Saddle

Great news Scottland fans!

My internet connection has stabilized so I'm now up and running.  Start checking back every day for new updates.  I've got some time to kill and a lots to write about, though I'm curious, what kinds of content are my readers most interested in?  So I'm starting a poll.  It's down on the right hand side of the page.  We're talking zero effort here, just pick your preference and let me know.  Also, something every one of my readers needs to be aware of, the main reason I started this blog: I need money.  Now, I'm not asking you to send me any, I'm just asking that you click on a few ads.  They're in a couple of places and they're labeled "ads by Google."  Even if you're not interested in the sites the ads link to, just clicking on two or three of those ads translates directly into revenue for Yours Truly.  Make it part of your daily routine.  For me.

Technology and Me

I first became interested in electronics at a very early age, so early I don't remember it. I know it was at St. Bonaventure preschool that I saw my first computer and got to move blocks around the screen. My brother an I eventually owned an Atari. All those early games that the two of us played endlessly in spite of their pitiful graphics and stiff controls: Asteroids, Air Sea Battle, Baseball, Othello, Pac-man. We spent hours mastering E.T. and even owned the ill-fated Kool-aid Man. Ever since those early years, I've wanted to know how they worked.

Electronics wasn't my first love, however. I wanted to be a magician first. I had lots of simple magic tricks and even got to amaze my friends from time to time. Magic incorporated two basic concepts into one: showmanship and engineering. Every time, the "magic" in the trick was a simple physical principle working behind the scenes. My primary interest in magic was that I liked to know how things worked.

I first started learning about electronics shortly after moving to St. Louis, with a hand-me-down electronics project set: an array of simple components connected to springs that you could wire together in lots of different ways according to diagrams. I learned to read a circuit diagram rather well, but the circuit design itself, or what the components did individually, was beyond me. I was also into puppetry, which incorporated the showmanship/engineering concepts as well. I started reading about robotics.

My father and I have a lot more in common than either of us like to admit. We never got along because we're both the kind of guy who absolutely must be the smartest person in the room. My teachers encouraged that kind of behavior in me, probably because they thought it was cute, but my father didn't like the competition. We did try to get along one summer, I think I had just gotten out of 3rd Grade. I had quit Cub Scouts just like my brother, David, after one year, but we still received Boy's Life magazine. One month that year, they published a set of plans for a do-it-yourself toy robot. Mom hoped that working on it together would bring us closer together. She was wrong, but it did help a little.

So Dad taught me to solder, and showed me around RadioShack, which I found fascinating. All those wires and tiny components for do-it-yourself electronics. Dad, I think, knew how to solder because he worked on cars, but he was also into electronics some. He showed me how to hold the iron so I didn't burn myself, how to melt the alloy onto the wires so they permanently held together. That was all. The body of the robot was a plastic trash can. It incorporated two double-motor assemblages, one for the wheels and one for the arms. The head was connected to the body with a lazy-susan bearing so it rotated freely. Parts of it were wood. In spite of the motors being advertised as "locking" it was impossible to keep the PVC-pipe arms in place. Once they were raised, they immediately fell. The wheels would not keep from rolling downhill either.

The most complex part was the control box which connected to the robot body via a short, clunky ribbon cable. There were four toggle switches, each operating a different motor. To move the robot you flipped each switch individually. It was basically a remote-control toy but without the antenna and you couldn't stand further than three feet behind it. I loved that we had built it. I liked to show it off even though it was mostly my dad's work.

I guess the main reason I didn't make it further in electronics was the expense. Sure, you can buy a lot of simple components for a few cents, but you'll never build anything more complex without more expensive chips and custom designed etched circuit boards. Designing your own chip could cost you a million or more. After a few years, it started seeming like everyone I knew was farther ahead in technology than I was. First, they all had computers when I didn't. Then, they all had better computers than I did. I learned as much as I could, but it wasn't enough when everyone I knew, even those who weren't much into computers had better ones than I did. One of the biggest chips on my shoulder was not having access to the equipment I needed to learn what I needed to learn.

In high school, I was the school's computer whiz. There's a plaque on the wall, an award for excellence in computer science given out every year. My name is the first name on it. When I earned it, the only computer I owned was eight years old: an Apple IIc my parents had gotten David and me, which I wrote all my papers on and still wrote Basic programs for. The computers the school used were even older: RadioShack TRS-80's. The Internet was already in full swing but I knew nothing about it. Worst of all, I had no idea how far behind I was.

In college, I spent my first several years just catching up only to learn that in that time, everything had moved on and I had to catch up still further. I met students who knew more about computers just because they had more money than me. What could I have accomplished if I had only had access to better equipment?

So I never learned everything I needed to learn, or want to learn. My earnest desire: to learn how things worked, got pushed aside while I struggled to keep up with technology: the lastest programming languages, the latest frameworks, trying to keep my skills marketable, which I never accomplished. One of these days I want to go back to school and learn what I really need to learn. Then maybe I can accomplish something.

Technical Difficulties

I haven't gotten to blog in a while because my network connection has been spotty.  Unfortunately, it's spotty for the same, or nearly the same, reason I have a connection at all.  In short: I'm stealing it.  Of course, it's not as simple as all that, it's more like I'm trespassing, camping out on somebody else's lawn.  I live in an apartment building and one of my neighbors is using a wireless router which is designed to provide internet access to a far wider area than my neighbor actually needs.  This is kind of like having an extra large back yard.  Either by choice or because my neighbor lacks technical expertise she has configured her router to do so without any encryption.  This is like leaving the gate to your back yard unlocked and hanging open.  I've taken possession of a little corner of her yard back behind some trees where no one will notice, and I'm even keeping that small area mowed, weeded and in good repair.


Ok, so that's not a perfect metaphor.  It might be closer to say that I'm making use of my neighbor's garden hose while she's away.  Water is trivial and she has more than she'll ever need.  But that doesn't really work because even water is a metered utility and her internet is unmetered.


Anyway, the reason my connection is spotty is because my neighbor is using Charter Cable for her high-speed internet.  It's a good choice because it's affordable and much faster than some of the alternatives.  Unfortunately, it's also a bad choice for two reasons:

1. It's a shared connection.
That's right, everyone on the block who subscribes to cable high speed internet is sharing that bandwith with all of her neighbors.  Now, the speed of this connection is so high that most don't even notice, but when multiple neighbors are streaming video, teleconferencing, or playing video games with your friends over the Internet, even cable high speed can get bogged down.

2. It's unreliable.
Don't believe what ads tell you.  Whenever your cable goes out, and in some areas it goes out a lot, your internet and sometimes your phone will go out with it.  And it will stay out until your cable provider sends out a technician to fix it.

