Dynamic Variables

Hello there!  It's been awhile, but I haven't forgotten about my blog quite yet.  Now that the fall semester is over I have a few weeks off to catch my breath and get ready for my final semester I feel it is a good idea to get back in the swing of things.  In May, if all goes well, I will graduate with my BS in CS!  It feels like I have been working towards this goal for a LONG time but it's finally getting close.

This spring I have three classes that I am taking: Operating Systems, Analysis of Algorithms, and a science class on meteorology.  I look at this semester as a final turning point.  In addition to taking three classes, I will be teaching four classes.  I am pretty excited about this and I hope that I do them all justice.  I love teaching and I still feel as excited about it as I did two and a half years ago when I was preparing my first lecture.  Teaching four classes is a little daunting (it's like twice what I normally teach) but I am looking forward to the challenge.

Life is pretty good right now overall.  My job is good, Trinity is doing really well, and I feel pretty happy.  A few months ago I wasn't feeling so content, but after quite a bit of thinking I was able to figure out what I needed to do.  Once the choice was made, it was like a huge weight had been removed.  All I needed to do was make it happen.  And making things happen is something I can do.  I rarely fail when I know what I need to do.  It feels great to be on track again and I am really stoked about moving out on my own (FINALLY!!!!).  I have come to believe that you have to take ownership of your future.  I can't expect other people to make choices for me, it's my life to live and I have to decide what I want and follow through with the decisions. 

There are other exciting things going on in my life but I don't want to talk to much about that here.  Maybe when I come back for my New Year's post!

Well that is all for now, I promise to be back before 2011!

~Syffin

Trepidation and Anxiety

Well. after that brief intermission and about a two or three month break I am back to poor my thoughts and dreams into this poor excuse for a blog.  I am overly tired after having a marathon reading of a book called The Bermudez Triangle.  More on that later, but a warning that this post might be a bit disconnected and strange.  You have been warned.

Life is pretty good, or at least it seems that way right now.  But I can't seem to shake this feeling of impending doom.  My life has been moving in a decent direction for a long time now and I am just not sure if I can continue this pace.  Sort of like a train that is running all out and suddenly the tracks are gone and in their place there is a wall.

I am trying to decide if this somehow relates to school and my job.  I will (hopefully) graduate with my Bachelor's degree after the spring semester.  But what do I do next?  Do I go on to grad school?  Do I try to find a job in the field?  Do I try to extend my current part time teaching job into something more full time?  After finishing my AAS, I knew I had to get  a BS but now the choice is less clear to me.  And frankly some of the effects scare me.  Am I smart enough to attempt to work towards a PhD?  Do I have what it takes?  I realize that this is all part of being an adult but it still scares me a bit.

I also miss having time to do things that are not job or school related.  I have never had a huge group of friends (like less than 10) but the group just seems to get smaller and smaller over the years as we all move into our various lives.  I have my daughter who I love more than anything else in my life.  Some friends have moved away, others have gone off for second shots at college.  Again, all part of life I know, but it still feels lonely.  The few friends I have left in the area where I live almost all live together.  I feel more apart from the group than I ever did before.

Maybe I am just being all boo hoo about having to make a decision about what I want to do in life and this feeling is just ... fear of making a big decision.  I haven't really every considered anything this much.  I just sort of think about things a bit, analyze all of the outcomes, and pick one path.  I did that with Ivy Tech, I did that with IUSB, and other parts of my life.  But I feel very unsure at this point in my life.

The real crux of the matter is that this is not me.  I don't worry about things like this.  I don't fret about decisions and fear making a choice.  And I think that is what scares me most.  I can't just make a decision about this and move on.  And that leaves a huge amount of uncertainty in my life which I think makes me feel like I have my own personal spectre only just a few steps behind me ...

Well, writing this blog didn't particularly help me sort anything out but it did make me tired enough to go to sleep.  I will try to post more, it might help me think everything through.

Nite all,
~Syffin

A Special Kind of Nightmare

FoTaD: Welcome back n00b! Where the &#@% you been? Forgetting about your blog is just not cool. Quit being a punk!

Me: Wait, who are you?

FoTaD: Umm, really? You don't remember me? I am your %&$# blog! You better start treating me better or I am GONE!

Me: ...

Me: Well you know, I have been spending more time on Twitter and even Facebo

FoTaD: &#@!&$# You think that new fangled "social media" can communicate better than me? How do you ever manage to express yourself in 140 letters or less? Well?!?

Me: ... Well Facebo

FoTaD: Don't even say it.

