one of many in the wild, wild net.

Cajun Crawler swaps Segway wheels for Theo Jansen’s creepy leg mechanism.  Found this via blography, it’s a segway with cool steampunk legs instead of the wheels it normally has.

So, I’m looking at my facebook, and realize that all the things that I have swirling around in my brain won’t fit neatly in a one-line sentence about me, written in the third person.  I think I’m starving, and I’m finally figuring out what I need to sate that hunger.  The mental tape-recorder clicked on starting on Sunday, when I finally went to church on my own accord for the first time in years.  Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you… whether or not I like it, I feel like I need to be right with the Lord before I can start fixing my own problems.  It’s an unbearable silence that consumes my senses when I don’t go to church, something I never really cared to note before, but when I go and pray for His forgiveness, I at least feel better somehow.  I had awoken spiritually when I first entered into the military… they say nobody turns more people to the Lord than a TI in basic training.  Well, I needed His help to get through those times, and when times were good after I got out of BMT I kept praying, eventually confirming into the Catholic Church. I think by keeping right with the Lord, I kept myself free from stupid worries, like how people feel about me, whether or not I pissed some people off that day, or whatever–I can focus on important things.  I was once told by my CCD teacher at Keesler (Hi John) that I shouldn’t try to share my burden with God, that I shouldn’t try to “do my part” because I want to take care of myself, but rather just give all my worries over to God.  I’m proud, and I have a big ego, so for the longest time I thought, “you know what, God takes care of so much, and so many people abandon themselves to the Lord, I want to at least try to take care of myself under the watch of God.”  I rationalized that I didn’t have to go to church if I prayed by taking action–sort of a “don’t talk about it, be about it”, but I think I misunderstood.  I eventually stopped praying altogether, and just regressed to my pre-military habits.  I think when I stopped talking to God, I stopped seeing God, and I saw myself as the sole shareholder of my life, even though I thought I was praying by acting.

Anyway, all that has begun to change.  I don’t want to say I abandoned myself to the Lord, but rather I’m putting my trust in God, and I’m making that effort to go to church.  I think the reason I feel like so much has happened in the last 3 days is because I must be undergoing some kind of large spiritual shift.  So I’m not abandoning myself to the Lord, but I am giving Him the reins.  I’ll do my best to be my best, but beyond that I can’t control what gets thrown at me, so I won’t worry about it.  I won’t worry what people think about me, because I can’t please everyone all the time, so I’m just doing what I need to do.  Making that effort to go to church, though… I realize that I like it.  I like sitting there, I like to kneel, I like to take a moment out of my week and pray.  I like to reflect, because that’s ultimately what church is about.  Geez… I’m so wordy!  I think the thing that excited me most about church, though, is the fact that I’ve decided that I would actually get involved in the parish this time.  For once, I stayed after service and actually partook in the coffee and donuts in the parish hall, and I met some folks that attend the 8AM service, one Mr. Walt and the deacon, both retired Air Force from Wright Patt.  If I had that great of a time meeting these guys, maybe I might meet more if I volunteered to do stuff at the church.  I think next Sunday, I’m going to put my name to volunteer.

Well, that was all Sunday.  Since then I got some work done on Monday, but then today I was really busy… at home.  AAFES delivered the washer and dryer here, and since their contractor didn’t have an installation service, I paid for delivery, but not an extra $25 to remove the packaging, i.e. do the garbage.  I ended up getting help from one of my buddies here, Ray G, that I graduated with from OTS.  I’m getting kinda thin on my credit after buying those two appliances, so I’m gonna have to save a bit of dough, as long as I stop buying stupid crap… and since my HHGs just arrived, I think I’ll be good on buying stupid crap to entertain myself for a long while.