Here's the worst part: Even if your cable TV is working fine, your internet can sometimes go out for no discernable reason.  Actually, there's several different reasons, but they all come down to this: your modem loses block sync.  Let me explain a little more clearly.  "Modem" stands for MOdualator/DEModulator.  It's a device with two jobs: in one direction (Modulation), it converts the digital (on-and-off) signals used by your computer to communicate with the Internet into an analog or continuous signal (similar to a sound wave but using electricity) which can be sent down your cable company's coaxial line (You know that fat cable that comes through the wall or maybe the floor and connects to the back of your TV?  Well, there's one of those that connects to your modem as well).  In the other direction (Demodulation) it does the opposite, converting the continuous analog signals from your cable company back into digital signals which carry data.  In order to do this, your modem has to be SYNC'd with your cable provider.  Think about it like this: your modem has a clock, and so does your cable provider.  In order to communicate at the speeds they do, the two clocks, which tick around 300 thousand times a second, must be ticking at exactly the same time.  In other words, they must be synchronized.  If your modem's clock is off by just a little bit, it loses BLOCK sync (modems are connected to the provider in groups or blocks.  Remember what I said about it being a shared connection?).


Now, losing block sync is usually a simple fix.  All you need to do is unplug your modem and plug it back in again.  If you're using a router (a device to allow you to connect multiple computers through a single modem), you'll need to restart it as well.  But how did you lose block sync in the first place?  Block sync gets lost because communications between your modem and the cable company were temporarily interrupted because, at some point, the coaxial cable was cut.  Maybe it was cut a long time ago and now there's noise on the line, or maybe it was cut and spliced back together again just today.  In other words, the most likely reason you lost block sync is because someone in your neighborhood is stealing cable.


Acquiring illegal cable is easy to do.  If your neighbor has cable, there has to be an access point where the cable can enter her house.  Sometimes it's overhead, sometimes it's buried, but an actual cable must enter her house at some point.  Find the cable.  Cut it.  Place an end connector on each side of the cut cable.  Reconnect the cut ends using a splitter (you can buy all these parts and the necessary tools at RadioShack) and branch off your own cable using the same splitter.  Run the new line into your house.  You may need to purchase a descrambler (which you can order out of the back of Popular Mechanics) to decode the signal.  That's all.


Assuming you did all this correctly, and your neighbor is a high speed internet subscriber she will lose block sync only once.  If, however, you did a shoddy job or sometimes even if your job was perfect, she will ever after have extra noise on her line which will cause her to lose block sync again and again.  Every time, she will have to restart her modem and router again.  If the hassle of restarting her modem and router becomes too great, she can have her cable company send a technician to her home to see what the problem is.  The technician will remove the illegal splitter and splice the cable  back together.  Sometimes it works, but spliced cable also causes noise and sometimes they have to run a brand new cable.  Technicians rarely report illegal splitters because they're on a tight schedule and because it's not their job.  At any rate, there's usually nothing to stop the neighbor from going out and putting in another illegal splitter.


All of this is a roundabout way of explaining why my internet connection is spotty right now.  My neighbor, who's wireless internet I'm effective stealing, keeps losing block sync because another neighbor is stealing her cable.  When the internet goes down there's nothing I can do until my neighbor restarts her modem and router.  Right now, I'm running Aircrack which is a program to decode the WEP key encryption of a different neighbor who has DSL.  So hopefully, soon, I'll no longer have this problem.

Grand Plans

Going off to college, I was still waiting for God to tell me what to do, but I was pretty sure that it would eventually involve becoming a martyr. People flock around martyrs, even if they didn't even know their name in life. Since I had accomplished so little for Him in life, surely my death would be the spark that ignites the next great wave of converts. Unfortunately, most Christian martyrs these days are missionaries, and I had already been informed by the Voice of God (aka my parents) that I could never become one.

Actually, becoming a missionary was not my first choice. I wanted to do something BIG for God, but there were always so many missionaries that it seemed pretty ordinary. I was actually fairly unenthused about the idea, wanting something bigger. I'd already decided that God was not to be found at church: they were a bunch who liked to talk big, but when it came to getting anything done they'd rather sit around and criticize each others' fashion choices. If I'd been born rich, I would give everything away to feed the poor or something, but I wasn't. I read about Francis of Assisi and Henry David Thoreau. God, who'd created the world and everything in it, should be found out THERE, in the world of His creation.

So I created a little fantasy and started building on it. I looked at some of the larger evangelical organizations that were in existence at the time: ICR, Focus on the Family, and their ostensibly non-minister mogul founders. I visualized the organization I was to found, a merging of all other christian organizations into a single unit, a single new church. A new sect.

It would have been a traveling sect, more of a cult, really. We'd move from place to place like Paul and the apostles were supposed to have done, washing our feet of the places who didn't accept us. It would have been a return to the faith of the 1st century: mere Christianity, nothing added nor taken away. I would start as a single, lone traveler and slowly add to my flock, attracting followers until we were a force that could be recognized.

I never mentioned my plan to anyone. It wasn't something you could really plan to happen, anyway. God would have to make it happen, I would only be His vehicle. I wonder how many others have had plans similar to mine, with no strategy, no training, no organizational skills.

I picked Wheaton on instinct. I didn't spend much time evaluating schools. I wasn't going to pick a christian school at all at first. The brochure spoke to me, just like it was designed to do. I felt called, just like I was supposed to. I thought things would be different at Wheaton. At they were, to a certain extent, but I started learning things there, things about the church.

For one thing, I started learning that not all Christians believed the same thing. They didn't always agree on finer points of theology that I thought were well established. I learned that there couldn't be one all-embracing ideology because there were too many differences. Ideas that might have been considered too forward-thinking and radical for some might have seemed the obvious course of action to others.

Something else I learned: for all their differences in opinion, church people are the same anywhere you go. They never relaxed. They didn't seem capable of blowing off steam. They put so much effort into being nice, as if it were the only thing that mattered. And they were rich. I don't mean culturally or spiritually rich, I mean physically wealthy. There were a few who had grown up on the streets and where there on scholarships, but no one I met was like me: lower middle class. They didn't know what it was like to live on food stamps or reduced school lunches. They'd never been envious of a friend who had more toys than they. I met those who thought that giving a little money to charity was enough to make up for all the workers they underpaid. I developed a chip on my shoulder.

In the end, I'm glad I went to Wheaton, I learned things there. It was like a trip to the better side of town, seeing how the other half lived. I suppose I would have seen the same thing no matter what school I attended, but Wheaton taught me that Christians were no different. They weren't interested in the lifestyle I proposed, one free from material goods, where we traveled from place to place with no fixed address, living on the Word of God.

I had already suspected that God was not to be found in Church. Now I was sure. But I was still determined to live up to His plan for me.

