the snowy weekend

On Friday, February 5, through most of Saturday, a nice big snow storm hit the eastern midwest and mid-Atlantic United States. And it was awesome. There is at least 32" on the ground with many areas having slight drifts/dips where it adds up to more. We're definitely snowed in. And for a county which never announces closings and delays early, having school already canceled for Monday is kind of huge.

From air-ctrl

Also, one day this week, I woke up and found a CD next to my head. I just wanted to say that it's the most amazing CD I've ever listened to. It's Called to Serve by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square.

And to add a bit more to the music excitement of this week, the new Angels and Airwaves CD entitled LOVE is coming out on Valentine's Day and I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be free. You can download one of the songs free already: Hallucinations.

Oh and I broke my headphones :(

From air-ctrl

bloody brilliant

I wanted to try my hand at a "real" blog post and also wanted to get out some stuff about this cool last weekend. I think I'll make it short and sweet though.

I'll start a week before last Saturday (the 16th). I began with an interview for a high school internship that would go on during most of the school day next year. I had good feelings about it and it would be extraordinary to get such an opportunity.

This was followed closely by an amazing meal at Wendy's (.. so the Baltimore-area Wendy's franchises have been selling these little key chains for $1 that get a free kids-sized Frosty once per visit - amazing) on the way to set up for the Eagle court of honor. After 8+ months of waiting after the completion of the work, I finally got the award, along with two other great guys. I think the part that made my day, though, was the number of people who were there. Not only were there "random" people there (random as in I didn't think they would care enough to come to a scouting function), my dad was also "coincidentally" able to be in town that weekend, and my old young men's president from before the move to Maryland (so one of the people who was actually there when I was doing the stuff) had also just moved to DC that week and I was able to give him the mentor pin.

That, followed by a fun dance and the Colts/Ravens game, was a pretty good Saturday I'd say.

I lived through midterms week. My chem AP final.. midterm.. whatever the crazy HCPSS wants to call it was definitely the hardest. In fact, it might have been the only one I was worried about. And I don't know why. Sure, it was hard. But the fact of the matter was, it was possible to get what I wanted with a C on the test (provided I did well this semester too), but I really only needed a B - which with the AP curve is something like a 52% ;-).

Right after school Friday (22 Jan 10), I ran off to the stake church building to leave for a camping trip in the mountains at New Germany, MD. There was lots of snow, food-fun (steakkkk), mountain climbing and sliding (it's so much more fun when the icy snow impedes your movement). Turns out, I actually really like being dressed up in serious winter gear. Hmm..

And then I'll just skip a bit up til today, Tuesday the 26th. The significant happenings of today include me giving blood for the first time. It was quite the experience. The feeling of being able to help others with something they really can't do for themselves (.. hopefully that reminds some readers about something else) is great. To all of you high schoolers (or otherwise healthy people) who are slightly hesitant, I'll be the first to agree with you. I don't like letting things happen to me that are slightly weird or not understood. But I can tell you the only side-effect I'm feeling is a slightly tired arm and a hungry stomach - I'm sure you know how to deal with that. Get out there and help someone.

Secondly, two good friends I met in the ward I moved into when I arrived in Maryland, Joey Y. and Sam N., were up wrestling each other today. I'll keep the description short: it was titanic.

I guess now it's time to do a little homework?

EDIT: Picasa web album to highlight the wonders

New Face?

I just decided I didn't think the other blog subject material was even worth reading for people who were interesting in the subject material and I'm trying to circle this sentence around to the phrase "subject material" one more time. Anyway, I think they'll be some more noteworthy things written that people who know me might actually read. By the way, I was able to keep... like 3 posts.

Anyway, feel free to check out the micro-blog (twitter). It's so much easier to update. But I wouldn't take it too seriously. I only say dumb things about random stuff (like this one that basically says, "I don't like Jack Black"). Occasionally, I also randomly say something to someone who likes the same thing as me. You know, follows the same artists and quoted something that made me wish I had quoted it.