So  yeah, now I’m here.  I’ve been waiting to get here in Dayton, OH, since last August.  I’ve been daydreaming about going to a country bar and learning to line-dance with a cutie, about taking some swing or salsa lessons and just having a great time getting to know new people (read: girls that take those classes) and just generally being dumb and acting a fool.  I’ve been kicking myself because I left my violin, motorcycle, and most of my clothes and old uniforms in LA… I should have brought those things with me to OTS, but I think my rationale at the time when I left LA was that I’d need all the space in my car to drive around MontG during OTS.  Well, now that I’m done with OTS, I wish I had brought all my crap with me, because now I have to take leave at some point, drive to LA, load my car, and then drive back here using as little leave as possible… I can’t forsee myself safely doing this in less than one full week.  And I have to rent a motorcycle trailer and subject my car to towing my bike across the country… AGAIN.  Oh well.  Life is a continuous learning process, and sometimes the lessons are hard.

Let’s see, other things on my brain… I’m going to ASBC in a few weeks, which means I get to drive back down to MontG and hang out for another 6 weeks of fun in the sun.  Honestly, I don’t know what to expect… I heard that ASBC is cake, and that it’s just as sucky as OTS, and that it’s basically a six-week-long drunkfest… I guess it just depends on who you ask.  My resolution before OTS was to try to make as many friends as possible, and I think that goal somehow perverted my basic character so that by the end of OTS I was highly disappointed that I had only a midget’s handful of people I’d consider friends.  This time my resolution is just to relax, focus on the goal of doing well at ASBC, but not going crazy about it.  All the extracurriculars aren’t worth a damn in the end, and people respect you more if you act normal to yourself rather than try to be something you’re not… I saw this in OTS, and all my friend-making effort wasn’t worth a damn because in reality I’m not a friendly or outgoing guy–I’m meek, but I also want to be the best there ever was.  General, vague terms, yes, but that’s what’s at my core.

I’m cutting it off here, before this turns into yet another rant-fest.  I have other things to do tonight, like make a bed that I can sleep on for a change instead of that damn cot.  Yeah, peace out.

-TJ

PS: Welcome, facebook viewers… this is the first post that’s also posted to the notes section in facebook.

best of craigslist : NO SEX TONIGHT.

Had to do it.  Somehow stumbled upon this.

I’ve got to do a few things:

1. Start a career goals list. I keep having spontaneous ideas of things I want to do now that I’ve gotten my commission. Formerly as an enlisted my career goals were to get deployed, PCS overseas to Europe and Asia, and just have alot of worldly experience. Now that I’ve commissioned, my career goals seem to be changing. I think in the back of my head I’m always thinking about what to do with my life, and commissioning has opened a very big door to some very interesting possibilities. The likelihood of me running for office when I retire seems to be more possible but for some reason feels less likely now. Lately I’ve been thinking, I want to at least work on UAV development, and any human-to-machine interface systems that the military may be working on or need. Also, it’s known that DoD is looking for several projects regarding simulating environments for use by multiple connecting clients… sound familiar? This project screams “We want MMO-building experience” to me. Anyway, these are just a few things.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this project I’ve had bubbling in the back of my brain for the last 3 years. I’ve really wanted to install a living space computer. My vision is very low-tech… just have a computer with speech recognition monitoring me as I live in my apartment, with either microphones in every room or bluetooth receivers in every room and me with a bluetooth headpiece, and I’ll be able to interface vocally with my computer from anywhere in my apartment. If I can re-learn how to program chips with logic and write drivers for them (CS 151A, anyone? Alvin?), I think I can make this happen. I have an old computer that I want to run as sort of a house-runner. Something to turn on the TV, adjust my thermostat, order pizza, give me the latest weather reports, etc. I think if I stopped playing WoW I could do this.

Speaking of stopping playing WoW, I think I’ll stop playing WoW. Once I get settled into my new apartment, I’m going to try to pick up extracurriculars… Sitting on my ass dreaming of things to do is never as good as actually doing the things I dream to do. I’m just all talk right now, but I’m working on becoming that man that I want to be.

Guess for now, though, I’m just hanging around. No place to call home except the different hotels I’m checking into while they’re processing my apartment app. Right now I’m waiting on my old utility company to send a letter of credit to my new utility company, and I can’t move in until I get a new account for whatever reason… yet another thing to follow up on. Once I get an address, that is.

I think that’s all I wanted to say for now… more later.

Learn every day!