Good (and Bad) Advice

I know it's not healthy, but I spend a lot of time imagining what my life would be like if I had made different decisions.  Ultimately, I wouldn't have done anything different because if I had I wouldn't be the person I am today, and I like the person I am today.  I never would have met Melissa, and who knows what delusions I'd be chasing

Still, I would not wish the life I've led onto anyone else.  The things I've learned, I've had to learn the hard way.  If I could go back and give myself a lifetime of advice, here's some of the things I'd tell myself:

1. Pick something and stick with it. 
You'll never get good at anything if you give up after a few tries. Real skill takes a lot of practice.
2. Stop trying to be a prodigy.
Face it, it's going to take a lot of work to master anything. But when you do, it'll be totally worth it.
3. Stop trying to impress people with how smart you are.
Being smart requires you to ask a lot of dumb questions first. Stop worrying about what they think and really try to learn something.
4. Stop trying to be a soloist.
Drop the piano and join the school band. Better yet, take drum lessons and join a rock band. Learn what it's like to be part of a team. Learn to improvise.
5. Learn to take directions.
People critique you because they're trying to help you get better. Listen to them and take their advice.
6. Start dancing.
It's the best exercise you'll ever get. Of course you'll feel awkward at first, everyone does. Stop worrying about it and have a good time. You'll attract more stares sitting by the sidelines acting miserable.
7. Start learning people's names.
The first person you see who's name you don't know, walk up and introduce yourself. Chances are, they don't know your name either. Do whatever you have to to remember their name and if you forget, apologize and ask their name again.
8. Listen to your instincts
You overthink things, especially when it comes to people. Stop convincing yourself that your instincts are wrong. Go with it.
9. Don't be afraid to tell people what you want
Your teachers are there to help you achieve your goals. Don't just wait for them to give you assignments, talk to them.

Here's some advice to ignore:

1. "If you can't be the best at something, why bother doing it?"
Remember what Dad said during the Olympics one year? Ignore him. Anything you work hard at is totally worth it
2. "Never talk to strangers."
You'll never make friends if you don't talk to people you haven't met.
3. "Just ignore them."
Mom used to say this all the time. Don't fall into this trap. Those kids teasing you? They're your friends. They like you. Go tease them back.

Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't support a universe where decisions are made randomly. Neurons fire according to fairly basic set of rules. Whatever fluctuations occur on the quantum scale, the effects on the macro scale are infinitesimal. There aren't a whole slew of alternate universes out there, where I became an engineer at ILM or married a girl I new in Middle School. In every case I would have made the same decision because the variables were the same and my brain was the same. Still, it's fun to wonder.

Me vs the Church

My parent's world was divided into two types of people: missionaries and Everyone Else.  If you were a missionary, you were special, a chosen one who's only purpose in life was to go somewhere far away and spread the Good News.  The purpose of Everyone Else was to work real hard so that the missionaries didn't have to.  In my parent's sect, the missionaries were royalty.


One night, after a particularly inspiring missions presentation at church I announced that I was going to become a missionary.  I hadn't decided where I wanted to go yet but I knew that I was being called.  The Holy Spirit had spoken to me.  Years of waiting, of pondering, trying to decide what God wanted me to do with my life had culminated at this moment.  I finally knew what to do.  This didn't go over very well with my parents.  "You can't be a missionary," they told me.


Needless to say, I was very confused by this.  I was about 13, and I had already heard God speaking to me.  They were always saying that He had something special planned for all of us, and with my background His plan for me had to be extra special.  Everything in my parents' church was centered around missions, so missions was the obvious choice.  If not missions then what?


Of course, my parents knew things I didn't.  They knew it didn't matter how loudly and clearly God was speaking to me.  They knew that God only called people who were tall and good-looking and charismatic and rich, like salesmen or politicians, not fat dumpy geeks who value thoughts over words.


I was already a little crazy.  Not "something's wrong with my brain" crazy, I just had trouble separating reality from fantasy.  Church encouraged this side of me.  They weren't completely off the wall.  No one spoke in tongues, nor did the minister claim to have any healing powers, but they still filled my head with stories of demon possessions and "spiritual gifts," super powers sent from God.  A youth pastor had me take a spiritual gifts test and I tested very high for the gift of Knowledge, so I thought I knew the will of God when others didn't.


This was one of those areas where my parents disagreed with their church.  Maybe everyone's parents disagree with their minister over finer points of theology from time to time.  They told me I had to take all this with a "grain of salt," while other people I respected were telling me to make the most of my gifts.  My teachers were telling me this as well, though they meant other gifts.  I didn't know who to listen to.


I had two great shames: the first is that I had never talked anyone else into joining up and becoming a Christian.  This made me unhappy, which was my second shame.  I never smiled.  Apparently, it's the Christian's duty to be mind-blowingly joyful at all times.  Church people were always telling me "smile, God loves you."  Try telling that to my parents who never smiled either.  So not only was I not happy, I felt guilty because of it.


Another problem I had was that I was too honest, and I think I could sense when others weren't quite being honest either.  All these smiling, happy people seemed false to me, like they were trying to convince each other that there was nothing wrong.  They were always so nice, but it was the niceness of a used car salesman.  Not because they like you, but because they want you to like them.


So I was unhappy because I wasn't a good witness, and I wasn't a good witness because I was so unhappy.  I was falling into a deep depression, but no one seemed to care, they were too busy trying to out-cheer each other.  I came to the conclusion that God wasn't to be found at Church.  I determined to find Him or die trying.

Any Sufficiently Advanced Tech...

People look at me weird when I say this, but we live in an age of magic.  I'm serious.  We're talking true swords-and-sorcery type magic here.  I used to think the 21st Century would look like the Science Fiction novels I used to read, but it's becoming something closer to the worlds portrayed in fantasy, where wizards wage wars of words from their towers high in the clouds.  Of course, the rest of us must make do with ordinary, every day magic, but it's no less magical.

Today, I took a little device out of my pocket, performed a few gestures and, with the speed of swiftest Hermes, sent a message around the world.  It's not the only "magic mirror" that I own.  I have one on my desk, one on the kitchen table, one in the bedroom and one in the living room, all showing different things depending on the commands I give them.  What powers these devices is the power of Zeus.  We have harnessed lightning and made it our slave, we hold the power of God in our very hands.  It lights our homes, cooks our food, keeps us warm in winter, cool in summer.

Of course, it's easy to learn how these devices work.  You can learn electronics in your spare time.  But does the fact make their effects less magical or does it make us wizards?   For millenia, humans relied on horses to carry us from place to place.  In a little over a hundred years we have completely abandoned animals for personal carriages that run on fire.  Neptune's depths hold little challenge to us.  We fly through the air in metal dragons, sail the seas irrespective of the wind and have placed our own stars in the night sky, levitating them into place on columns of fire.

