Faith vs. Theory

From m-w.com (Merriam-Webster's dictionary):

Faith -- firm belief in something for which there is no proof

Theory -- the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another

My Family is nuts!

Check this out:
I went to Orlando on Saturday to hang out with John and Lori. Late that evening, I notice that there's a message on my phone from mom saying that she was going to be leaving for vacation the next day. Since my battery was almost dead, I decided that I would just call her mobile phone the next day (I had my car charger only).

Since I didn't call her back that day, the next morning she calls my sister Annetta saying "I'm worried about Chris, he didn't call me back." She checks to see if I'm online (I'm not), calls my other sister Cathy, and they both try to call my cell phone (the battery is still dead). They call dad. He tries to call my cell phone (still dead). Annetta calls the Tampa police department to have them check to see if my car is at my apartment. They can't because it's a parking garage and it could be in any one of a thousand or so parking spaces spread out over three garages. She argues with the cop. The cop argues back. Annetta calls Cathy who is planning on hiring a private investigator to track me down. At this point, it's around 1:00. Tampa police have tried to call me two times (at least). My friend David in Washington, my aunt and uncle in NC, and my cousin in Tallahassee have all been contacted to see if anyone has heard from me.

I'm getting ready to leave Orlando so I plug my phone in to get it charging. There are six voicemails waiting, but before I can listen to them (I still don't know that everyone is looking for me), the phone rings. It's Cathy. She tells me that everyone is looking for me, dad calls to make sure I'm ok, the cops call to make sure I'm ok, Annetta calls to make sure I'm ok. I yell at dad and Cathy, apologize to the cop, ask Annetta what happened. After about 45 minutes I start to calm down, call David to apologize, call dad to apologize, call Cathy to apologize, leave a message for mom to call me back and explain what the hell she was thinking. By the way, I was only apologizing for yelling at them, not for being out of touch. I find out that Dad had fueled the fire by saying "Chris was complaining about getting headaches, maybe he had something wrong with him and he can't answer the phone." Cathy works with stroke victims, some of whom were incapacitated for days before someone found them (more fuel). Annetta is pretty sick with a cold and flu that makes her a little loopy, so maybe the same thing has happened to me (more fuel).

To close out the day, I made multiple calls to make sure people knew that I was appreciative but very disturbed by what happened. I said things like "how boring is my life that people always expect me to be able to answer the phone", and "you people are always complaining about how I never do anything and the one weekend I do, they call out an all points bulletin to track me down." They want me to give them points of contact because "they worry about me being so far away." My response to that is "I'm 36 fucking years old!!" They want enough control over me that will allow them to call someone to say "Go by and check on him." Of course I refused because it's a ridiculous request. If something happens, they'll find out about it eventually.

This whole incident did very little to help improve my self-esteem. Crap like this is exactly why a former psychologist asked me "why do you even talk to them?"

Ok, what's new

-- Still bored
-- Registered for classes
-- Passed my last probability test
-- 20 minutes after reinstalling Windows on my laptop, I picked up the Nimda virus (even though I was behind a firewall)
Did I mention I was still bored?

ho hum

I haven't really had anything interesting to discuss here over the last few days. Sure, I had a birthday (#36), and had my hair cut and colored back to brown, but is that really worth printing? I think not.

School is humming along and I'm learning my way around Tampa (I know where compUSA and all the strip clubs are :-P ), but other than that, I just watch TV and do a little homework. Damn life sucks.
CC

SHIT!!!

I bombed my friggin' Probability test today. Sure I could have studied more, but I kept finding things that I didn't know before and it was pushing old information out of my head. :-)

Let's hope I do better next time.
CC

Repressed memory of the day

My grandparents died when I was very young (less than 10 or so), so death was easy for me to accept. That's probably why I'm comfortable with my mortality. At that age, I accepted things for the way they were. I didn't question religion, I thought the government knew what it was doing, and I thought that it was normal for non-TV families to never show any affection to each other and humiliate their only son/brother at every opportunity.

However, as I got older, I realised that not all was well. Religion, as it was presented to me, was a lie. Families are supposed to have a certain amount of respect for their kids, and so on. This knowledge led to my self-alienation. I still feel very uncomfortable in groups and don't function well on my own. Had I been born twenty to thirty years later, I would be diagnosed with ADD and possibly autism. Since I at least give the appearance of being a mostly functional adult, getting help with my learning disability is very difficult, not to mention my social "issues". By the time most people reach my age, they've already been through many relationships and have possibly been able to get on to being a middle aged adult. I'm still stuck in my adolescent fears and problems.

More school stuff

God I f'ing hate school. I always have and always will. I'm a total outcast and my mind is never clear enough to be able to actively process information. When I try to clear my thoughts, there is at least two or three inner monologues going on in my "think-space" regarding exactly how I'm supposed to clear my thoughts. Next thing I know, five minutes of class have passed by and I have no idea what the prof. is saying.

