"Inspiration unused is merely entertainment" - David Bach

Well summer is over and I've been back at school for almost a week now.
The second half of my summer wasn't as exciting as the first half. Here's some things I've done the last half of the summer:
- Hackintoshed my Dad's Dell Mini 10v with Mac OSX Leopard, and also my m1330 and little brother's m1340.
- Beta tested Windows 7RC (great improvement)
- Went fishing a lot with my father
- Took British Literature 2 at a local college nearby (Researched about George Orwell)
- Baby sat some kids for my mother
- Saw tons of anime and movies. Especially love One piece, Bleach, and Naruto.
- Played a lot of iPhone games.
- Worked out with my little brother
- Went to Missouri Marian Day 2009 (surprisingly there was less people this yr)
- Help direct and record a movie with my friend Josh and Murphy for a hobby.

That was pretty much the gist of the second half of my summer vacation. Majority is nerdy I know =D. But that was what happened. Anyhow i'm back at my dorm now and have gotten everything I need for the semester. I'm actually doing my own cooking this year because the campus cafeteria is a pain of a distance to go to every day.

I've read a book called "Automatic Millionaire" by David Bach that was given to me as a gift by Rice and UTMB from the SMDEP program and I must say, it is a packed full of useful information. So far I am only half way through the book and have already decided to plan for my financial future. Attending college has really put me in a financial pickle. Had to take out some Stafford subsidized and unsubsidized loans for it and it adds up over time. One of the useful things I've learned in the book was that its not how much money you make but how you manage it over time. The suggestion of opening an IRA has a major impact on one's future. A heads up for anyone whose interested in their retirement future. But I got to say that is a rather long time, don't you think? I'm thinking more of the present more than anything. But I have decided to start planning and not dig myself in too far of a hole in debt..

Anyhow class schedule is looking pretty good. Not as intensive as last semester and not as time consuming. Hopefully everything will go smoothly.

I leave with a slideshow of the past ten years of the week photos that I found on a friend's facebook: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32090322/ns/news-picture_stories/displaymode/1247/?beginSlide=1#

~ Hoping for the best.

Narrow mindedness only begets more narrow mindedness



So I reactivated my Facebook today.

I was on a month long hiatus with no connection to the social world besides AIM and my cell phone. Kind of feel like a hypocrite for saying I won't until after I accomplish some tasks. But I realized that I compensate the time spent on Facebook doing something else online..like youtube...manga...aim...sleep...watching family guy, Naruto Shippuden, One Piece, Britain got talent, knight rider (just started seeing this one), sleep, etc. So the experiment was a fail =D.

Social networks somehow loses those personal touch with people that you can only get if your talking directly to them or on the cell. This and the fact that I got tons of invitations and emails about random things from dozens of people irritated me. On top of that, the semester was also crazy so I felt that it was in my best interest to get away from it all and deactivated it for the time being. But I realized now that I was only limiting myself to information that could only be gained from the social world. Friendship as well as the connection to keep these bonds are important. They keep us going and look out for our best interest...and sometimes not at all =].

But you know whats really annoying? It is when people are calling you constantly and when you finally pick up, they don't have anything to say. (-_-). I have this friend who keeps calling me out of the blue. I mean I don't have a problem with being a good friend and all, but I don't have any interest in her and have already made that clear. Now she's even bothering some of my other friends by calling them. What would you do?



I also went to the mall today to buy some new clothes for my trip to Houston and spent the day with my dad and younger brother. It's been awhile since I spent any time with my dad but today was great. First, we went to Chili's because I recently won a $50 gift card online, and justs dined it out. After that, we headed over to the mall, bought some clothes and whatnot. The movie "Angels&Demons" was out and we wanted to see it. My dad, being Catholic, and hearing rumors about how "blasphemy" Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" was, at first didn't want to see Dan Brown's other work. But eventually, his curiosity got the better of him. I already knew what the movie was going to be about since I read the book back in high school, though I didn't understand a single clue about the physics in the book back then. Now, after the launch of the Large Hadron Collider the past year and after taking Physics in college, it all makes sense! lol. So anyhow, the movie was spectacular! The director did a great job making this film. It displayed such intense drama, thought provoking, mystery and suspense, and very accurate science and religious topics. Central theme was about the creation of the universe: God vs. the Big Bang, Elohim vs. Antimatter, Yahweh vs. the Higgs Boson "God Particle", and so on and so on. Though the movie itself is about how they should not be purely one sided, but rather both a collaboration to help and refute one another.

