by the seat of my pants

Tuesday night I had a few errands to run on my way to Homer's. The first place I stopped was the post office. When I got back into the car I noticed a strange sound. I felt the car seat thinking that maybe I sat in something. Nothing.

I stopped by the gas station and contemplated on how cold it was. The weather seemed to cut right through me.

I went to Home Depot and returned some materials that did not fit in our bathroom. I also headed to the plumbing section to pick up the last couple of things necessary to get our sink into working order.

As I bent down to look for a specific part that I need I noticed the same noise I heard in the car. This time it was more distinct so there was no doubt what it was. I had torn the seat of my pants. Later, I would confirm a seven inch tear along my rear left pocket.

I wonder what the people who saw me before I realized what had happened thought. Did the guy filling his mini-van at the gas station get a laugh out of me shivering with a tear in my pants? Did the people in the aisle at Home Depot with me hear the tear? Did I look suspicious because of how quickly I left the store? So many questions, so few answers.

gag me

This is just a note that I will be discussing an issue with my digestive system in this post. If that makes you queasy, there is no shame in skipping this one.

Very early in the morning on Tuesday I had some stomach problems that kept me up for most of the night. I don't want to overstate it, but I had a relatively severe stomach ache. This used to happen to me frequently, but the last time it happened was over two years ago.

Under normal circumstances this probably wouldn't be too noteworthy. However, yesterday at work I mentioned that to relieve the pressure on my stomach I gagged myself a few times. I truly believe that shortened the length of time I had to deal with the pain and the severity of the pain because some stuff that would have had to go all the way through my digestive system didn't.

One emphatic reaction that I got was that, given the choice between bearing the pain and gagging one's self, it is better to just bear the pain. My position is that if I am in severe pain, losing sleep, and all of the other alternatives that I can conceptualize do not work, that forcing myself to vomit is an acceptable step.

This is not a big deal, but it does surprise me that someone would prefer to bear the pain rather than take an uncomfortable step that could relieve the pain. I started to wonder if I am in the majority or minority. The question I have is, if you are in the same position where you have limited alternatives and you are in pain and losing sleep, is gagging yourself still off limits?

the bathroom

Ever since we got our house I have wanted to do something about our bathroom. I was specifically irritated by the medicine cabinet, the light fixture, and the sink. The medicine cabinet did not really fit in the bathroom, and had not been mounted to the wall properly. Over the last couple of years, two of the three lights in fixture had failed. Finally, the faucet in the sink was next to impossible to keep clean. Golden probably has her own list of what she did not like.

So, Golden and I planned a bathroom renovation. Golden went for a brown and red theme (I think). We started the project on the twelfth of this month and it is still not officially complete, because the sink is not yet operational. For people who have multiple bathrooms in their house this may not be as big a deal, but this is in our only full bathroom in the house so we are still in a hurry. The appearance of the room is very close to what the end product will be, though, so I am ready to show some pictures.

Also, if you don't really care to get a play-by-play, just look at the pictures and skip the text.

First, here a few "before" shots.

On the first day, we removed the medicine cabinet and found wallpaper behind it. Based on what we pealed away from the wall behind the medicine cabinet, it looks like the room has been wallpapered twice and painted three times.

By the end of the first weekend I had painted the top half of the room, replaced the medicine cabinet with a mirror, and replaced the light fixture. This all sounds like simple stuff, but I was amazed at how much time they consumed.

The second weekend started with me tearing out the sink. Once the sink was removed, we learned that a lot of water that goes down the drain in the kitchen sink finds its way to the drain for the bathroom sink. Until the P trap is installed on the bathroom sink, we have to keep a bucket under the drainage pipe.

Another thing that we noticed is that there have been leaks in this bathroom before. I had to take some diluted bleach to the mildew that I found. Also, I had to be very careful not to do any more damage to the subfloor than was already done.

After the sink and toilet were removed, I spent a over a day removing three layers of vinyl floor and the top layer of the plywood subfloor. I did not get a picture of the completely cleared floor. I will say that this was my figurative, as well as physical, low point during the project. One day of doing almost nothing besides scraping a floor and making no significant progress is actually quite depressing. It felt good to have that part of the job behind me. The picture below is the backer board I put down over the sub floor.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day I completed the painting job, applied a sealant to the backer board, and installed the tiles. It was nearly four in the morning before I finished.

