out of the blue

Yesterday was very enjoyable. I had a ton of classes, from 8:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the evening, with only two hours of break. But, I enjoyed it, because all of my teachers seemed interesting, with the possible exception of ym programming teacher, and the class itself ought to be interesting enough to make up for it. Then, after doing all that, I decided to not do any of my homework (I still had a whole day to do most of it) and work om my website.

I figured out that the server supported SSI, which I'd used a little bit before, and I used it to great effect. Now, instead of changing every page when I want to adjust the layout of the pages, I can simply change the layout html code, and it will be done on every page. It took a lot of work (most of yesterday) to set that up, but it's a long-term investment, and I can change the layout whenever I want. It's awesome. Anyway, I also added a bit of content, and connected a few of the pages that I hadn't linked to the rest of the site. It might take a little work to find all of them, though. Next step for my web site: add some more content, and work out a decent site organization. It's a bit convoluted now.

Smurf's Domain

Anyway, today I only had one class, because the physics-related one was cancelled, so I did a lot of nothing. I cleaned up a lot of my papers, learned a bit of php, and talked to various people about philosophy and religion. That was fun.

More tomorrow, probably. You get to read all of my extensive impressions of my teachers, sometime tomorrow or Saturday. Goodnight.

Well, I've had most of my classes. In fact, I've had all of them, with the exception of the Physics recital (with my normal physics teacher) and my Physics lab (also with him). Here's my class schedule, if you're at all interested. I've got 19 credits, and I may join the choir, which would mean an additional 1 credit. I have decided that I probably won't take voice lessons this semester, because I'm going to focus on working hard and developing a work ethic. Yes, Smurf has decided (once again) to try to be responsible. Let's hope that it turns out better than those in the past have. Anyway, here ya go.

Honors Literature II
Patsy S. Fowler
12:00pm – 12:50pm
MWF

Digital Computer Programming – ENSC 104 03
Steven D. Schennum
2:10pm – 5:00pm
MW

History of US I Honors – HIST 273 HON
Kevin C. Chambers
10:00am – 10:50am
MWF

Calculus-Analytic Geometry II – MATH 258 03
Dean S. Larson
1:10pm – 2:00pm
MTWF

Scientific Physics I – PHYS 103 02
Dennis W. Garvey
8:00am – 8:50am
MWF

Scientific Physics I Lab – PHYS 103L 06
Dennis W. Garvey
2:10pm – 5:00pm
F

Scientific Physics I Recite – PHYS 103R 04
Dennis W. Garvey
1:10pm – 2:00pm
R

Honors NT:Matthew Mark Luke – RELI 124H 01
Kevin B. McCruden
2:10pm – 3:25pm
TR

I've not had any of these teachers before, with the exception of Larson, who was my Calc teacher last term. I wrote down, in each class, my first thoughts about the professors, and I will post those sometime. Most of my teachers seem quite interesting. One may or may not be, I haven't gotten a clear impression. But a couple of the others are going to be particularly good, particularly fun, or both. So, I am happy. Have a nice day, all you silly folks wherever you are.

Well, I've finally started uploading bunches of pictures to the internet. I started at the most recent stuff, along with some random stuff. So, if you're interested in seeing some pictures, you should take a look.

Smurf's Photo Pages

Take some looks back here to see when I update them. I've got lots more pictures to put up. Some artistic, some just random and fun. I'll write here more about my new classes, and my teachers. Probably tomorrow, if I have the time. You never know; I might.

Goodnight. Got to wake up tomorrow at 8:00.

Here's my away message for a few hours today:

I'm in an interesting state of mind. I'm having interesting thoughts. I'm being introspective. Therefore, it is time to write. I'm not sure what I'll write. It may be deep thoughts; it may be poetry; it may be a letter; it may be fiction; it may be any one of a number of things. All I am certain of is that I'm going to write. Wake me when it's time to live.

Here's what I ended up writing, with the exception of the bad poetry:

Journal: January 2, 2005

Don't bother reading this unless you can stand reading some scattered thoughts, and probably a bunch of unclear stuff. My own thoughts were more clear, but I'm only beginning to learn how to express them effectively. And I didn't put too much work into that aspect; these are mostly recorded for myself. Read them at your own peril.

I've been confused about a number of things, in a situation that I'm not really sure how to solve. Every time I think about it, I get just about nowhere, and I can't help but think about it a lot. All this in my mind has made me go a little crazy, sometimes. But, this has a purpose. I'm not complaining about my life, I'm telling an amusing anecdote. Interesting way of starting it off, huh?