Me: But look, on Facebo

FoTaD: Really? Are you going to make me do it?

Me: What? You have a problem with Facebo

FoTaD: Just stop, you are not helping yourself here. Just forget it. I understand now. You think that having lots of "friends" and writing on your stupid-*## "wall" is more important. At least with 140 characters I could believe that you are just warming up for a blog post. But with that abomination that you call ... I can't even bring myself to say it ... Lets just say that if you bring that up here again I will have to delete myself.

Me: Uhh, ok. I won't bring up Facebo err I mean MyS

FoTaD: WHOA! STOP!!! Just stop alright? I get it, you are an idiot that uses retarded social networks to make up for the fact your tiny little brain can't think up anything to write here. I would rather be old and unused than associated with this *$#*$% sites. If you don't have anything else to say than just back it up and leave. We are done. Come back latter after you have thought about how your idiocy affects me. How it makes me feel.

Me: ...

Me: ...

Me: *Removes his hands from the keyboard*

FoTaD: That's right just back away, BACK AWAY!!!

Me: *Retreats back to studying for an exam*

FoTaD: *sigh* What a n00b . . .

The Onus of Proof

It's March 1st (almost March 2nd) and in just another three days I will be 27. And on the cusp of turning 27 I think it is appropriate to look back and see how things have progressed in my life. What proof do I have that my life is moving in a direction that achieves the goals I have? Or better yet, what goals do I even have?

Determining goals is a risky business. You risk setting them too high and never achieving them. You risk setting them too low and never achieving something worthwhile. I probably have goals that seem silly or idealistic but I strive to achieve them never-the-less.

My first goal (and currently the one I am working the hardest on) is to be the kind of father that I see my Dad as. Is my Dad perfect? No, (sorry Dad!) but lets be realistic, nobody is. I can see places in the way that I was raised that I wish had turned out differently, but that is because I have the benefit of hindsight. I also am young and perhaps I am still acting like I know better than my parents, as many young people do. But I know that at my Dad's core are the values and ideals that I want to have. For example, I want to be there for my daughter in the way that he is always there for me. Even if I didn't take his advice when I was younger, I still remember all of it today. When I am faced with a tough decision I tend to ask myself, "What would your dad do?" For example, when Kelsey lost her job last year and I had the choice of taking out additional loans to help her get her car, I figured this is the type of thing my Dad would do and I did it because it was right to help her. My Dad helps even when people don't show appreciation. Also I believe that my Dad was basically the first person in my family to graduate college with a bachelor's degree. I plan to be the second, and the first with a master's and hopefully a doctorate. I will be done with my BS in May of next year. I really just want to live my life in a way that my daughter can be proud of and provide an example to her as I feel my Dad's life (both the good and the less good) has been an example for me. The constancy of my Dad's presence in my life was an anchor that kept me from drifting too far from my potential.

My second goal is that I want to help people. Currently my goal is to do this through teaching (at the community college level). I currently teach at a community college part time and I love it. I have never had a job that I was happy to go to. I feel blessed to have found something that I really enjoy. I also have found that I love comparative politics. Perhaps I can find some way to work politics into this goal as well.

My third goal is to lead a happy life. This seems kinda silly but I feel that so many people that don't seem to be enjoying life that I feel like they might be missing the point. If you are never happy what's the point of living? I have adopted a philosophy that I should always make time for something fun. Even if that just means sitting down and reading a few pages of a book, listening to some music, spending a night out with my friends, playing a game with my daughter, or keep abreast of political news. If you are enjoying your life, you make any room just a little brighter and a little more fun.

So in the end have I made much progress to any of these goals? I don't know, I feel firm in the knowledge that I am leading a life that I have chosen. What more can you really ask for? I am blessed to have a great family and great friends. My life is good and I am happy.

I don't have a lot more to say right now, but I hope to post again soon. I have read a number of additional books to add to my list. It's late so I think I will get off of here and head to sleep.

~Syffin

The Grey Spiral

Fail.  Epic Fail.  As much as I enjoy blogging I find it hard to make myself do it.  Perhaps with my new computer setup I will be able to keep up with it more.  I have been Twittering though or tweeting or whatever the heck the correct verb is for that.  If you are interested: Syffin's Twitter.  Not that much is on there that is worth while mostly just blah blah blah.