EDIT: Yes, I also just arrogantly became the first follower of my own blog.

The Language of God

Excerpt from The Language of God by Francis S. Collins (leader of the Human Genome Project) -



"My Junior year in college, 1968, was full of deeply troubling events. ... [escalation of Soviet offense and Vietnam War, assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King] ... But at the very end of that year, another much more positive event occurred that electrified the world - the launch of Apollo 8. It was the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon. ... On Christmas Eve, the three astronauts broadcast a live television transmission from their capsule. After commenting on their experiences and on the starkness of the lunar landscape, they jointly read to the world the first ten verses of Genesis 1. As an agnostic on the way to becoming an atheist at the time, I still remember the surprising sense of awe that settled over me as those unforgettable words - "In the beginning, God created the havens and the earth" - reached my ears from 240,000 miles away, spoken by men who were scientists and engineers, but for whom these words had obvious powerful meaning.

"Shortly afterward, the famous American atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair filed suit against NASA for permitting this Christmas Eve reading of the Bible. ... Though the courts ultimately rejected her suit, NASA discouraged such references to faith in future flights. Thus, Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 arranged to take communion on the surface of the moon during the first human lunar landing in 1969, but that event was never publicly reported.

"A militant atheist taking legal action against a Bible reading by astronauts circling the moon on Christmas Eve: what a symbol of the escalating hostility between believers and nonbelievers in our modern world! No one objected in 1844 when Samuel Morse's first telegraph message was "What hath God wrought?" Yet increasingly in the twenty-first century, extremists on both sides of the science/faith divide are insisting that the other be silenced.

"Today, it is not secular activists like O'Hair who make up its vanguard - it is evolutionists. Among several vocal proponents, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett stand out as articulate academics who expend considerable energies to explain and extend Darwinism, proclaiming that an acceptance of evolution in biology requires an acceptance of atheism in theology. In a remarkable marketing ploy, they and their colleagues in the atheist community have also attempted to promote the term "bright" as an alternative to "atheist." (The implied corollary, that believers must be "dim," may be one good reason why the term has yet to catch on.)"

Watch inauguration live

Windows 7 review through pictures with comments

I don't want to put these pictures here and take the time to re-comment them all, so I'm just going to post the link to the Facebook picture album that is already commented.  Enjoy everyone.

Also, here's a list of keyboard shortcuts for Windows 7 and The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets.

Review of The Killers' 3rd studio album - sort of

The Killers are a unique band. They sure do put on the front that they enjoy being showy. But I think they really do enjoy what they do. What gives me the hint is this: with their debut album (Hot Fuss), not the sophomore album, 3rd album, or 7th for that matter, but the debut, The Killers had hit the right note. And they didn't keep making music that sounded the same! They could have made so much money making songs that sounded like Mr. Brightside over and over again, but they didn't, they expanded to see if they could master another field.

It was a good sound that allowed them to come out strong and to let everyone know who they are. That was what set them in the music business. Once in, the only aspirations I, personally, pull from them are these: they want to do as well as they can and they want to make great music. Brandon Flowers (lead singer, frontman) has said many times he wants to be remembered like U2 and other such faces. I don't believe he's in it for the money. He's in it for the name. He knows he can go somewhere. Secondly, they want to make great music, and that's where the explanations for the albums come from. Flowers has said that they write the songs for themselves first and just hope people will like them.

Sam's Town was a great album too, but no one liked it because it didn't have that amazingly popular sound that was in Hot Fuss. But the songs went from the attractive, popular Europop to the epic American west sound that is Sam's Town.

And now, with the third album, they've created a new magnificent sound. I agree with Brandon Flowers: Day & Age is like Sam's Town from space. I think it really communicates the nobility and the popular fun that Flowers wants to portray.

"Are we human, or are we dancer?"