Anyway, last night, around 2:00 or so, my roommate Aaron and I were discussing random things. We had watched A Beautiful Mind (definitely on my list of favorite movies now, I'm just not quite sure where it places), and were discussing things. We got into talking about our favorite movies were all so very different from one another and how that (at first glance) didn't seem to make all that much sense. I mean, we liked movies all across the board in subject, and it would seem that if you like one movie, and there was another in the same genre that wasn't quite as good, then you would like that other movie better than some good movies in other genres. But we looked at the possibility of having a sequel of a movie, so the same movie, the same script, and having it done very well. We asserted that it was a good movie. Would you enjoy watching both of them, or would one take on preference, and the other not be worth watching? That was the question. But with a little bit of thinking, we decided that both would be very good to watch, and you really wouldn't get as complete an idea of the movie without seeing both. Aaron compared it to a play; seeing a couple different productions of the same play is always good, so it stands to sense that the same thing would hold for movies.

Later, we were talking about the difference between two movies, A Beautiful Mind versus Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. They seemed very similar in theme to me. They both seemed (to me) to be focused on the relationship of two people, and that was the main point of the movie. But Aaron pointed out that, although A Beautiful Mind was definitely focused on the relationship as its point, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind instead focused on the relationship as a way of communicating an idea besides the relationship. This made a lot of sense to me, and I was happy.

Why are these amusing anecdotes? And how the devil do they connect to a situation in which I feel helpless to find answers? Well, since I have been thinking about this problem for so long, and since I haven't been able to come to any conclusions, it was a wonderful feeling to think about something and come to logical conclusions immediately and easily. I find it amusing that it's such a wonderful feeling when that happens, because it shows how much this problem has screwed my mind.

Hehehe. Bad things make other things funnier! Perhaps this is the answer to the age-old question of why there is evil. It is so apparent right now that it would be impossible to experience good without having bad things as well. Maybe this is an oversimplification, but it makes a ton of sense to me at the moment.

Adieu for now.

Well, my parents left yesterday, and then a while later I slept for the longest I've ever slept except when sick. It wasn't constant sleep, or anything like that, but I was in bed and sleeping on and off from 4:30 until 8:30. That's 16 hours. I don't understand how I managed it, but I did, and I feel wonderfully un-sleep deprived now. I'll talk more about stuff later on.

Today, I took out the thugs in two consecutive fights. Cal caught me first, and got in a good solid blow, but in the end I won. He left licking his wounds, hardly able to stand because of the efficiency with which I dispatched him. Phil was a bit of a tougher fight, and I might end up with a few bruises, but he never got in quite as strong a blow as Cal did. He walked away from the fight, but not by much. I was the clear winner. Now for celebration…

Look at that. Again so soon! There may come another Dark Age in the Journal of Smurf's Mind, but it doesn't begin today! Anyway, what's been going on with the crazy fool I call me… Hmm. That's odd. Not many other people call me "me." Why am I giving myself a nickname that nobody ever uses? In fact, I'm not so sure it's even original! Didn't Abraham Lincoln call himself me, or something? Oh well, I might eventually give up that habit, but it might just be too ingrained. It's so natural!

It's amazing that people actually remember that I'm around! My last entry actually got comments! Isn't that odd, when I hadn't been around for many months? I guess I must be somewhat liked. Or perhaps it's just the "know your enemy" mentality that makes everyone wary of me. I don't know. I'll be optimistic, and assume that people are afraid of me.

Tonight ought to be frightening. These two guys named Cal and Phil are out to get me… I think they're going to hit me with something I won't like tomorrow, and there's really nothing I can do about it. I mean, I have to go to classes, and they're in league with the teacher. They'll just wait for me where I have to go, and then all hope is lost. I might be able to learn enough about them in the next few hours to keep them from beating me to a bloody pulp, but I doubt I can escape completely unscathed. At the very least I won't be all that happy when I get out of Calculus and Philosophy classes, but I think I might have a chance of winning. Wish me luck. I have a bit of experience with these sorts of thugs, but if I'm not careful, I could make a mistake and they'd eat me for breakfast.

Goodnight all.

Well, I just spent a long time in which I didn't write anything in here. And by that, I mean a LONG time! I was last talking about college entrance stuff, and now I'm attending college. At Gonzaga University (grins). It is quite a ways away from most of the people I knew in Oregon, but at least I've got Aaron. Anyway, that's about all for today. Maybe I'll write a little more frequently now; it would be hard not to. Adios.

Well, today we played frisbee! It was very fun. We played at Beaverton High School right after we got out from school. Although we lost, we put up quite a good fight. They were almost all bigger than nearly all of our players, but our teamwork was excellent. We should be working on being more careful when throwing, so that our short quick chains of throws work better. It would be nice if people could be faster, but the people on our team are fairly small, so it is much more difficult. We'll work on everything. A very good thing that came of playing against them was that we now have something to aspire to. We will get good enough to beat them someday. Good job, everyone. Let's see how good we can become!