I grouted two days later.

This weekend, I reinstalled the toilet, installed trim, and started work on the sink. Here is how the bathroom looks now.


In the end I lost track of how much we spent, but I do know that I was at Home Depot at least twelve times over the last two weeks. Home Depot is the real winner in this entire project.

a nice repose

I do not have too much to say this weekend, so this will be short and light.

As Golden mentioned on her blog, we have been working on the bathroom for the last two weeks. I should get the major stuff done today, meaning I expect to have the toilet and sink reinstalled by the time I go to bed. If this works, I am hoping that my next post will be a walkthrough of the transition that has been our bathroom.

Aside from the obvious fact that we have been without the service of a toilet and sink in our only full bathroom for the last two weeks, two other things have made this project feel like it has been going on forever. The first is that the cold spell that was snapped yesterday started roughly when we started the project. The second is that colds that everyone in our family has had and that we are just now completely getting over started roughly when we started the project. It is not just the end of the renovation that I am excited about.

Hopefully, the next time you see a post life will be a little more stable.

moment of truth

I watched The Moment of Truth last night. This is probably something I am supposed to be embarrassed about because there are probably some bad reasons to want to watch the show. I think my reasoning is good, though.

For those who have not seen the barrage of commercials for the show, it is a game show where people have to answer questions under a polygraph exam to win money. Some of the questions were relatively benign ("Do you belong to Hair Club for Men?") and some were downright sinister ("Have you delayed having kids because you are not sure you are going to spend the rest of your life with your wife?").

I am intrigued by the show because I am always wondering what people are thinking. The idea that someone has to be completely forthright about himself or herself in a way that is not normally considered socially acceptable is very appealing. I like being around people who do not feel they have to put on an act largely because I do not like dishonesty, and this same part of me is what wants to watch the show.

The obvious drawbacks of the show are that it has the potential to destroy relationships and livelihoods, and it has the potential to make pariahs out of the contestants. Also, some of the questions are vague or broad enough to not have a definite yes or no answer, even if at first glance they appear to be simple yes or no questions. Finally, this is not a show for kids, but no one should have needed me to mention that.

One thing that the show reaffirms to me is my belief that everyone has something about them that is not acceptable by society's standards. Everyone has some opinion that would offend most other people, or some habit that would disgust most other people, or something else in their being that most other people would find detestable. While everyone has these things, a lot of people express a sort of righteous indignation when the areas where other people don't fit into society's norms are revealed.

I am always amazed at the shock people have when a public figure is disgraced. People are human and will make mistakes. Some are big. Some are small. Some mistakes are indicative of bigger problems. Some are just proof of that person's humanity. While this is certainly not meant to be an excuse for bad behavior, it is a reason to think twice before passing judgment on the fallen.

For what it is worth, I really liked the last guy on the show. He seemed like the type of person who would tell the truth even if he wasn't being tested for it. Of course, he had made a lot of serious mistakes in his life that were only starting to become clear by the end of the show. Everyone makes mistakes, though.

the silver-haired screen

A few days ago one of my coworkers was talking about how he has watched a lot of older movies and he recently learned how few people have actually watched many old movies. He noted that he has seen thousands of black and white movies, which was met with a little skepticism.

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while should know that I am very willing to watch an older movie that looks promising. I do not seek out movies because they are older, though, and some things about older movies can annoy me, such as pacing. I have found some very good movies from the years before I was born. I have found some lousy films as well. What I am looking for in a movie can be found in both old and new movies, so there is no reason for me to focus only on movies made recently or only on movies made years ago.

I think that many movies get ignored by the typical American in part because they are in black and white or because none of the actors are current A-list stars. While these are not the only reasons that a lot of people do not watch older movies, they are the first things that come to my mind. Like with most decisions that people make, I am sure some of the reasons people have are valid while others are not.

I have a few simple questions for today. Do you watch old movies? Do you prefer more recent movies when given the choice? Why?

nothing but the truth

I have been told in the past that I am very calculated in my responses. I prefer the word, "thoughtful," but I will not disagree. At least part of the reason for this was illustrated to me yesterday.

