AND THE LACK THEREOF*

*we put the "mmm" in communism

about

This is the personal blog of Tim. Here, Tim writes on anything he has enough inspiration to finish a post on. That usually ends up being matters of science, pop culture, technology, religion, and philosophy.

This blog is around nine years old, which is over a third of Tim's current age. Back in 2003, it was called "Of Tim: Tim's life - or lack thereof", and it was as bad as you might expect the blog of a freshman in high school to be. Tim hopes that his writing is a little better, these days.

Tim welcomes any input that you, the dear reader, might have. Comments are very much appreciated, especially if you have a dissenting opinion. If you'd like to learn more about Tim, you might want to see his facebook or google+.

Also: Tim is a very avid consumer of various sorts of music. You may be interested in his playlists!

You Know You Love Them (O.o)
click to show/hide the rest of this post




Your Brain is 53.33% Female, 46.67% Male



Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female

You are both sensitive and savvy

Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed

But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve











You Are 65% Left Brained, 35% Right Brained



The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning.

Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others.

If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic.

Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.



The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility.

Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way.

If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art.

Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.



posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
No. You Can't Have A Sip. (...)
click to show/hide the rest of this post
Or so the mug sitting on my desk says. This mug was used in the acting of our Macbeth scene in English today, for the porter. We did alright, but not fantastic. We all stumbled on a few lines, but we had "mad propz" as I like to say. Karel had a beard made of cotton balls, Karel and I had robes on, ben had a blanket, Jared had keys and the mug I brought, and a bell. It was kinda fun, I guess.

I have an orthodontic appointment tomorrow. If all goes well, I may get the braces off, I might not. We'll see. Tomorrow is actually shaping up to be a good day. I shouldn't have to stay after school (Wednesdays are department meetings), so I'll have a lot less school than normal. Or at least, normal as of late.

Daniel has, for the first time in history, beat me to the chase in getting a new game. How this happened, I cannot tell, but it did, and I am left in pure jealousy as he plays Chaos Theory to his heart's content. Woe, woe, woe is me.

And now, more homework.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
Why Doesn't Food Rhyme With Good? (...)
click to show/hide the rest of this post
That was a serious mistake, to whoever invented the English language.

So, Friday I did not attend school. Not because it was Good Friday (I find it bothersome that so many people do take the day off with that excuse), but to do 5 hours of make up work. I got all of my backlogged math work done, got more practice in on my English performance lines, and didn't actually get to sleep in Friday. I figured since so many people would be gone, I could take the day off without drawing much attention. Hopefully that is the case. Anyways, this officially means Chemistry is the only subject left with work to do. I'll be spending all my remaining days off working in Chemistry.

Saturday. The church youth (led by Greg) went to Lindseth at Cornell and did some climbing. It was pretty fun, despite my prognostication beforehand. I got to know Lincoln and Andrew a little better, which was cool. There's a few kids at church I never really talk to, I dunno why, I just don't. As for the climbing, I think I did okay considering I suck at it. I got to the top in two different places, but spent most of my time bouldering. My arms are pretty sore right now, but they're almost back to normal.

Today was Easter (obviously), and the church, as usual, doubled in attendance. It's kind of weird to see all these people come out of nowhere to church on Easter, and Easter alone. Dad actually taught a really good sermon, though. I normally don't care for his style and presentation, but I definately learned something today.

Tomorrow? Not only is it Monday, but, Chaos Theory comes out. Speaking of which I need to go harrass my dad about Daniel's money. If you haven't read up on Chaos Theory, you need to. It's gonna rock. 99 from OXM, 98 from Team XBox, 96 from IGN. Definately gonna rock. (btw Daniel, i just asked my dad, he said he lost the credit but will get more money for you tomorrow, i should have it by the time Scouts rolls around)

Finally, I've been experiencing a rather strange phenomonon recently. Food, in general, has stopped tasting good. Too much sugar? Not enough sleep? General stomache problems? They probably all contribute, but even my more preferred foods have ceased tasting as delicious as they should. My best guess is just a lack of sleep, because whenever I don't get enough sleep, I find myself not seeing food as attractive. We shall see.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
This Merits....AN INSTA-UPDATE! (O.o)
click to show/hide the rest of this post
WOOT! Bungie's releasing NINE, COUNT EM NINE new multiplayer maps for Halo 2 - one of which is Wizard, ported! My enthusiasm is high. My love for Halo 2 is rekindled. The new 2v2 playlist will be most excellent. Rock on.

Linkage

Teh awesomeness.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
Banana Nut Cookies Are EXTINCT! (O.o)
click to show/hide the rest of this post
That's right. I ate the last one.