In warfare we have replaced the clumsy sword and shield with metal magic wands that can kill from any distance with the twitch of a finger.  If that's not sufficient we can summon balls of fire to destroy our enemies and their cities from miles away.  We will soon be entering an age where most of our fighting is conducted by inhuman armies, monstrous beings of our own design.  Even our human soldiers will be wearing suits of armor that make them stronger, faster, and even invisible.

We have learned techniques to see into the past, and others to let us predict the future, though these skills are far from perfect and we have yet to learn to predict how our own actions will change that future.  Every  day our knowledge of the universe increases, knowledge anyone can access, and even add to, through our magic mirrors.  Healers perform miracles daily, letting the lame walk, and soon even the truly blind will see.

Unfortunately, magic carries a price.  We must consort with evil powers to gain these abilities.  Demons who dwell deep in the earth, remnants from the ancient past, stoke our fires and poison our air.  Fortunately, magic is neither good nor evil, and there are other gods, gods of wind and sun, who can carry us out of our evil past and into the future.

I despise allegory, or I would attempt to write a novel exploring these themes.  Fortunately, I don't need to.  It's a novel we write ourselves, every day.  Perhaps if we saw ourselves as wizards we would spend more time trying to correct the evils of this world rather than going about our mundane lives.

Growing up "Christian"

Continuing...
When I was four, my parents had just moved to a new town, Thoreau, New Mexico. They needed a preschool for me. There were a few possibilities but the one they settled on was run by the local catholic church. They came to regret this decision. My parents are not catholic and wish to have nothing to do with Catholicism, or any religion which is not their own. My parents are evangelicals, although I'm not sure either of them know exactly what religion they are or what it means to be an evangelical. They know they are christian, and consider themselves protestant (only because they are not catholic), but they think that theirs is the one true religion, superposing all others. In fact, what they are most likely to say is that their beliefs are the Truth and not a religion at all.

So basically, I grew up in a christian sect made up of my mother, father, brother and me. Later, I had a second brother but I'll get to him later. It was kind of hard to know for sure what this particular sect believed since it seemed to change from day to day. They claimed to follow the Bible (usually KJV or NASB), but if a particular verse didn't sit well with them they could ignore it or interpret it as being irrelevant. They've attended several different churches, but only now that they've founded their own, "The Jesus Church," who's doctrine they can alter to their heart's content, do they seem really happy about who they're worshiping with.

The funny thing is that even though they didn't really know what they believed, they were able to raise enough funds to head out into the American Southwest and become missionaries, sowing confusion among those indigenous tribes who had thought themselves converted a hundred years ago. Something my parents never really seemed to understand about being missionaries, however: it's hard. Missionaries are basically salesmen, only instead of trying to sell a product, they're selling a belief system. Before any salesmen can sell anything, unfortunately, he has to sell himself, and my parents never were very good at selling themselves. I think the difficulty lies in their inability to conceal their disgust at having to deal with people who's beliefs are different from their own. After living three years in one location and making no progress with the local tribe, my parents were moved to a town with an almost entirely white population of Catholics, Baptists and Mormons. It's like my dad had been made the manager of a brand new McDonald's franchise and he ran it into the ground. So they moved him to a failing older store with a Burger King, Wendy's and Jack-in-the-box all on the same corner to see if he'd make it.

Once in the new town, I don't think my parents were quite sure what they were doing there. Instead of trying to start their own church, which I think is what they were supposed to do, my parents decided to engage in a kind of "guerrilla evangelism," working their way subtly into the town and convincing the locals to accept them before deciding on their next move. That's why I was enrolled at the local catholic school and why my mom went to work there soon after. At the time, the school was small enough that there were only two other boys my age. We were the Three First-Graders (I was considered bright enough to skip kindergarten), for several weeks and learned a lot of Sunday-school songs along with the reading and writing. I don't think my parents knew about the alter boy training they were giving me, though.

A lot of things happened during that period that I didn't quite understand and that my parents were never very straightforward about thereafter. I was a child so, of course, my parents could do no wrong. I never considered that things were happening outside of their control. I thought it was something I had done that got me pulled from my class and placed back in kindergarten where, reasonably, most of my friends were. Because of the instruction I received, however, I think my parents were always just a little worried that I was going to Hell.

I became a Christian at the age of six, under my mother's tutelage. That wasn't good enough so I got saved again in Sunday School at the age of eight (this was shortly after leaving Thoreau to return to my mother's homeland: St. Louis, Mo). We were attending a Bible Church which supported a lot of missionaries but not, unfortunately, my parents, who had left the mission field because, once again, they were unable to sell themselves. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Personal Savior at Youth Camp when I was 13. Every year after that I rededicated my life to Him. I listened to nothing but Christian Rock music and Bible Study programs until I was 19.

All of this failed to convince my parents, however, who continued to worry about my personal stake in Heaven. My parents belonged to a sub-sect of a sect of another sect which had broken from the Catholic Church because it counted as doctrine all kinds of traditions which, though they had been part of the Church's faith for a millennium, were not mentioned in the Bible so they must be Wrong. That sect went off and established a whole new set of traditions which, though not mentioned in the Bible either, sounded to the people in charge more like the kinds of things a good Christian should or shouldn't do. This Grand Tradition allowed my parents to come up with a sizable unwritten list of things I, personally, wasn't allowed to experience, though my brother could because his Faith was stronger and unbroken. TV shows I wasn't allowed to watch: The Simpsons; Married, with Children; Night Court; Cheers; Saturday Night Live. Over time I learned to pick out more shows they wouldn't approve of and turned them off automatically. Strangely, my parents watched Baywatch religiously and didn't mind if I watched it with them. The list of words I wasn't allowed to say (or even hear, though they had little control over that), changed dynamically. At one point I had a youth pastor who used "fart," "screwed," and "crap" so they had to start allowing those. You know I wasn't allowed to play Dungeons & Dragons, and only the most innocuous rock and pop music was allowed in my playlist. I was embarrassed to learn that I was less cool than many of the kids I went to church with. Apparently the catholic taint was so great that I needed the extra purity in my upbringing.

Talk to my parents, now, and they will tell you that it wasn't as simple as all that. It's not enough to go through the motions. You can't just recite the words they tell you to recite and then you'll go to Heaven. You have to know it, believe that you are a sinner ("For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God") and completely unable to redeem yourself no matter what your actions ("Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us"). Only through Jesus Christ and his death on the Cross can anyone be saved ("If you confess with your mouth Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved") I'm not going to look up the references. It's the Internet, look them up yourself.

If they read this (I doubt they will) they would probably think I was mocking them. I just want people to understand that for years I sincerely believed all this, with a religious fervor that some cult members would find hard to match. I was under instruction from my youth pastor, my Sunday School teacher, and Christian radio to read my Bible daily. I don't think they expected me to actually learn from it, however.