I was talking to someone in the hallway at church yesterday morning when the service started. About five minutes into the song service I told the person I with whom I was speaking that I needed to get to the service since I was supposed to usher that morning.

Later, I found that someone had miscounted the ushers so there were too many of us. As a result of this I did not usher. This is great except that I am concerned the person I told that I was going to take offering thinks I fibbed to break off the conversation.

There are a lot of reasons why I usually pause to think before I talk, and that I choose my words carefully. One of the big reasons, though, is that I do not like the idea of passing on bad information or other people thinking that I lied. I figure that I am always one mischosen word away from saying something wrong. That's no lie.

a pen for my thoughts

Over the last couple of weeks I have needed to grab a pen around the house to write something down several times. In our house this is a bad thing because the working to non-working pen ratio is not very good.

I can be guaranteed that if I am looking for a pen I will find about eight pencils, three markers, and three or four pens that turn out to have no ink. This last part is my fault because rather than throw away the inkless pens, I put them back where I found them. It is still irritating because I get my hopes up that I have finally found the implement that I need.

The reason that I do not throw out dead pens is that I am not always convinced that the pen is completely dead. For some reason I rationalize that it is worth keeping the pen around in case there is still some residual ink left in the pen. Plus fifty-cent pens are hard to replace.

I think that in the near future one of the things I want to do around the house is round up all of the pens, test them, then replace the ones that are all used up. Of course, that would take effort, and I am sure I will rationalize that this plan requires a lot of work to simply make sure I always have a pen handy.

it begins again

"You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library."- Will Hunting (Good Will Hunting)

Today is my first day of classes for the semester. This is also the first time I will have a class that lasts an entire semester in my graduate program. Since I am used to taking seven- and eight-week classes, I am not sure how a four-month class is going to work.

I do not know exactly what to expect from the class I start today, but I do not anticipate that it will be one of my more challenging classes. The class is entitled Systems Analysis, and I took a very similar class in my undergrad program. I think it will just be annoying in that the class will feel like it never ends.

The other class I am taking the beginning of this semester is Investment Theory. It doesn't convene until the twenty-eighth because the twenty-first is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This is a mixed blessing, because the class is supposed to be very involved, and I will have one less week to complete all of the assigned material.

Since I have been going at this for two years and I have at least two more years to go, I have had plenty of opportunity to consider the true value of a degree. While I do believe that the work and learning involved in getting an undergraduate and a graduate degree is valuable, I am starting to seriously question the importance that American culture gives a college education.

Since I have gotten my undergraduate degree, most of the people with whom I have worked have also been college educated. None of the jobs I have had really required a degree, and neither of the two coworkers that I have had in the last few years that I consider the best suited for their jobs have a college degree.

Slowly and surely nearly every career choice available is requiring people to be over-educated. I think this is largely a bad thing because the resources a person has to devote to education could probably be more efficiently utilized to better learn the job at hand. From a practical perspective, apprenticeships are probably more valuable than degrees ninety-eight percent of the time.

From what I can tell, in most jobs the majority of the skills that are required are not taught in the classroom. Abraham Lincoln did not need a degree to practice law. Qualifying to take the CPA test in most states now requires much more focused education than was previously required, though I would not question the auditing ability of someone who passed the test years ago. It was not that long ago that almost everyone who had a technical job did not have a technical degree.

Most people know someone who has a degree and does not appear to have the requisite intelligence. So, does a degree prove much more than that a person knows how to take a test and write a paper? People with degrees are probably more intelligent on average, but how much of that is simply smarter-than-average people self-selecting college?

Regardless, I still have to go to class tonight and every Thursday for the next four months.

slash

I like communicating through text, but one serious weakness that frustrates me is that there is no punctuation to express moderate excitement or surprise. I will often send an email or instant message to someone with a comment that I want to be expressed with some excitement, but not the level that an exclamation mark provides.

As an example of what I am talking about, take a look at the two following sentences.

1. "That joke you sent to me is funny."
2. "That joke you sent to me is funny!"

And yet another example.

1. "Your newborn child is cute."
2. "Your newborn child is cute!"

The first option in both scenarios could be read as obligatory comments, almost said in passing. The period makes me imagine an emotionless voice is matter-of-factly rattling off the comment.