Updated grades:
  • German 3H, Bronfenbrenner: C (a guess)
  • Math 10H, House: B (updated)
  • Principles of Engineering, Peters: A
  • Global 2H, Rumney: A- (updated)
  • Programming 2, Teukolsky: A- (updated)
  • English 10H, Asklar: C (another guess)
  • Chemistry, Smith: F (updated, but i have a LOT missing)
  • PE, Palmer: B
A little bit better, but definately the C's need to be gone before the end of the semester. I also got my schedule for next year set up. Ideally, it will look like this:
  • Honors English 11
  • Honors US History
  • Honors Math 11
  • AP Physics B
  • AP Computer Science
  • Digital Electronics
  • Computer Integrated Manufacturing
  • PE
Note the lack of a lunch. I'll probably end up having to drop one of the DDP courses simply because having that many single courses line up is...unlikely. I can hope, though. I can't wait, though. I won't have German, and ALL of my classes (excepting US History and PE, and possibly English, depending on the teacher) are on things I'm genuinely into, and finally, it looks...challenging. AP Physics is supposed to be taken after having had Course III - that should be pretty interesting, and fun, as long as I have a good teacher. Back to the good old homework, which I didn't go to Scouts to do.

EDIT: i accidentally pressed the "save as draft" button, which is why this was gone for two days. sorry!
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
For Your Edification (O.o)
click to show/hide the rest of this post
Read, and become more brilliant (for your sake, timestamps were remooved.

Random Conversations 101

Enjoy.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
Evolutionary Napping (...)
click to show/hide the rest of this post
This week has sucked. Not in that "oh teh woe is teh me, my girlfriend has left meeee" or "omg world must die omg", but that "i'm tired, i'm hungry, i'm cold, and i'm still not done with my homework" kind of way. I'm not actually cold, or any of those right now, but that's the general feeling I've had all week. I've had no time to socialize during the week. Monday through Friday have been spent hard at work improving those grades I got.

  • German 3H, Bronfenbrenner: D
  • Math 10H, House: C
  • Principles of Engineering, Peters: Passing (probably A or B)
  • Global 2H, Rumney: C
  • Programming 2, Teukolsky: C
  • English 10H, Asklar: F
  • Chemistry, Smith: D
  • PE, Palmer: B
These are officially the worst grades I've ever recieved in my lifetime. My first D's ever, my second F ever (first was last quarter, remember), and the most C's ever on one card. Unacceptable, to say the least. The grades have all risen by about one letter by now (that's how much I've been doing). You know what? I'm gonna say it again. I hate Mary, German, I hate it all. Every time I step into Ms. Smith's room I want to shoot myself, just from listening to her for 45 minutes. That counts for an entire month's worth of being emo, so I'll stop there.

In addition to fixing grades, which have caused the generic lack of sleep, and an increased hunger, other things have been happening. Most important of all is that of a recent reform to my creationist beliefs. I was what is knows as a YEC (young-earth creationist, they believe God created the world in a 6-day period, instantaneously). Due to recent evidence I came across while doing research for a bible study lesson I was teaching last Tuesday, I've changed my opinion rather drastically. I had previously had good faith in the Big Bang, simply due to the empirical evidence already available, but had not actively pursued trying to apply it to the Bible. Upon reading, I came to the conclusion that the Big Bang and Evolution work in a Biblical context - they are not the enemies of common Christian theology. You have to know my history to understand how big of a change this is. You're reading the blog of a boy who stood up in front of his 7th grade Life Science class to debate evolution, and had several almost heated discussions with his teacher. This is a guy who's argued with at least a dozen people over the physical evidence for evolution, almost on a regular basis. I really believed evolution had been disproven and was prepped to collapse in on itself. I didn't just change all that in a moment, you see. It's taken a good 20-25 hours of researching this week to get me to a point where evolution is believable in a scientific context. I still have my doubts, and I may not accept evolution in the end, but it's comforting in a lot of ways knowing that I don't have to fight it anymore. It sapped a lot of energy from me, always arguing and struggling against my friends over it. If nothing else, I've gained a more open mind. If you'd like to see my resources on this, just give me a line, I'll be glad to show you. For now, I supply to you a rather important verse on which this is based.

Romans 1:20
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."

This is giving away a little bit of the bible study lesson I'm doing next Tuesday, but basically, God has not put anything in Creation that would be a road block for someone coming to faith. Everything we see is evidence of him, not against him. I'll get off my soap box now.