Most denominations will tell you never to read the Bible yourself without assistance from someone who has had the proper training. You might accidentally read something you shouldn't and assume it means what it actually says. You have to make sure to read the right translation, too, or you might miss the places where words were inserted to aid understanding (and to change the meaning. I'm serious. Those words in italics aren't in the original. Take a look at Genesis where it talks about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and see what's italicized.) One day, I'd like to write my own commentary on the Bible. So many have already been written. I recommend the one by Isaac Asimov.

Where I went wrong, I think, is that through all this I was entirely too trusting. When you're in a situation where you're being taught contradictory things it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to believe as much as you can. When the things that they do contradict the things that they say, it's even worse. I went a little loopy. My head got cracked. It took me a while to sort things out, but I think I'm the better for it.

Trip Report (A Little Late)

Trying to maintain my commitment to post every day. Well, it's just after 12 now so it's only a little late. I was in the car all day so didn't get a chance to write and then I was so tired once I got home.

So altogether Branson was pretty fun. Found out that I've yet to scratch the surface with all the things there are to see and do down there. I probably sound like a tourism brochure. I saw Dixie Stampede and wrote a review. I got to eat at Shogun and Hard Luck Cafe. We did some shopping and actually only got to see about half of what I wanted. Everywhere I looked there was something else I wanted to look at but just didn't have time. It's like one big city-sized shopping mall. There's all kinds of little specialty shops that just wouldn't make it anywhere else. Just off the main drag there's a little used book store that I never would have known about. I could have spent the day there just looking around, but it was near closing time already. I'm a huge SF fan if you didn't know that already.

So Melissa is saying she wouldn't mind going back for our honeymoon, which is great news to me since I was having a hard time coming up with a destination. It's within driving distance so it's pretty reasonable cost-wise, a very important factor. And there's no way either of us will be getting bored.

I Got Stampeded in Dixie

This is a combination show review and food review of Dixie Stampede.  Permission has not been given to write this review.  All opinions are mine and are entirely biased.  Read at your own risk.

The pic on the right is an official souvenir photo of me and Melissa. If you're looking for an authentic "Western" experience, go somewhere else.  Whatever the official brochure says, I highly doubt the story about the wagon races is accurate.  The true history of the attraction is probably more like: a group of circus performers with horse riding skills decided to settle down and open a permanent attraction.  For one thing, there is no way that little arena could house any kind of full-sized race.  Dixie Stampede is a one-ring circus complete with ringmaster.

That being said, the performers are highly skilled.  If a circus act is what you've come to see, you won't be disappointed.  There are some spectacular examples of horseback riding and gymnastics.  There are dance routines.  There are clown acts and a magic act (involving horses and wagons).  Interspersed between the rehearsed numbers are actual races and competitions between the performers as well as some audience participation.  A mock rivalry is established between north and south sides of the arena (equated with North and South sides of the Civil War), and audience members from each side compete head-to-head in a series of county fair style contests including broomstick riding, kids' chicken chasing, and giant horseshoe throwing (with toilet bowl seats as the "shoes").  It all culminates with a patriotic spectacle and a projected message from Dolly Parton.

The most unusual part of the evening (though perhaps not so unusual for Branson) is that while all these performances are going on, the audience is also being served a 7 course meal.  In keeping with the "Western" theme of the attraction (and probably cutting down on costs as well), there is no silverware provided.  Audience members eat with their hands.  The highlight of the meal, in my opinion, was the soup, a creamy vegetable, which is drunk directly out of the bowl or mopped up with the provided cheese biscuit.  The main course is an entire small chicken, after which the single pork cutlet seemed superfluous.  The potato half seemed like an afterthought as well and needed more toppings to make it interesting.  The corn-on-the-cob needed butter.  Desert was a tasty apple pastry.

All-in-all, the circus acts were impressive and the comedy sketches served to break things up.  The interspersed nature of the various performances and audience participation allowed different audience members to eat during the parts they care less for and watch the show during parts they were more intersted in.  Though my overall impression was of an attraction more suited to children and retirees, I enjoyed myself and even went home with a souvenir, a pair of boot-shaped mugs.

First Public Debate

I suck at research.  My writing suffered all through college, and I was totally put off of writing for a long time because of the huge emphasis on research.  Needing to find sources that support your theories, like 50 sources for a 25 page paper.  What do you do when your theory is something no one has published anything about?
These days my research is limited to what I can find using Google and Wikipedia. Even so, it's hard finding sources that support my ideas.  I've always been more of an essayist, anyway.  I like to put my ideas out there and let others debate about it.
So here's an idea that may or may not be original but I was never able to find a source to support it.  Call it "organizational drift," the idea that, over time, various types of organizations start to resemble other types of organizations.  Specifically, governments start to resemble religions, churches start to resemble businesses and corporations start to resemble governments.
Let's look at examples and try to figure out why this is so.  Right now, the US government resembles nothing more than the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages.  Due to its size and complexity it is slow moving and resistant to change.  It has a central figurehead who is expected to be a moral example of all things an American should be.  It is highly corrupt and takes great pains to hide that corruption behind a virtuous facade.  It's most important role is to keep the populace calm and obedient while it mediates disputes between other powerful groups, namely businesses.
Business have come to resemble nations under the Middle Ages feudal system.  Though they are not necessarily united geographically they are kept in constant communication, each supporting a "corporate culture" all of its own.  They are strictly hierarchical with compartmentalized branches, each branch reporting to a central supervisor, and overseen by an all-powerful central leader.  This structure also resembles a military hierarchy and most corporate CEO's, with a few notable exceptions, are former military leaders.
Churches, in America at least, have come to resemble businesses during America's early heyday, though there is some resemblance to the Middle Ages as well.  The most popular churches trace their lineage to travelling evangelists who settled down, just as businesses began as wandering traders and tradesmen.  They are easy to establish but much harder to maintain in an arena with very little brand loyalty.  Many consumers switch quickly from one church to another, even attending multiple churches at once  They are highly competitive and aggressive in attracting followers away from their competition.  The most successful churches are image conscious and advertise via billboards, newspaper ads and even TV commercials.
So that's my thesis.  I'm hoping to start something of a public debate.  I'm sure there are those who agree and others who disagree.

Happy Birthday to Me!

How on earth did I get to be 34?  At one point, I didn't expect to live past 20, but that's a blog for some other day.  Also, my Branson trip starts today so I'll try to keep you updated.
I'd heard that there were a lot of changes in Branson.  That they had branched out, expanded, added more space so the place would be easier to get around in.  It's exactly the way I remember it, though.  Even saw the same hotel my parents and I stayed at once.  Just about everything is still country music or country-themed in some way.  Only a few new shows have been added to break the pattern.  Silver Dollar City is still here.  Shepherd of the Hills is still here.  You can still ride the Ducks.  There's too much to do and everything costs and arm and a leg.  There's no way to cover everything in 3 days, and tonight we're not planning to do anything but relax.  It was a long drive and my neck is killing me.  I'll upload some pics tomorrow maybe.