The exclamation marks make it seem like the person who wrote the comments is piling it on. It is almost like when an adult takes a fake excited tone with a child, so I sometimes see exclamation mark overuse as patronizing.

So, what is a person to do if none of the choices for punctuation seem acceptable? Create a new form of punctuation. I propose that new sentence ending punctuation is adopted that expresses excitement, but not to the level of an exclamation mark. This could be done using punctuation that is already available, like the backslash.

If the backslash is adopted for this purpose, I will no longer have to choose between the apathetic period and the patronizing exclamation mark. I don't know about you, but that makes me moderately excited\

honk

On the way home from church yesterday I was behind someone who did not notice that the light at the intersection was green. I waited about five seconds then honked. As we moved forward Golden commented in a surprised tone, "You honked!"

In these ten years since Golden and I started dating I have probably intentionally honked the horn in my car a total of three or four times. Until yesterday I had never honked the horn with Golden in the car. Not ever.

There are a few reasons that I don't use my horn much. One big reason is that my impulse reactions to a dangerous or annoying situation do not include horn honking. Had I honked the horn a lot more when I started driving I may have become more comfortable using the horn now than I currently am.

Another reason that I do not use the horn is that, since most car horns sound very harsh, I feel like I should only use the horn when the situation is serious. Most of the situations that I am in when driving never seem important enough to use the horn. I might be frustrated that another driver cut me off or is driving too slow, but something in the back of my head tells me that it is petty to sound the horn for something so minor.

So if we meet on the road and you cut me off, there is a good chance that I will get frustrated. You will not hear a peep from my car, though.

second winded

When I was in college I did not get much sleep. Even so, I still made a habit of watching movies on Friday night until deep into the night. I would go out with Golden and do whatever we were set to do for the night, then I would watch two or three movies until four in the morning. Sometimes I would stay up even later.

The trick for me was that even if I felt tired early in the night, I would always get a second wind that I could use to get through the night. That is also how I pulled all-nighters when I needed to for school. There was generally a good chunk of time in the early morning where I was not horribly tired.

I have noticed that over the last few years my ability to go without sleep has diminished. I still like to stay up on Friday nights watching movies, but now it is not uncommon for me to fall asleep in the middle of my first movie for the night. It is more difficult for me to get to my second wind, and when I do I am more tired than I used to be.

As when I was in school, Friday night movies are what I look forward to every week. Falling asleep in the middle of one kind of feels like an injustice. All I can say is I should probably increase my caffeine intake.

all set

Every time someone sets me up with a ready-made joke or even a catch phrase, I have a difficult time with resisting completing it. When I do resist it feels like I missed a significant opportunity.

Most everyone who knows me well understands this, but what most people do not know is that I crack these comments silently when I am the only audience as well. For example, I have a "Personal" folder in my inbox at work. Almost every time I move an email into this folder I tell myself, "This time it's personal." It's not funny even to me any more, but I still go through the process.

So, for those people who complain when I try to complete every setup, which is nearly everyone I know, just remember that I give myself the same treatment everyone else gets. Also, in a way, I am giving everyone the opportunity to tell me that what I just said was funny the first four hundred times they heard it. I wonder why most people resist that obvious setup.

it's all a blur

I have been noticing something recently that I do not remember seeing before. There are a lot more blurry areas on the television now than there have been in the past.

As far back as I can remember if something on TV was blurred it was either due to modesty issues (certain parts of an exposed anatomy would be blurred out) or due to identification issues (some people's faces, license plate numbers, etc. would be blurred out). Lately just about anything that has a company logo gets blurred out.

Specifically, when I watch a show that displays people in everyday life any company logos on shirts, hats, pop cans, and other products are frequently blurred. I have to ask why. There are not any good reasons that I can imagine, but there are a few mediocre ones I have considered.

Is there some exclusive product promotion agreement that makes the producers of the show want to blur out the word "Pepsi" to keep marketers from Coke from getting mad? Is there some concern about Calvin Klein suing if someone who does not embody that brand image is shown wearing a Calvin Klein logo on a shirt? Do the video editors just get a kick out of blurring whatever they can get away with blurring? Whatever it is, I guess I will have to get my fix of ogling Pepsi cans elsewhere.

essentials of philosophy

I decided maybe a year or two ago that I should learn at least the basics of philosophy if I truly have an interest of learning truth. If I really want to seek truth I need to understand how other people believe they came to truth, even if I do not ultimately agree with their methods or conclusions.

