Other World

Now, October is probably my favorite month anyway, but so far I’m having a particularly good time. For starters, my best friend Matthew flew down from Oregon to spend the weekend with me. He arrived Thursday afternoon and I spent most of the evening cooking up a good meal for him. I want him to remember me every time he goes to Taco Bell and gets so much less. But the big plans were for Friday and Saturday. So Friday we hiked up to Stewart Falls. It’s a fairly mild hike, and Matthew took dozens of pictures. Most of them can be found here: http://flickr.com/photos/mattheww/sets/72157608186637435/ We also had dinner and did a movie with Gina and Ryan that night.

Plans to go to Bryce on Saturday fell through when we realized it was a 4 hour drive instead of 3 hour. But we had a good time sitting around watching Battlestar Galactica and heckling Kristen over her date. Then it was dinner and a Star Trek movie. I pick good friends.

After dropping Matthew of at the airport Sunday it was home for church and sleep. But Monday I got up in the early afternoon and went to buy a piano. Kristen and I brought it home that night and set it up. It’s been a big hit here at the apartment. I think Victoria has played it more than I have, but we had fun this afternoon playing “Heart and Soul” together. And to top it all off, I finally received the complete series of ” The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” Throw in the fact that Halloween is coming up and it’s no wonder this is my favorite month.

The Five Love Languages "The founder of Christian faith wanted love to be the distinguishing characteristic of His followers." (The Five Love Languages, 19)

by Gary Chapman

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis: Gary Chapman, a well-respected marriage councilor looks at love and marriage and addresses the problems that couples frequently face as soon as the honeymoon is over. He identifies Five Love Languages and their role in an individual’s ability to believe that he or she is loved. The five languages are:

Words of affirmation
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch

While Chapman declares these to be the five primary love languages, he does acknowledge that there are several dialects within each. He discusses ways to show your partner love in a language he or she will recognize, and argues that a lot of marriages may be failing, not due to the fact that love isn’t being shown, but due to the fact that love is not being shown in a way that your partner understands. For each language he identifies several dialects and gives ideas and techniques on how to show love to your partner in that language (learning how to “speak” your partner’s love language). He also discusses way to discover both your partner’s primary love language, as well as your own.

Review: You have to appreciate Chapman’s ability to keep it short, sweet, and to the point. With all the self-help and marriage counseling books out there, is it nice to find one that you can get through quickly, while still receiving excellent advise on how to improve, or even save your marriage.

As someone who is not married yet, and has enough trouble just with dating, I was particularly interested in what he had to say about love and courtship. Chapman states that “falling in love is not real love because it is effortless.” During the falling in love stage we frequently become obsessed with the other person to the point where anything we are asked to do for that person becomes effortless. Chapman notes that falling in love is more of an instinct that often drives us to do what he calls, outlandish and unnatural things for each other. At some point we come down off the emotional high, and return to the real world. At this point love becomes a choice that is concerned with the emotional well-being of our mate.

While Chapman’s theories on the five love languages ring very true, I still have some reservations about what he says. For example, he notes that one partner may have Words of Affirmation as their primary language, and that a frustrated spouse who constantly criticizes may in fact be doing a great deal of damage since the person is being directly attacked on the front that matters to them the most. This bothers me a bit. According to Chapman, not everyone will have Words of Affirmation be their primary love language. But Psychology today recognizes that one of the major forms of abuse is verbal abuse. I don’t think Words of Affirmation needs to be someone’s primary love language in order for them to be severely damaged by negative words from their partner. Chapman argues that if both partners have a full love tank they will be kinder to each other, but I would be very much interested in hearing more from him about integrating all the love languages into a relationship. One might be more important that others, but I don’t think anyone likes to be torn down verbally, even if it’s the least of their love languages. I was just very concerned about the concept that a person might give a mate who’s primary language is Physical Touch lots of love and affirmation in that area, but might still be nagging or abusive on other areas. Champan touches on this a bit, but I would have appreciated another chapter on how to interact with your spouse in all areas after having found their love language.