The movie left out a very important theme that was in the book, so it was a bit dissapointing when it didn't come up. *Spoiler warning*. In the book version, the Pope fell deeply in love with a local nun. But because of the restrictive laws of the church, they could not express their love for one another. They turned to science instead and used artificial insemination to fertilize an embryo in order to conceive a child in order to express that love. That child grew up to be the Camerlengo, the "adopted son" of the pope. Torn by the matters of science and religion, he sided with religion and sought to destroy science's theory of the big bang. To do this, he made it look like he was a savior in order to gain reign as the next pope. It was not until it was revealed that he, himself, was the product of science and that the original pope ("foster" father) was his real father, that drove the Camerlengo to his own demise. The movie version, however, failed to comment on any of these and seemed kind of fast paced. It tried to cram in all the action and mystery that it missed out on what the theme was about.

Anyhow, my father really enjoyed the movie to his surprise.This world is filled with propaganda about what one should think or act...or look like. So in essence, by limiting ourselves to certain things, we miss out on possibly what could be a worthwhile experience.

~ My thought provoker for the day. Till next time.

Who I want to be is not who I am. But what I am, is who I will be.

The past cannot be changed. Moving forward is the only way to improve. And to improve, I have to make mistakes. If there are no mistakes, and perfection is achievable, then there is no improvement nor is there a will to go any further.

This world is not perfect. It has flaws left and right. We are not made to be perfect nor are we made to believe that perfection can ever be achieved. This is a good thing and a bad thing. With so much imperfections in the world such as poverty, widespread diseases, undeserved populations, corruption in politics, or oppression felt in other third world countries, it is hard to justify any means of perfection.

No one is perfect, a rather cliche phrase, but not necessarily always the case. To me perfection is merely an idea or a state of mind to further one's own ambition and goals in life. Believing that perfection can be achieved or one day be accomplished, given a specific field or area of interest, that idealism will one day become reality. Imagine if Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, had never invented the Macintosh - the first commerical and modern PC. Then would Windows have ever been so popular without them? Would we have computers and technology like what we do today? Maybe not. I can't imagine texting someone using morse code and smoke signals. The neighbors will probably yell at me for burning down their tree just to say hi. I can only imagine the possibilities of the things we live with today and the things we take for granted.

I had a 4.0 for my first semester entering in college at Baylor U. Of course it didn't last past the first year. Now im saddened at how much I have fallen from it, due primarily to the lack of commitment because of time limitations and other activities. Yesterday I just took my last and final exam for the semester, Organic Chemistry. Spent most of the night cramming in the excess material and gap in my knowledge because I wasted the whole day Saturday agonizing and stressing about the semester. In an effort to challenge myself and improve and as well as save time, I took more classes than I could handle and underestimated the time restraints, and because of this ended up not having enough time to study as in depth as I wanted to. There were a lot of test conflict dates for me throughout the whole semester. My worst week was not final but half way through the semester, when I was smacked with 6 exams from 5 classes, three of which were three core sciences covering over 14 chapters, and a language class, Spanish, which I severely underestimated here. For the most part, I wish I hadn't taken Spanish, but it was a requirement and I was forced to. I can honestly say I put more effort and had more work for Spanish this semester than all three of my core sciences combined. This all proved to be impossible to maintain and resulted in a hell of a semester.

Looking at the bigger picture, what did I really get from all of it? How can I possibly use any of this information and apply it to real life situations? Is all this education really necessary, seriously? The text book is completely different than real actual experience. As many, I am a learner by doer and a doer by learning. I can not hope to understand what it is or what something is about simply by memorizing minute facts. It has to be a compelling interest and consistent practice for me to fully understand something. 

I remember disassembling my first computer, laptop, and iPhone. I Followed documents and manuals that were found online. About half of the time I got it down, but the other half I ended up causing another problem instead of fixing the primary one I set out to resolve. For example, I broke my iPhone LED screen trying to replace a new battery and to clean it out. Another example was when my laptop malfunctioned and I tried to disassemble it, only to cause another problem. I eventually learned to fix everything that I had broken, and in the process know how it functions.

God has instilled in me with an OCD-like personality and a super ego, which just means that if I can't find the answer to something or if the answer wasn't what I wanted, I simply can't move on but am stuck there infinitely in the past and unable to move forward. This is bad when I want an answer, but was always afraid to search or ask for them out of fear of its outcome. Whether a situation could have resulted in a different outcome or whether that outcome could have benefited for the better I will never know.

In essence, I will never know this path I have chosen to take unless I follow it all the way through to the very end, make and learn from past mistakes, and see where it will take me.

P.S. I will morse you later.

~ T