Because of this I got the aforementioned philosophy joke book and I asked for philosophy books for birthday and Christmas gifts. My sister then got me the book Essentials of Philosophy: The Basic Concepts of the World's Greatest Thinkers by James Mannion, which is published through Barnes & Noble.

Overall, I like the structure of the book. The chapters are essentially collections of descriptions of the perspectives of philosophers who fit into a specific category. So, for example, there is a chapter on Existentialism that is broken into five parts, each describing the perspectives of a different existential philosopher. The reason I like this is that it allows me to get a summarized view of what each person believed and why, so I can know who I want to investigate further.

The book also has its weaknesses, however. Probably the most significant weakness is that the author has a very hard time hiding his opinions. He takes every opportunity to bash the Catholic Church. He is also willing to make excuses for philosophers and philosophies that he likes, such as why it was not Nietzsche's fault the Nazis liked him so much. Normally I don't care about editorializing, but I read this as more of a text book, so I expected the author to be more objective.

Mannion actually takes the editorializing to the level of saying that the three major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) should just learn to get along since they worship the same God anyway. To an outsider, whether the different religions serve the same God is more a question of semantics, but he should still know better than to make his assertion in this particular book.

I did notice that some philosophical ideas were skipped that I figured would be covered. Among these were Schrödinger's cat and Pascal's wager. I do not expect every philosophical idea to be covered in a philosophy overview such as this, but I consider the two above concepts important enough to Philosophy that they should have been included in the book. There is probably something else that should have been included that I simply do not know about.

Finally, there are some minor typographical issues that I found some people online complain about, but most of those do not impact the accuracy of the information that I care about. These are only noteworthy if this will annoy a particular reader.

Now, for the real purpose of the post. As I was reading the book I started thinking that it would be a good idea to do a series of posts on different philosophical perspectives and how they mesh with how I believe. The book provides a great structure to design a series, so much of the design work would be done. Also, it would be interesting to see which philosophies agree with or contradict my interpretation of the Bible. I would probably cover thirty to forty different perspectives, so this would not be a short series.

There are a few reasons why I think this would be a good idea and a few why I think it would be a bad idea.

The Good:

1. Some readers will enjoy it.
2. I believe that it is good to seek truth.
3. The series would not be too pervasive because I would only post something on the series once every couple of weeks.
4. This gives me a ready-made topic to post on.

The Bad:

1. Some readers will be bored by it.
2. I will probably have to oversimplify the philosophies that I discuss to keep the posts manageable.
3. I am not an expert.
4. This will take effort on my part.

What do you think? Would you enjoy or be bored by this type of discussion? Is it something that will be worth the time and effort?

holiday recap

It feels like forever since I last posted something. A part of me wants to believe that someone else besides me has felt some withdrawal from my lack of posts over the last two weeks.

I will restart my normal posting schedule on Monday. Until then, here is a recap of the last two weeks.

• Golden and I visited her family and my family for Christmas. As I noted, NJ did well in the car. He got very fussy and stayed that way when we entered Missouri near St. Louis, though, so it did not end as well as it started.
• I did do well in Christmas presents, but I am always leery to go into too much detail about presents because I will probably not evenly express appreciation for my gifts.
• NJ got a lot of gifts, so now we are starting to run out of places to put his toys.
• We celebrated the new year with my parents, which was kind of funny because neither of them stayed up until midnight. Golden made it with the assistance of a short nap beforehand.
• I shipped my laptop in to get it fixed at the end of the trip, so that is the real withdrawal I am experiencing right now. I have rediscovered books and magazines in the last week.
• Maybe the thing that I am most happy about is that we missed a lot of the bad weather that Kansas City got while we were gone. Seeing news reports of the Kansas City airport from Pittsburgh made me happy I wasn't in the area.
• We visited Dash and T on the way through Indiana. It was nice getting to see them and to get the grand tour of their house. I also always like the opportunity to play board and card games.
• I will be trying to fit a small renovation project into the schedule before classes start again. This could get interesting, since it is not my forte.

To reiterate, remember to start checking the site again beginning on Monday, as I will be getting back to the old schedule.