Still, overall, this is a very good book that I’ve already recommended to several people. The subject of happy marriages can be a bit touchy in a society with so much divorce and anger. It’s perhaps a sad testemant to all that is going on that as I read this book, I feel both optimiztic and enlightened, and worried that this might just be another fad that can’t really save the marriages around me. Still, concerning the primary idea of finding out how to express your love to your partner and making that effort to let them know that they are loved, I do believe that is an important step in itself towards building happier marriages and closer families.

The Screwtape Letters "All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that he at least may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, 'I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.'" (The Screwtape Letters, 60)

by C. S. Lewis

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis: Wormwood has a problem, the soul he is charged with dragging down to Hell has converted to Christianity. In an effort to assist, his Uncle Screwtape, a senior devil, sends him a constant stream of advice based on the patient’s (the person’s) current mental and physical states. Based on Wormwood’s reports, Screwtape both evaluates the patient, and gives advice about how to subtlety nudge him closer to Hell, where the hordes of Devils look forward to feasting on his soul.

Review: It’s very hard to go wrong with C. S. Lewis, but people the world over agree that this is one of his finest works. Screwtape’s analysis on how to attack the patient are particularly poignant in that he frequently suggests two completely opposite approaches for each scenario. The conflict appears due to the fact that just about any virtue can be taken to an extreme or distorted in a way as to make it a sin instead. This occasionally makes the reading a bit tricky, for it is easy to recognize virtues, and Screwtape (and certainly the devil today) is a master of very slyly twisting those virtues. One may need to read over the passages a few times to pinpoint were the behaviors and attitudes really start to go wrong.

One could possibly consider this a guide book to the many ways our behaviors start to run amok. It is interesting to note that most of Screwtape’s attacks lead towards gradually building up ill feelings towards other people. The remainder are largely focused on how to get the patient to destroy any ability to believe in his own redemption and worth.

One thing that particularly interests me about the book is that it would be very easy for a good-intending Christian to take the words in here, and start desperately applying them to his or her own life. Certainly there are many areas and aspects of our daily life in which we are open to temptation. But one thing I do not believe Lewis intended of this book, was for the reader to now become fanatical about perfecting every aspect of his or her behavior. It is important to be aware of the tools used against us as we strive to become better people. But one should remember that the most vexing moments for both Screwtape and Wormwood occur when the patient simply turns to God and looks for peace in his life. In those moments Wordwood often finds that all his attacks are rebuffed no matter how clever they may be, and that the patient is shielded from the temptations Wormood is throwing at him. Thus we see that while it is important to recognize the various ways we can fall, ultimately, when we seek to become better, we are saved by grace and there is nothing more powerful that God’s love in lifting us up.

Still, these letters by a master tempter are a marvelous tool in the arsenal of Christians everywhere. I personally was able to look at just about every attack and recognize times in my life when I’ve allowed myself to slip into thought patterns or behaviors that are not condusive to becoming a better, more productive person. I would strongly encourage all people to read this book, not just Christians. Whether you believe in God or not, there are some behaviors that are to be avoided in life, and some that will help you in being a better friend, citizen, and person. This in not a book to be breezed through. This is a book to read with a pencil and postit notes, making marks and comments for yourself. And it is certainly a book to read over and over again.

I’ve been frustrated lately, again with my lack of progress in many areas of my life. But this weekend I did finally start getting a few things together. My bedroom is significantly cleaner. More importantly, it’s getting organized. Frequently cleaning for me is taking stacks of papers and putting them in a neat, tidy pile in a corner to “look through later.” Later rarely comes. It also frequently involves putting a lot of things away in a half-hazard manner that makes them difficult to get out and put away again later.

But thanks to a generous donation of shoe boxes from Victoria, I was able to get a lot of things nicely contained and stacked. That mostly involves boxing up computer cables, but there’s always a handful of knick-knack type stuff lying around that I’m not quite willing to toss, but that I don’t really want sitting out. That’s everything from small flashlights, tools, candles, mini electronic toys and parts, and some random odd stuff. Those also were thrown into a shoebox. That means much cleaner bookshelves. And I certainly need the space for the books instead.

Speaking of books, Kristen and I have been going over plans for building another bookcase. I should have the necessary tools as long as Lowes or Home Depot are willing to do a few of the major cuts for me. The new bookcase will be almost 6′ tall, that will take a lot of pressure off my existing bookcase in my bedroom. I’m also moving my DVD stand out here, which will free up more space in my room. I’m going to need that space in order to expand my desk. I plan on attaching a large board to my small bookcase and a table to give myself more working room.