I was reading an article in Wired magazine today. I happened to glance at the previous page and thought that I had accidentally skipped it during a page turn. It turns out that I HAD read it and had to read almost half of it to realize that.

It's extremely depressing knowing that I must go to school, but I can't think clearly enough to learn anything. Being put into futile situations has a way of overwhelming me with angst.

Changing History

Let me begin by saying that I'm not planning on killing anyone!!! This is merely a blog based on a conversation I had with someone recently.

In the movie "The Dead Zone", Christopher Walken's character knew two things: 1) He was going to die very soon, and 2) Martin Sheen's character was going to become president and start a Nuculear (not nuculur like our current preacher-in-chief says) war.

When Walken figures these two things out, he asks his (Jewish) doctor that if he could go back in time, would he kill Hitler before he came to power. Even if it meant he was going to die. Without giving too much away, Walken decides to try to kill Sheen, thereby saving the world from nuculear war and a bunch of bad movies and a TV show (where Sheen plays the President. . .huh, that's weird).

Anyhoo, the conversation I had with my friend was that put in that situation, who would you kill? It would have to be someone relatively accessible, so Bin Laden and Hussein are out of the question.

I guess that (to me, anyway), this is one of those things that I can't possibly answer unless I'm actually put in that situation. Mainly because I'm not a violent person and feel that everyone would be a lot better off if we would just learn to accept everyone's differences and figure out a way to think AND act globally (i.e. controlling population) and learn how to use technology to improve our learning capacity.

School overcrowding in Florida

A month or so ago, voters in my county passed a referrendum raising sales taxes by .5% for the construction of new schools. Why should I fund new schools when I am not adding to the school overcrowding problem. I was smart enough not to have kids. The people that have kids should pay per child when they register them. If you have ten kids you pay for ten kids. The root of the overcrowding problem isn't that there is not enough money, it is that there are too many kids in the buildings. Make people see the consequences of having kids, maybe they will reconsider it.

"Theory"

A lot of people say that since no one actually saw the big bang or the creation of life from the primordial soup, that God must have created everything. What they fail to realize is that those aren't the only two choices and that we don't have to have an answer for everything right now. After 100 years of flight, we can't even agree on what makes planes fly. There are a couple of main theories, but they can't come to a definitive answer. Perhaps eventually we will know how planes fly and what the origin of life, the universe, and everything truly is, but until then, examine the available information and come up with a plausible answer that doesn't require an omnipresent conciousness

God vs. Big Bang and Evolution

"Theory"


People say that Evolution is a "theory" assuming that the theory of evolution means that we are just guessing about the origin of life. If you look at the definition of the word "theory", the definition that is SUPPOSED to be used in association with evolution is the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another. We know that life adapts, or is adapted, to its enviornment (German Shepherds didn't exist 1000 years ago).

Life Stinks

Have you ever felt like you have no reason to live, but can't figure out why you aren't suicidal?

All this, without ever having taken any illicit drugs.

Excerpt from the Offspring song "Have You Ever"

Have you ever walked through a room
But it was more like the room passed around you
Like there was a leash around your neck that pulled you through


Have you ever been at someplace
Recognizing everybody's face
Until you realized that there was no one there you knew

Well I know


Some days, my soul's confined and out of mind
Sleep forever
Some days, I'm so outshined and out of time
Have you ever


Falling, I'm falling


Have you ever buried your face in your hands
Cause no one around you understands
Or has the slightest idea what it is that makes you be


Have you ever felt like there was more
Like someone else was keeping score
And what could make you whole was simply out of reach
Well I know


Someday I'll try again and not pretend
This time forever
Someday I'll get it straight but not today
Have you ever


If you want the all the lyrics or to listen to the song, go to their web site.

Sundays. . .Blah

Ok, I woke up this morning and watch the Italian Grand Prix (M. Shumacher won. . .again). Since then I've been vejing [sic] out in front of the TV. Right now there's a boring NASCAR race on, and I'm flipping back-and-forth between that and Saturday Night Live that I recorded last night (Jennifer Garner was the host. . .mmmmmmmmmmm). Shouldn't I be outside doing something? I guess, but losers are more prone to hide in their homes. :-D

USF vs UCF

Well, the first week of school at USF has begun. I'm sitting outside looking at a very large breasted student (female) using wi-fi in one of the few hot spots on campus. University of Central Florida kind of spoiled me with their wi-fi coverage, but University of South Florida is slowly building out their network. What they don't have in hot spots, they more than make up for in hotties. Out of 40,000 students, an average percentage of hot chicks provides for a bevy of eye candy.

In case you were wondering, USF seems to be pretty good academically, but that remains to be seen. After all, I moved all the way to Tampa from Orlando to get away from, what was supposed to be, one of the top Computer Science schools in the country. Boy was I disappointed. E-mail me if you want details.

Just to make you jealous, three more women with huge. . .tracts of land walked by while finishing this post.