Growing up "Chubby"

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I was a cute kid.  Precocious.  I got along well with grown-ups, but not with other kids.  I was picked on, left out, bullied.  I never thought of myself as being cute.  The only adjective I would have used to describe myself was "fat".  My mother would say "you're not fat, just a little chubby."  You weren't around, Mom, when the other kids were teasing me.  "Fat" is what people saw when they looked at me.  "Fat" is what I saw when I looked in the mirror.
They say now that childhood obesity is a rising problem.  They're starting all kinds of school programs: tailored lunches, after-school clubs, TV commercials aimed at getting kids to get up and exercise, to try to halt, or at least slow this epidemic.  What would it have been like for me if those programs had been around back then?  Probably not much different.
People were always asking me "Why don't you go on a diet?"  I was always on a diet of one kind or another.  The only thing I knew better than my Sunday bible verses was what kind of foods I could or couldn't eat.  I knew all about carbohydrates, proteins, fats.  At the age of 7, I could tell you that corn and potatoes were starches, not vegetables, how to read a product label for calorie information (don't forget to check the serving size), how much white chicken I could put on a sandwich, how much milk is in a cup.
Losing weight was all I thought about for most of my life, but it never seemed to happen.  There would be long periods of weight loss followed by short periods where I would gain it all back.  More than anything else, I wanted to be skinny.  I wanted to be like the other kids.  I wanted to eat like a normal person, not having to count every calorie.  I wanted to be able to run and jump and play without all those laughing, ridiculing voices following me everywhere as I jiggled and bounced comically.
Most of all, I didn't like being set apart from everyone else.  I was four.  My family had just moved to a new town: Thoreau, New Mexico, and my parents needed a preschool for me.  It wasn't a big town, but I remember driving around looking at different possibilities, being asked if I was a boy or a girl (not as weird a question as you might think.  In Navajo culture, boys are routinely raised with long hair, and a lot of girls back then had short hair.).  I know they later regretted their decision to leave me at the local catholic school, but at the time it was just a new place, with lots of new kids I didn't know.  It was a feeling I would later get used to: being the new kid, not knowing anyone.  I was on a diet.
Snacktime.  I hated celery, but there I was, at a table all by myself, with a bowl of it while the other kids all ate Rice Crispies, laughing and talking.  I don't remember eating, just staring.  I envied them their sense of belonging more than the food they were eating.  I wanted to be a part of the group.  Afterwards, during cleanup, I scraped dried Rice Crispies off the dirty carpet and shoved them in my mouth.  The teacher came over and grabbed my hand, dragged me to the garbage, made me spit it out.  I was humiliated.
Sundays at church, there would sometimes be potlucks.  It was the only time I could eat whatever I wanted.  I gorged myself until I couldn't eat anymore, then I would belch and go back for more anyway.  I was such a cute kid at 3, I always wanted "lots".  I would sneak snacks whenever I could, but church was the only time I ever got to have sweets, my parents didn't keep them in the house.
I just wanted to be normal, like the other kids.  I didn't want to stand out.  Later, I did my best to leave others alone.  I lived my life by the mantra: "leave them alone and they'll leave you alone."  The Golden Rule: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," meant that I should ignore people, just as I wanted to be ignored.  I stopped trying to fit in and just assumed that I never would.  I read the book of Job, and then the book of Matthew where he says "The last will be first and the first will be last."  I listened to my pastor talk about about trials and tribulations and how they are meant to strengthen us, and strengthen our faith and increase our reliance on Him.  Obviously, God was preparing me.  I was suffering now so that I could accomplish some great work for Him later.  He had a plan for me.
To be continued...

Visiting the Country

This weekend I'm going to Branson, Missouri with my fiance Melissa (along with her friend Cindy, her husband Evan and their kids Kaylin and Ian).  It's the first real vacation I've had in years, mainly because what's the point of a vacation when you're not working?  Also, I usually can't afford one.  The closest I usually come to taking a vacation is attending a family reunion.
Anyway, Branson has several draws.  There's theme parks and museums but the main draw is the shows.  Just like when you visit New York you have to see a Broadway play, when you visit Branson you have to see a show.  Branson has changed a lot since I went there with my parents years ago.  They've added more streets so there's no longer just one main drag where everything's located (think of the traffic situation), and the whole city has grown.  There's more shows than ever now.  It's a big place.
Now I have a difficult confession to make.  I hate country music.  I really don't understand why people like it so much.  I keep hearing how it's such a huge part of American culture, it originated here, etc., but so did Jazz, Blues, and Rock n' Roll.  I grew up on Country, my parents listen to it, along with most of my relatives (when they're not listening to church hymns).  And I listened to it almost exclusively growing up.  What happened was I just grew tired of it, the illusion of hometown values, the whole cowboy image.  I found out there was better music out there.
So Melissa, in her never-ending quest to keep me happy,  did some research to find out what else was available.  I won't bore you making a list, but here is their official website.  Bear in mind: Branson is a tourist city, which means everything is expensive.  We couldn't begin to afford all the shows we'd like to see.  We're only going for 3 days anyway.  We've reached a compromise.  We will be seeing the famous Dixie Stampede (now called Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, which brings it down a notch in my book), to enjoy the food as much as the horses.  Another night, I'll be exploring Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum while the kids have more fun at the Dinosaur Museum.
So that's what I'm doing this weekend.

Call me "Q"

I don't really like the name "Scott".  There are several reasons. 

1. It's one syllable.
It can't be shortened, but people have to try to make a nickname out of it anyway.  I hate being called "Scotty."  Do people really think they're being clever when they ask me to "beam" them up?  I like the original Star Trek and I love the new movie, but I hate that nickname.  Only Melissa gets to call me Scotty.
2. It's cute
In spite of what Melissa says, I just can't see being cute as a good thing. Cute people and things don't get taken seriously. Bunnies and babies are cute. Cute means innocuous, effeminate and harmless. Cute is what a preteen girl calls the new boy she just met, it doesn't help you land a job.
3. It's a last name
As far as I've been able to trace it back, Scott was a surname long before it became a given name. I hate it when people use last names for first names.
4. It doesn't say anything about me.
Why can't I have a nice biblical name or a name that means "warrior" or "shepherd" or "town drunk" or something? What does "Scott" mean? It means you're from Scotland. Seriously.