All this will hopefully allow me to concentrate enough on the other things I’m working on, like C, Python, and Ruby programming. The space will also allow me to start on the bookcase since it wouldn’t be fair to have the mess elsewhere in our small apartment before it is complete.

Other accomplishments include getting the oil changed in the car, backing up one of my machines for upgrade, and diving 40′ under water without the aid of SCUBA gear. That last part was during some down time on Friday when Tim and I went to visit The Crater in Midway. I like diving down and waving at the people in SCUBA lessons. The water is about 65 feet deep total. My goal is to make it all the way down one of these days. As it is, I had Tim a bit scared when I disappeared from view and didn’t come up for a moment.

So goals for this week include a temple trip, getting the mythbox back up and running in time for General Conference, having my desk expansion put together, homework and programming, and more progress on getting the room cleaned.

by Stephenie Meyer

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
As I stood in an estrogen-saturated line at Barnes and Noble, I wondered at the crowd this book draws. There were a very large number of teen-age girls squealing over the strangest things; a small set of disgruntled looking men on short leashes next to their wives/girlfriends; and a small handful of people, who like me, looked rather perplexed and ready to bolt, book or no book. I suppose it’s a part of Meyer’s talent that she can write for such a large audience.

A lot of people love Stephanie Meyer’s books, but claim that her writing style needs work. I disagree. As with all her novels I find it easy to pick up this book and not see a single word, just images in my head, like watching a movie. As far as I’m concerned that is one of the key ingredients to a good book. While she is a bit predictable, towards the end she really had me wondering how she would wrap it up.

The romance still gets to me, though unlike some authors, Meyer’s still happily keeps it around PG-13. I did have a little trouble towards the middle of the book, where the story transitions a bit. But overall, another nice piece of fun, easy reading from Meyers.

View all my reviews.

Aunt Marie had an interesting blog post recently. For the exact text, click here. The gist of it is that it’s a book list containing titles of 100 books. It generalizes a bit, for example, it lists Harry Potter and Shakespeare, no specific titles there. The point of the list was that apparently the average adult has only read 6 of the 100. Things like that bother me. The list reflects a fairly diverse taste, with an obvious preference for the classics. But it isn’t as though there are only 100 good works in the world. I’m not sure why “The Time Traveler’s Wife” made the list. It was a good story, but it was filthy-dirty! Not one I’d recommend to anyone looking for a wholesome reading experience. And it was missing a lot of titles that I would consider essentials, like Fahrenheit 451, Anne Frank, anything by George Orwell or Isaac Asimov. If we’re doing compendiums, then where is 1001 Arabian Nights, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, or Aesop’s Fables? Don’t forget the Illiad or the Odessy.

The list also does not take into account a person’s background. A lot of people read extensively, but they prefer Newspapers, Technical Manuals, or Children’s Books. Reading is supposed to be about having fun and improving yourself. Lists like that can be fun, they are a nice reminder of how much is still out there. It might be a good list for a book club. But a lot of those books, though epic or thought-provoking, are often very dry. Not that I’m trashing Moby Dick, but if you finish the whole book, you’ll not only have the story we all talk about, but a thorough background in whaling. Are you less of a person for reading the abridged version? Read because you enjoy it, not because some stuffy windbag thinks your less of a person for not having their idea of a well-rounded literary experience. I just don’t like the idea of something as wonderful as reading being used against people. Whatever happened to reading because you just want to enjoy a good book?

“Actually, my experience has been that people generally don’t recommend this kind of book at all. It is far too interesting. Perhaps you have had other kinds of books recommended to you. Perhaps, even, you have been given books by friends, parents, or teachers, then told that these books are the type you ‘have to read.’ Those books are invariably described as ‘important’ — which, in my experience, pretty much means that they’re boring. (Words like meaningful and thoughtful are other good clues.)” – Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson.

