A Lot of Catching Up to Do...
Let's see... what's new? I'm really not sure, to be honest. Helen and I are still impatiently engaged, and we've reserved the churches for the 19th of May 2007. Oh, it's now going to be a double wedding. Theresa's squeeze finally proposed and they're going to have to be married about the same time as we are. We didn't want to overshadow their wedding or make the relatives choose between one and the other so we're putting them together. I think it's going to be fun. The planning is going to be really interesting, but having two couples will take the focus off of the couples and put it on the institution of marriage and thus on God, where the focus should be anyway. On top of that, two weddings will be even more happy than one.
I finally (finally) bought the processor that I want to put in the computer that I'm building. For the geeks out there, I'm getting the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+, for the rest of you, just drool excessively. Yes, $600 is a lot to spend on one small part of a computer, but when you take into account that it is the fastest PC processor that AMD makes, and that I spent $50 less than I would have anywhere else and $250 less than retail value, it looks a little more attractive. This would be like spending $30,000 on a $45,000 Jaguar, or spending $75,000 on a $100,000 home. Yeah, I'm excited. Now I just have to spend another $300 or so on all the rest of the parts and I'll have the fastest computer that anyone in my immediate family has ever owned.... but that's not saying much.
I have also finally been accepted to Duquesne (du-KAIN) University in Pittsburgh. I will start online classes as a full-time student on the 24th. I was able to get 27 hours of lower-level (Associate Degree level) credit because of my military training and they gave me an additional 3 credit hours for the Calculus AB AP test that I took in high school. My official degree will be in "Leadership and Professional Advancement" with double majors in Computer Science and Business Administration. I will also be able to graduate in two and a half years (possibly less) with a Bachelor's Degree so that I can use my MGI Bill money to pay for my Master's Degree at the VisLab at TAMU. I'm really excited to get started with classes because my job is incredibly boring and mostly unfulfilling. I am also looking forward to being able to relate to Helen's situation better. She is really having tough time right now taking 16 hours so that she can graduate a year early. It's very stressful for her. I'm also hoping that taking classes will lend a little more to my credibility in the areas of stress and academics. Boot Camp is very vague for civilians and they can't fully appreciate the difficulty of it because they don't know what happens on a daily basis. College will help others evaluate my competence/maturity/stress management abilities a little more easily.
A couple of my friends became frustrated with the forum that we had been posting in and created one of their own in which Christians can come together for education and encouragement. They call it Ludus because that is the name of an arena in which ancient Roman Gladiators would train for battle, and we are Christians in a battle "not against flesh and blood" and we need to "be prepared to give a defense." It's been really great for me to be reminded that there are other Christians out there and that there still are things to learn about and doctrine that I don't understand, but also that there are things that I can be teaching others. I have been "drinking milk" for far too long and it's been good to eat "real food" for the past year or so.
More later...
I finally (finally) bought the processor that I want to put in the computer that I'm building. For the geeks out there, I'm getting the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+, for the rest of you, just drool excessively. Yes, $600 is a lot to spend on one small part of a computer, but when you take into account that it is the fastest PC processor that AMD makes, and that I spent $50 less than I would have anywhere else and $250 less than retail value, it looks a little more attractive. This would be like spending $30,000 on a $45,000 Jaguar, or spending $75,000 on a $100,000 home. Yeah, I'm excited. Now I just have to spend another $300 or so on all the rest of the parts and I'll have the fastest computer that anyone in my immediate family has ever owned.... but that's not saying much.
I have also finally been accepted to Duquesne (du-KAIN) University in Pittsburgh. I will start online classes as a full-time student on the 24th. I was able to get 27 hours of lower-level (Associate Degree level) credit because of my military training and they gave me an additional 3 credit hours for the Calculus AB AP test that I took in high school. My official degree will be in "Leadership and Professional Advancement" with double majors in Computer Science and Business Administration. I will also be able to graduate in two and a half years (possibly less) with a Bachelor's Degree so that I can use my MGI Bill money to pay for my Master's Degree at the VisLab at TAMU. I'm really excited to get started with classes because my job is incredibly boring and mostly unfulfilling. I am also looking forward to being able to relate to Helen's situation better. She is really having tough time right now taking 16 hours so that she can graduate a year early. It's very stressful for her. I'm also hoping that taking classes will lend a little more to my credibility in the areas of stress and academics. Boot Camp is very vague for civilians and they can't fully appreciate the difficulty of it because they don't know what happens on a daily basis. College will help others evaluate my competence/maturity/stress management abilities a little more easily.
A couple of my friends became frustrated with the forum that we had been posting in and created one of their own in which Christians can come together for education and encouragement. They call it Ludus because that is the name of an arena in which ancient Roman Gladiators would train for battle, and we are Christians in a battle "not against flesh and blood" and we need to "be prepared to give a defense." It's been really great for me to be reminded that there are other Christians out there and that there still are things to learn about and doctrine that I don't understand, but also that there are things that I can be teaching others. I have been "drinking milk" for far too long and it's been good to eat "real food" for the past year or so.
More later...
posted by Matt at 09:34
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