I can't decide what I want to blog about tonight, so many things have been staking out little spots in my brain recently.  First off I suppose I should mention the earthquake in Haiti.  In fact I am watching the Hope for Haiti Now special.  I find that as I have been watching coverage of this on CNN and other news stations I have been just blown away by some of the footage.  How does one reconcile the images that have been shown with one's own life experiences?  I can't fathom what it must be like to be in a situation like that.  I don't really have words to describe it.  The whole scene in Haiti is just unimaginable and indescribable.  The only thing we can really do is donate money and to this cause and I have certainly done that.  In addition they have some really great music on the Hope for Haiti special and you can get it from Itunes for like 8 bucks.  Apple and all of the artists are donating all there portions of the sale of the album to the Hope for Haiti charity which covers a lot of different charities like the Red Cross, UNICEF, and the United Nation World Food Programme.

When I sit here at my desk and think of all that I have going for me in my life and then think about what people in Haiti are going through I just wish I could do more than donate a small amount of money.  I am pretty poor but even given that fact I still have more than I need and I certainly don't know what its like to need water or food.  I can only imagine that if something like that happened to me or my family then I would have to rely on my faith that everything happens for a reason.  I would have to believe that there was a point to it all.

The funny is that not even two years ago I wouldn't have cared enough to donate money or even follow this on the news.  I just never considered what it is like for other people.  I guess I have changed a lot and while I think in this regard it is for the better on the other hand I find it makes it harder to deal with other things.  Sometimes I feel like I am on the edge and I have a lot of emotion that wants to get out but I don't know how to express it.  I have always been very emotionally muted but I find as I get older I have a harder time keeping that view.  Sometimes I get misty-eyed just watching a movie or TV.  Sometimes even in a book.

Speaking of books I have not done a good job of keeping my book list updated on the side there.  I have read a few more books since the last update and in fact I think I will just read what I have read since October:

City of Bones
City of Ashes
City of Glass
The Summoning
The Awakening
Marked
Betrayed
Chosen
Untamed
Hunted
Tempted
Vampire Academy
Frostbite
Shadow Kiss
Blood Promise
Evermore
Blue Moon
Shadowland
The Lightning Thief
The Sea of Monsters
The Titan's Curse
The Battle of the Labyrinth
The Last Olympian
Strange Angels
Betrayls
Blue Bloods
Masquerade
Revelations
Ghost Ocean
Zoe's Tale
Old Man's War
Ghost Brigades

A short list.  33 books.  I will say that almost all of those books are YA books.  For some reason I have had an interest in YA books specifically supernatural or dark powers types of stories staring female lead characters.  This of course matches my taste in anime as well.  Not sure what that means about me (or maybe I do and don't want to admit it =) ).  In any case I think that is a good enough post for now.  I have Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour) on repeat and I feel like I need a drink.  Tonight feels like a good night for reflection.

I will hopefully post more soon.  Perhaps something about my thoughts on the current US political situation or the recent SCOTUS decision.  Of course school and my life also can make interesting posts so we will have to see.  Plus I haven't mentioned how good looking Richelle Mead is on here yet either.  It's kind of silly to have crush on an author =)  Oh also I want to talk about the whole Grey Spiral thing, it is kind of interesting in a very depressing sort of way.  In any case Jack Daniels and I have an appointment with a Cherry Coke so I better plug this off here.

I will post again soon, I hope that if you read all the way down to here you have considered donating something to the Haiti relief effort, it's really something worth doing and every little bit helps.

~Syffin

The Inevitability of Violence

This particular blog post will be a little more specific and deal with only one subject unlike many of my other posts.  Something has been on my mind recently and I really want to spend some time thinking about it and getting my thoughts down.

In recent months I have found that I have been thinking about violence a lot.  I am not sure why but with recent events like the horrible tragedy at Fort Hood it is hard to not consider the subject of violence.  For me it all started to pop in my mind when I was sitting here in my room thinking about science.  What do scientists think about their inventions and how does that change as they see how we use their technology?  For some reason Robert Oppenheimer came to mind.  How did he feel about helping develop the Atomic Bomb?  If you design these systems what kind of responsibility do you bear for technology?  Should you be responsible at all?  I am not sure.  Certainly some technologies are designed for benign reasons and we twist these inventions to new uses.  Other more deadly technology can be reworked to be used in some beneficial way.