Other than that, I've just been plain busy. I took a nap after I got home today, and went to Sho's for an hour. That was a little akward, it's a little hard to describe, but suffice to say, it was akward. And with that, I take me leave to continue playing Mario RPG.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
Trucker Hats and Zelda (O.o)
click to show/hide the rest of this post
This week in general is not a good one. Productive, but not good in the least. The crappy grades which I've spent so much time fixing, Jonothan leaving, none if it's cool. I had a glass of champagne with Jonothan and Brian Wednesday night. I'm not a fan of most alcoholic drinks, but it wasn't too bad, nothing I would drink of my own accord, though. Jonothan left Thursday morning.

Friday was really nice and relaxing, exactly what I had hoped for. Saturday was too, but I had Kerry, Paul, Ben, and Jennie over around 7:30 to watch a movie (we couldn't decide what movie, but Paul just shoved Zoolander in while nobody was watching, which sort of decided it for us). For whatever reason, Kerry was wearing this really large trucker hat, which she left here. Ben and Paul ended up spending the night, and left in the morning, and I walked down to church. For some reason, my mom's been in Wisconsin. I can't fathom what's worth seeing in Wisconsin, but maybe some things are better left unanswered.

[geek]Beyond that, I've just been playing a lot of ZSNES games. I'm a good way through Yoshi's Island, Mario RPG, Lufia II, Mario 3, Donkey Kong 1 and 2, and I already beat Zelda. I enjoy playing classic games a lot, it's nice just to be able to sit down and enjoy a game without waiting for other players or dealing with complications and crashes and such. Playing the older games has resurrected my respect for Nintendo, which I lost upon release of the Gamecube. The Revolution may or may not be good, I can't know, but one can hope. Speaking of which, I was enjoying the spoils of the GDC (Game Developer's Conference). There was an Empire Earth II demo (sucked) a Chaos Theory Demo (looking good!), reports on a whole bunch of new games - Spartan: Total Warrior (from the makers of the Total War series, and I'm presuming using the Total War engine), Lego Star Wars (looked kinda funny, maybe one of those rental games), some stuff on Xbox 2 features (I was not left enthused), the PC version of Fable (didn't look fantastic, but it said it had more quests, might be worth a download at least). E3 is on the way, though, which is supposed to have playable prototypes of all 3 consoles. I'm not really into console-hyping, but it's good to know which system to go for first.[/geek]

At the moment, the house is empty and I'm blasting the Rome soundtrack at as high volume as my ears will allow.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
It Won't Be The Same (O.o)
click to show/hide the rest of this post
I bring to you the fabled Colorado post, minus one picture (which happened to be the one I looked forward to seeing full-size the most) which my dad deleted. This is what I get for letting my dad touch that camera. *grumble* All my mom and dad's pictures turned out like crap - they're barely worth putting up. It ticks me off a lot - the scenery is completely ruined by a crap disposable camera and poor photography skills. *more complaining*

We left Sunday, landed in Denver about dusk, picked Christopher up from Clair's (cousin's widow, for those who forgot). We drove on over to the Johnson's, which was a two hour drive with 20 lbs of luggage on my lap. It'd been years since the 5 of us had been in the same car, so this was something to be savored, in that bitter kind of way. We got there about 1 AM, greeted by the Weimeraner known as Tenzing (after the mountain climber).

Entrance:



Driveway (that's our rental in there):



Tenzing (poor picture, apologies):



We slept, and spent Monday adjusting to the elevation of 10, 800 ft.. Christopher ran out and bought a Gamecube on a whim, and rented Mario Kart, which supplied Jonothan and I some amusement. He had a Gamecube, but it was stolen a little while back. Poor Christopher has a hard history with robbery - all his possessions were stolen from a storage facility when he was 18 and had just joined the Army (that was a lot of stuff). Not too long ago his laptop and other major appliances were stolen.

Yes, we woke up to this view every morning:



We stayed in the bottom portion of their house. Their house by the way, is custom, completely wood, and disgustingly nice. Not rich kind of nice, but non-standard kind of nice. Retirement kind of nice. The bottom portion has two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a den (with TV, VCR, DVD).

The downstairs main area:



The upper portion is wide, lots of windows, and shockingly bright in the morning. I took most of the pictures around dusk, so it's not bright, as the mountain blocks the sun.

The living room (there's a huge wall of windows to the right (you can see them on the east side picture), but for obvious reasons I can't take a picture of that):



The kitchen (facing out the south side):



The entry (facing out the north/west side, with my back to the windows):



The outside is very much like a log cabin. Pictures tell more than words, though.

The north side (the outside pictures are going in something of a circle, you should be able to get something of an idea of what the outside looks like if you follow it):



The east side (this ones a jump, sorry):



The south side (you can see the porch that's in the east side picture on the right, for reference):



I won't supply many skiing pictures, simply because it's a lot of work for something that isn't going to tell much. So, skiing. We skiied Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I didn't actually ski though. Christopher, Jonothan, and I all snowboarded for our first time on Tuesday, and stuck with it the entire time. It really hurt the first day - you fall down a lot, it sucks. You run out of breath so fast at 11,000+ feet, we were sweating up a storm that first day.