My iPod Classic (pre-video) kicked the bucket recently. I love walking to the grocery store and anywhere else I can, but I like doing it with music. I’ve been compensating for a few weeks by either taking my whole laptop (no control over volume or fast forwarding), or my old, decrepit, touchy, barely working Discman. Still, the loss of my iPod had me appreciating the Discman, which I’ve had since, I was 12 or 13. And I’ve been missing my Walkman, the one I’ve had since I was 8, and eventually gave away, still in perfect working condition, to a roommate. The iPod lasted almost five years. However, the iPod always had problems. It stopped working about two or three years ago for a while, until a friend advised smacking it soundly. That worked. But not this time. Ultimately this seems to be a problem with the hard drive. You could hear it clicking and choking every time it had trouble.

So I had decided I wanted another iPod, but have been dubious about two things. First being price, second being it’s ability to last a while, especially given price. Costco is a great place to get them, it’s about the only place you can get any sort of discount on the price. They have Nanos, Classic Video iPods, and the Touch. My inclination was towards the Classic again, but while 80GB sounds great, I highly doubt that those have flash hard drives. I just don’t like the Nanos, even though they are nice and cheap (relatively). The major problem I have with the iPod Touch is that it is one step short of an iPhone. I’d love an iPhone if I could get a reasonable plan with it. But that’s right out. So I settled on getting a 8GB Touch, with much trepidation.

I’ve had only a few hours of sleep since.

I LOVE it! I love it too much. I got home, plugged it into my computer and went and took my shower. After getting out I went to check on it before climbing into bed. It was already done charging and had my music synced. I was having trouble finding my cell phone (aka alarm clock). So I looked and figured out how to use the alarm clock on the Touch. Then I needed to adjust the Time Zone. And add Portland. Set up weather. See if Safari really worked. Connect to my wireless network. Set up email. Send a message on Facebook. And OK, we’ll put on some music and finally go to sleep. Nice music interface, play with that a bit. And hey, direct link to YouTube so we’ll just watch some Muppets and Doctor Who shorts. I didn’t get much sleep today. The one thing that really bothered me is that I only got the 8GB. And it was about 70% full with my currently uploaded music. That doesn’t leave much room for movies, more music, and apps. I took the 8GB Touch back and splurged for the higher capacity model with 32GB. This thing is way too cool. I’m officially converted. This is enough to possibly derail my ambitions for the Nokia Treo 1973.

And now, just a few tidbits of the best Youtube and the Muppets have to offer:

Meh

Ode to Joy

Stars and Stripes FOREVER

Classical Chicken

Habanera

Danny Boy

So I got into work tonight and noticed something right off. My login screen was different. Behind me, Brett called out a congratulations. The box was different, the prompt was different, and I was not happy. I tried to login but was denied. So I went to Brett and asked him what he’d done to my computer. At this he looked rather confused. I went back and rebooted the thing and sure enough, GRUB had nothing but Ubuntu. I was not happy at all, and getting vocal about it. About this time Craig poked his head around and also said, congratulations. I pointed out the splash screen and again noted that I was not happy. Arg! Slash screen, how useless is that?

About this time Tim came over to congratulate me. At this point I was finally cluing into the fact that they didn’t mean the computer. After all, Tim at least knows that I hate Ubuntu and love having root access on my Fedora box. Turns out I got a promotion at work, but seeing as how I couldn’t get to my email, I had no idea. So the sad thing is, I have increased in rank and yet, lost privileges. Apparently the Fedora box was acting up earlier today, and when my desk-mate complained to the admins, they brought in one of the test Ubuntu boxes. I not only lack root access, nothing works. Pidgin has a tendency to crash, I can’t customize my themes and desktop, and I even had trouble logging out. I had to open a terminal and run pkill to get rid of myself.

Still, I’m very happy about the promotion. It’s one step closer to doing what I really want to do, which is be an admin. And at long last I no longer need to go to an L2 to get a DNS change done.

I’ve never been much of a programmer, but I do decent enough writing and debugging PHP and Java, and I’ve recently fallen in love with Python. PHP has a huge fan base, so Googling for any problem usually has good results. Java has Java Doc, which makes it pretty darn easy to look up anything you need to do. Python was so easy to get started with that I wrote several of my Operating Systems assignments after only 4 chapters of reading, with 40 lines of code, versus my classmates who were averaging 250 lines of code.