I have come to the conclusion that I really dislike violence.  I don't understand the need for it and I don't like the idea that we should ever have to resort to this sort of thing.  When I think about events like those at Fort Hood, school violence, and just general run of the mill violence it is hard to think of a justification.  Now I have to admit that maybe this makes me weird and I haven't really talked about this before.  When my daughter was stabbed a few years ago and I saw her laying on that hospital bed bleeding I didn't wish violence on the man that stabbed her.  In fact I rarely thought about him at all while she was in the hospital.  My thoughts were all wrapped up in how I could make her life better, what could I do to make her life just a little easier and better.  All I could think about and wish for at that moment was that she would make it through ok.  During that time period many people spoke to me about wanting to hurt or kill the man that did this to my daughter.  I agreed because I really wasn't interested in talking about it and the easiest way to end a conversation you don't want to have is to agree.  But if I am honest about it I didn't care what happened to him, how could I?  How could I spare one ounce of thought for someone else when my daughter's life hung in the balance?

As I have thought about this over the last couple of years, I searched for a reason to want to wish death upon him.  In my mind and in my heart though I couldn't do it, who am I to judge whether a person should live or die?  Certainly I hate and despise him but I would not take his life given the chance to do so.  I would never choose to take another person's life as it is not in my power to understand whether they truly deserve to live or die.  I sometimes worry that this makes me . . . strange or even bad.  I feel like it would be more socially acceptable to wish he was dead.

I am not a religious person by nature, in fact I can count the number of times I can remember being in a church on one hand, but I do believe that there is some higher power out there.  And if there is some higher power, what right do I have to judge another human regardless of what they have done?  If there is a higher power than humans, there must be a reason that this happened and that the person who did it will eventually have to face his deeds in a way that will be just and correct.

Perhaps this past has colored my aversion to violence and tools of violence.  I have come to have a very firm dislike of guns, knives, and other weapons.  I would never own such a weapon as I do not see the reason or meaning behind it.  I know that many feel security with having a weapon but I can't see that.  Weapons represent a source of danger for many, all it takes is one bad day to cause a tragedy.

~Syffin

Life Simulator

I am taking a class this semester at IUSB called C335 - Computer Structures.  In the class we are learning about assembly language and taking an in-depth look at how the CPU and other pieces of hardware work.  Now before I took the class I was really looking forward to taking the class because I was really wanting to mess around with assemby.  Now we are using Linux assembly and it is interesting.  The class has an overarching project that we are supposed to be complete.  We are using Kephra robots to help us learn assembly.  To that end we have been writing a simulated CPU in assembly to use with the Kephra robot simulation software.  Writing a cpu as software sounds difficult but really it is pretty straight forward.  All you do is define some memory for the simulated registers, define some memory for simulated memory, and then define a reasonable set of instructions.  Defining the instructions is certainly the bulk of the work here but again much isn't really that difficult.  Given this you would think I would have no problem getting this assignment done.  Unfortuneatly this hasn't been the case.  I have had an almost incapacitating aversion to working on this for some reason.  I couldn't seem to get any resolve to sit down and work on it at all.  Finally I just sat down and did a reasonable draft of the code and I think it is good.  At least it assembles and loads without error.  And it even executes into a seg fault.  I suppose the seg fault is a problem but at least it didn't error before I could run it.

In other nontechnical details, my daughter's birthday is coming up in a couple of days.  I got her a Nintendo DSi with three games.  I think I might go back and get a fourth game but I haven't decided.  I think she will like it.  Her mom and I are split up again, not suprising really.  We haven't really been "together" for a long time.  Perhaps too much has happened for that to ever work out.  Honestly I am too busy and too broke to deal with having a relationship right now.  School needs to be my priority and then probably my health.  I really need to lose some weight.  I am getting to a size where I feel pretty uncomfortable and I think I need to make a change to get back on track.  I use my busy life as an excuse but that really is just an out.  I have no good reason to be this way.

Of course I have been playing DnD a lot lately.  I feel like sometimes our group is backwards.  I always thought as you grew up and matured there would be less drama.  Unfortuneatly I feel like there is only more.  Constantly I feel at odds with my friend Beau because his friend wants to play but can only play every three weeks.  I personally think we have too many people playing DnD as it is but I feel like I am obligated to allow more players.  The same thing with my friend Jarad's girlfriend.  It appears she is going to play as well but again we will have too many players.  The more people that we try to add to our group the harder it is to run and also keep things straight.  Meh I just paused and sent out an email stating I don't want any additional players.  Probably people will complain but I just don't want to deal with it.  Sometimes it pays to be able to be coldly removed.

Defineatly excited about next semester, I get to take two different Politcal Science classes.  One is on War, Terroism, and Reconcilliation and the other is on West European Countries.  I really enjoyed my Intro to Comparative Politics so I am looking forward to these classes.  It's getting late but now that I have my room to myself I think I will be posting more.  I guess I better link a couple people to here as well in case anybody wants to actually read this stuff.

~Syffin