Ok, so it could be worse. I don't share it with half the town. I'm not constantly hearing my name called from across the room only to find out they were paging someone else (that only happens once in a while for me).  My fiance likes it, again, because it's cute.  Nevertheless, I have a few times tried to get by with a nickname.
Fischer dorm at Wheaton College is divided into suites.  Each suite is two rooms connected by a mutual bathroom, so there's two students to a room, four to a suite.  The one time I actually liked living with other people was that first year at Wheaton.  It was like camping.  I liked my roommate and my two suitemates.  This was a guys-only floor.  Girls weren't allowed except during certain open-floor nights when all the doors had to remain open.  It worked out well, I thought, but I'll blog more about my relationships with women some other time.
Anyway, there were 3 "Scott"'s on the 2nd floor of Fischer dorm.  Me: Scott Meyer, Scott Draper and Scott Mealus.  Now, I never did find out what method was used to assign students to their rooms, but the suite where I lived contained all three: Me and Scott Draper in one room and Scott Mealus (along with his roommate John Perryman) in the other.  There were 3 Scotts in one suite.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity to give myself a nickname.
The first day I arrived at Wheaton College, I called myself Q.  It didn't really mean anything, but I came up with all kinds of different explanations for it.  My hair was short, so I looked like a Q-ball.  It stood for "Question Man".  It was after Q from James Bond.  It sounded cool.  I was cool.
I wasn't used to being cool.  I'd never been cool before.  I was used to being in the shadows, overlooked.  I was used to my actions being ignored.  As Q, what I did and said got noticed.  Suddenly, my words and actions started having weight.  It was like I was back on stage again.  I couldn't handle it.
I had lots of friends.  People who's names I couldn't even remember all remembered me: quiet, unsocial me.  Things I said in class became important, and I didn't even realize it.
Cut to Junior year.  I was trundling along, head down, off in my own little world.  I was struggling to keep up in classes because, once again, I was failing to work well with others.  I was taking mostly computer courses and trying to do everything all on my own so I never asked for help, never got to know any of the guys I was in class with.  I think I was growing a little paranoid, on my way to a nervous breakdown.  I didn't realize that I was still cool.
I was always jealous of the whiz kids.  It never really got through to me that I would be working with people smarter than me, and that I would have to deal with that.  Growing up, I had nothing to offer physically or socially, or so I thought.  The only thing I had going for me was my intelligence.  I just HAD to be the smartest person in the room.  I never realized that smart people ask questions.  More stuff to blog about later.
So one day there was a fire drill.  It happens occasionally.  College students love anything that's disruptive to dorm life, so everyone else was standing around outside having a good time.  I was just looking forward to going back in and getting back online.  So there I was: head down, not talking to anyone, getting annoyed that it was taking so long when this sophomore comes up to me.  I'd seen him before, probably had several classes with him, but I didn't know his name.  Didn't know him.
"Just who do you think you are?" he says.
"What?"
"Doc never answered my question because of you."  Doc was Doctor Hayden, head of the computer science department.  Most of my classes at this point were with him.
"What are you talking about?"
So this kid goes on to talk about a question he had asked, days ago.  It could have been weeks ago for all it mattered to me.  He'd asked a question, and I had blurted out a joke about it that made the whole class, including Doc, laugh.  I didn't even remember what the joke was.  Still don't.
"I never found out the answer because Q thought it was funny."  The way he said my nickname was the same way I would have talked about the popular kids in high school.  It reminded me of another junior who's name I never learned.  I'd called him a poseur once because of this stupid hat he wore: a baseball cap with dog ears on it.  Apparently, he'd overheard me because he stopped wearing the cap after that.  Sometime later, he asked me if I thought he was still a poseur.
Anyways, It's hard for me to explain what happened after that.  I guess "Q" really stood for "Quitter" after all.  That one conversation pushed me over the edge and out the door.  I quit school.  Too many people knew me, recognized me.  My desire to be cool conflicted too much with my need to be anonymous.
So Q went the way of the dinosaurs.  I went home.  When I returned to Wheaton a year later I was back to being pseudoanonymous Scott Meyer.  Things weren't the same and I dropped out again after another year.  I'll blog about it some more some other time.

Let's Write Some More

I'm not much of a talker.  I'm one of those monosyllabic types.  Doesn't mean I have nothing to say, just that I  can't decide what to say first.  By the time I get around to saying anything, the conversation has moved on.  So I just don't say anything.   I guess that's why I'm better at getting my point across as a writer.  When you write, you don't have to worry about timing.  You can invent the whole conversation yourself.  You get as much time as you need to think about what you're going to say.  It's a luxury you don't have in plain conversation.  I think having the option to stop and think about what you're saying has ruined my conversation skills.  I can't really say anything without thinking about it first.  So am I more comfortable with writing because I'm bad at conversation, or am I bad at conversation because I spend too much time communicating in writing?  Chicken, egg.

What to write about first

So now that I've got that out of the way I'm running into the same problem: what to write about first.  I've got a lot on my mind that I think I need to build up to, a lot of stuff I think I should dedicate a blog post to.  I'm starting to find out I have more friends than I thought I did.  I got into this habit, years ago, of burning my bridges behind me and I think it's hurt me a lot.  I have this survivor complex, and a loner complex, and even though I've had a decent number of friends over the years I've always thought of myself as being alone. I few months ago, I read this article on Science Daily which suggests that the personalities we have as children carry over into our adult life.  It confirmed a longstanding suspicion I've had myself.  For years I've been analyzing people I meet in terms of what they were like as children.  I'm pretty accurate, but I'm also pretty biased.  My mother ran a home daycare for several years so I spent my preteen years around children, mostly boys younger than five.  So when I meet new people I automatically think of them in terms of what they were like as children.  I can't help it. 

Dwelling on the Past

It's come to my attention recently that I may be an information hoarder.  I can't stand to miss anything, any scrap of news, particularly science and technology news.  Maybe the Internet has encouraged this habit, I don't know, but I'm sitting on a huge pile of text files containing scraps of ideas I had years ago; ideas for stories or essays I wanted to write mostly.  I never look at them, but I always intend to go back and expand on them someday.  Maybe all writers are like this.  Anyway, another part of this hoarding behavior is that I'm a huge perfectionist.  I can't help but focus on the flaws.  I'm constantly dwelling on the past, blaming myself for things that went wrong, wishing I could go back and change things.  Everything we do adds up to compose the person we are so if you don't mind I'd like to go through some self analysis based on my history.

Stranger

As I was explaining, we are all basically the same people we were as children.  So everything about me comes down to something I did as a child.  In general, I'm not a person who deals with change very well.  I need stability because as a child I needed stability.  Unfortunately, as a child I moved around a lot.  Stability was hard to come by.  At first it was a new city, then a new school.  Every three or four years I would be picked up and have to leave everything behind.  It became something I expected to happen, even wanted to happen.  Any relationships I had I expected to be short term.  I became used to being the new kid, the only stranger in the room.  Any friendships I made I expected not to last.  I never learned the value of making friends in school.  I concentrated on my studies, saw friends as a distraction.  The pattern I saw was this: making friends means spending more time talking and getting to know them, less time to spend reading.  Spend less time reading and your grades start to slip.  Grades start to slip, it's time to move on: new school, out with the old distractions, go back to being a stranger.