And then there’s Ruby on Rails. I’ve been loath to try it. It seems over-hyped and largely used by people who can’t get their paths correct, much less properly use an MVC environment. But I’ve heard from several people how easy it was to use, and after trying out Cake PHP, I have been looking for a decent MVC environment. Initial assessment: Rails bites. Or is bytes? I’ve been messing with several online web tutorials. So far none of them are encouraging. I’ve seen several that help you create your first Hello World app, but don’t explain anything about it. My favorite, billed as the quickest possible way to get from install to Hello World:

alias rails_hello_world='rails hello && cd hello && ./script/generate controller welcome hello && echo "Hello World" > app/views/welcome/hello.html.erb && ./script/server -d && firefox 0.0.0.0:3000/welcome/hello'

And no explanation. Yeah, that’s useful. I’ve managed to get Rails running on my server, nice little Congrats screen and everything. Here’s the sad thing, when I look at Rails and the basic commands to get stuff set up, they make a lot of sense. But I’m really frustrated with the things that don’t make sense. For example, one aspect of the above code,

./script/generate controller welcome hello

When I initially ran a command along the lines of the above, I received a nice output that made a lot of sense considering the MVC framework. But I initally ran it with just one variable. And the tutorial I was going through at the time then provided a few lines of code and said, vioala, Hello World. Only that didn’t work. I’m pretty sure I need some view stuff first. So I went back to another tutorial which invoked multiple variables, like the above command, but with no explanation. I’m having a real hard time getting an idea of what is supposed to work, and why. Admittedly my frustration tolerance is a little low right now. And bad docs and tutorials does not make a bad language or environment. Sadest part is, I’m no good a documentation myself. So even if I do manage to get this all figured out, I don’t know that I’ll be able to do much better.

So anyone know of a good tutorial, preferably set in a Unix environment?

I have had aspirations to actually write more on this blog. I have a few lines of what was supposed to be a post on my trip to Hawaii, and I had planned on a nice, long stint about the Provo Freedom festival. But I have aspirations to do a lot of things that never seem to get done. I have a partialy built table-top aeroponics unit out in a lego bucket in the living room; my scorpions finally have proper dirt, but are still awaiting cool plants, etc. But this blogging thing, I’m not quite sure what to do about it. My orginal plan was to make it one part journal and one part rough-draft documentation for the many projects I aspire to complete.

The problem with using it as a journal is that I’m a very private person and there are things I don’t want the whole world to see. Really, there are things I just don’t want certain people to see. But keeping a journal is important to me. Last year President Eyring gave a talk on keeping a journal. Whenever prophets and general authorities give talks in conference I do try to apply what they are saying to my life, no matter what, but Elder Eyring’s talk was one of those that hits you in the heart and gives you that extra twinge of guilt/resolve. Guilt that you haven’t been doing whatever they are talking about, and resolve to do better. This is especially notable because it hit me at a point in conference when my attention span was waning a bit. As I said, this was last year, and a few entries in a blog that has not been properly backed up does not a journal make. Especially since I’m not even blogging about things that I don’t mind everyone seeing.

As for the projects, as usual, I’m just a slacker. I’m not sure how other people do it. It seems like my friends and co-workers have seen all the latest movies, faithfully watch more TV shows than I new existed, keep up with facebook and online gaming (they also know more games than I ever knew existed), run families, read books, and still manage to keep learning about all the complexities of the computer world. How are you doing that?! Me, I have trouble convincing my body not to sleep ten hours a day, eating regularly, keeping my room in the clean-if-cluttered category, watering my plants and feeding my critters. I usually get to work no more than five minutes late and barely manage to make my quotas. That’s about what it comes down to right now for me. I want to do so much more but I’m struggling with just the basics. Reading is just about gone right now in my life, except for the reading I do to prepare for my sunday lessons; I watch too much TV but it from the conversations around me, it at least seems like I watch almost nothing compared to some; I gave up most computer games years ago; I don’t think I facebook very much (feed the virtual dog, send plants, play a few brain games) and I don’t have nearly enough time for the people in my life or the projects I want to be doing.

I’m almost out of the blogging time I’ve alotted myself tonight, so in my next post I hope to list some of the things I am working on, and maybe set some reasonable timelines for working on them. Maybe, just maybe, I can start managing my aspirations so that I can complete a few.