Performer

Most people don't know this about me: I'm an actor.  This means three things:

1. I need a script.
I'm not comfortable being in a situation where I don't know exactly what to do. You see actors on tv all the time, and they always do exactly the right thing. You never think about it, you just expect it. No one ever makes a mistake on tv (unless it's part of the plot). No one ever stutters and stammers trying to put an idea into words. Actors get a script, lines to memorize, hours and hours to rehearse. Without those, I don't know what to do.
2. I'm used to being someone else, never myself.
For years I didn't know who I was. I divided my life into the different roles I'd play in different social situations: the school Me, the church Me, the family Me. None of those were the Me I wanted to be, nor were any of them the real Me.
3. I'm always on stage.
Everywhere I go, I feel eyeballs on me, watching me, judging my actions.  Can I fool them this time?  Can I make them think I belong? 

I acted on stage from the age of 5 up through 8th grade.  Before 6th grade, acting was fun.  I was good at memorizing lines, I enjoyed being on stage.  I thought I was so talented, that in due time I would start being picked for leading roles.  I had hope.  In Middle School I started to learn that I would never be a movie star: I just didn't have the looks, the skill.  I started realizing I had an audience and that I was fat.  I wasn't the cute kid anymore.  I started forgetting my lines in front of everyone.  They would only give me small parts, easy parts.  In retrospect, I should have tried to get more into the technical side of things: lights and sound, set design, maybe even directing.  But I only knew one solution for failure: quit.  Too many people had seen me fail, and I couldn't live with the reputation.  After doing nothing else for 8 years, I left it all behind and never went back.

Programmer

At first, I wanted to be a magician, not because of the performing aspect, but because I liked to know how things worked.  I wanted to learn the secrets, what makes the magic happen.  I still do.  I love machines, computers, technology.  Unfortunately, while growing up those were the things I had least access to.  From the age of 8 I wanted a computer not because I wanted to play games or for school but because I wanted to learn how the computer worked.  I'm still trying to do so.  I think this goes back to being an information hoarder.  I can write a program, design a user interface, write a web page, but I still don't know enough about what the computer is doing behind the scenes.  I know enough electronics to understand logic gates.  I'm comfortable with assembly language.  But I've never written a device driver.  I don't know how the different parts of the computer work together.  I only understand things on a very high, or a very low level.  Where do I go to learn the middle part?

Artist

Over the years I've had to learn something: talent is useless. I remember sitting with my brother and his friends trying to put a company together and listing our assets, hearing Scott B saying "there's so much talent in this room."  Talent is cheap.  Everyone has talent.  My teachers used to talk about how much talent I had, but nothing ever came of it.  It's skill that's actually worth something, and skill is hard to acquire.  It takes time, dedication, lots and lots of practice.  Musicians and artists and inventors don't make gobs of money because they're talented.  They make it because they're skilled.  Am I skilled?  Not really.  I'm talented.  But I've never dedicated myself to any one thing long enough to call myself skilled.  I'm a talented programmer, but not a skilled one.  I'm a talented writer, but not a skilled one.  One of the reasons for this blog is to change that, turn some talent into skill.  Maybe then it'll be worth something.

Can I Make This Work?

About me

My name is Scott Meyer and I am a writer.  I woke up today and all I could think about was writing.  I said to myself: "it's about time."  I've tried being many other things, but writing is what I always come back to.  I admit I've been putting it off.  Too many other things absorbing my attention.  Too worried about what other people will think about my writing.  Too much a perfectionist.  Trying too hard to come up with that one BIG IDEA that will make me famous.  Maybe I really don't need one.
So I started with facebook, figured it was the best way to let people know I was still alive.  I've lost a lot of friends over the years simply because I didn't keep up with them and I don't want to lose any more.  Maybe I can actually get back in touch with some older ones.  I was actually surprised at how many friends I have already.  Well, most are relatives so far but there are a few old friends I'm glad to hear from.
I need to mention that I'm engaged to be married.  Her name is Melissa and this past year has been the best year of my life because of her.  She's also the reason I had to move far away, though not so far that I can't visit my friends occasionally.  Because of her, also, I'm motivated to try to get back in touch with all my old friends.  I think I'll find I have more friends than I realized.

About the title 

My best friend for years was my cousin Ryan.  As anyone who knows me will tell you, I have ADD.  I tend to space out, thinking about something miles away.  Ryan always used to say I was "off in Scottland" when I wasn't paying attention.  I think it's a good title.

Why blog?

I know, I know, I'm late getting into the game.  For someone who loves technology as much as I do I've always been behind when getting into things.  Mostly, it's because I've never really had the money to be truly state-of-the-art.  I want to be an early adopter, but what if the tech I choose turns out to be the wrong one?  I still have my first mp3 player, but it's broken now.  It came with an actual 20G laptop hard drive which was supposed to mean that my music would be eternal.  Of course, it used a file system that was completely incompatible with any other in existence.  So now I have all this music on a broken device that I can't retrieve.  Maybe it's better that I'm not such an early adopter.
Anyways, I'm sorry to say, this blog isn't for you, dear reader.  It's for me.  I've had so many ideas over the years about things I was going to write: essays, stories, what have you.  I've never completed anything.  So maybe if I do have an audience I'll be more likely to finish things.  Here's hoping.

More about me

So I'm going to pretend that my audience doesn't know anything about me.  I was born at a very young age (I'm also a lousy comedian).  I started reading and writing soon after.  I'm an avid role-playing gamer and for years I've been keeping a series of "journals" about my character and the characters of the other players.  I should start calling it an "adventure log" or something.  I like taking on the personalities of other people, especially people more interesting than me.  If my fellow players have different opinions of me than they did in the past, I can only hope they remember the journals.
It actually didn't start with me, it started with Bob and his character "Mouse."  Bob liked to keep a character journal and send it out via email to the other players.  At the time I was playing an illiterate half-orc fighter named Vaarg (we were playing with Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Ed rules, 3rd Ed hadn't come out yet so it wasn't necessary to be a barbarian to be illiterate).  Vaarg had an interesting backstory that I made up as I went along involving his mother and how she had been captured and raped (and ultimately killed) by orcs.  I invented a diary that she had left behind and which Vaarg wanted to be able to read.  So Vaarg learned to read and became a scholar and started keeping a journal of his own.  Unfortunately, many of those journal entries were lost because I didn't save my emails, but it led to the other players creating journals of their own.  Everyone's now moved on to other characters, other game settings, but I always wanted to take what we wrote and publish an adventure story about our little party.  I even wrote a partial script for a comic book.  Just another project I never finished, but maybe I can find the motivation to finish it now.
Anyways, that's me, or most of me at any rate.  I'll be writing more about me eventually but for now that's all I really wanted to say.