Tuesday was Copper, which is the biggest resort in the vicinity of 1.5 hours. It has about 125 trails, a dozen or so lifts (speed lifts, at that. if you didn't hear this last year, they're lifts that go about 3 times as fast as normal lifts. they detach onto an alternate rail at mount and dismount, which goes about half as a fast as normal lifts. the convenience of this is indescribable). We took a lesson that day (and only that day) to make sure we got the basic techniques and stuff. The lessons were so much better there - it's amazing. Greek Peak's instructors do this "do this, no you're not doing it, you have to do this" kind of thing. Our instructor, Jeff, gave us all kinds of tips for how to do all the stuff, it was really nice. We found that when we applied the rules he taught us, everything worked, it was amazing. We just did the bunny hill that first day - and that was hard. It hurt. It hurt bad. When the lesson was over I decided to go attempt a green, and wow was that a mistake. Apparantly Copper stops grooming about mid-season, so on the mildly steep parts of greens, there are moguls. Understand, moguls are completely different on a snowboard. If you don't know what you're doing (me), you can't do crap, whereas on skis you can at least run over the moguls and ruin them. I fell about 30 times on the run, and I wore myself out badly pushing myself across the straits. I was about ready to go back to skiing the next day, but some encouragement from Brian and the brothers kept me at it.

Wednesday we went to Cooper - the smallest resort, but the highest at 13,000 feet. Towards Cooper is about the size of Greek Peak in terms of amount of lifts and runs, and even layout. The runs are still about twice as long, though. I forgot to mention - the runs at Copper are generally half a mile to three-fourths. The green path I took made for a 20-minute run, with a 4-5 minute lift ride. That's about four to five times as long as Greek Peak's. And about half to a quarter the lift ride. Amazing, yes? By the end of the day we braved a mild blue. Two days, and a mild blue!

Thursday we went back to Copper to meet up with Clair. We spent half the day floundering on these really bad greens - most greens had "traverse" zones, where snowboarders have to detach their back foot and push for a few hundred yards. This is really tiring, and just frustrating. We managed to get some advice from some seasoned Copper-goers and took a few nice and steep blues, which really made up for the first half of the day. The last run, though, we went to the top to try another blue to discover that it's really, really steep and had moguls. We actually did ok, but we split when it came to a fork in the path. I went down first, and stopped at the fork. It forked between a blue and a black. The plan was to take the blue, but Jonothan and Christopher missed the blue and went down the black. Jonothan did ok, but Christopher wasn't feeling too hot and just detached and walked back. Three days, and harder blues!

Copper, at the top (crappy camera):







Friday was Monarch, the middle-range between Copper and Cooper, but all the trails are of far greater difficulty. This is by far the best resort, IMO. It has a lot of unmarked forest trails which are really fun and challenging, they all have huge jumps, lots of powder, huge moguls, all created by skiiers. We did one trail, called "Turbo" 6 times. It's about the equivelant of Olympian on Greek Peak, the hardest black on the mountain, and yet it's blue. The first four times were pretty tough, we didn't know how to handle the moguls. By the 5th and 6th time, we had it down to a science of jumping and braking, it was far more dynamic than it is on skis. FOUR days, very steep blues with a lot of moguls!

Snowboarding has it's perks, but I think I'll stick with skiing. Skiing has a lot of conveniences, like poles, seperated feet, and is generally more mobile. Also, you can't really do back-trail snowboarding around here, as you'd have to push yourself everywhere. Anyway. Monarch had a few ok pictures. There was a professional photographer at the top taking pictures, so one is good.







That was our last day of skiing. Saturday was nothing, I just ran around taking pictures and such. There are a few left of views of the scenery. These are the good ones.

This is of Buena Vista, from the windows:



Night time:



View to the west:



View to the north:



We packed up and cleaned the rooms Saturday too. I ended up vacuuming with a vacuum older than my parents. So old, there was no date on it, anywhere. I took a picture to immortalize this antiquity.



The trip wasn't just fun, though. It was (and this is said at the risk of sounding corny) a really good family bonding experience. Every time I spend time with my brothers, I realize how much alike we really are. It helps that I'm old enough to really have fun with them now, and not constantly be left behind. Our family sat down for about 3 hours just talking about problems we were facing and prayer requests, it was nice like that. It's a little weird looking past the outside stuff that bothers me about the family and seeing what's really worth looking at. It wasn't gooey, soft, and pretty, but was definately heart warming. Anyways.

And a poorly taken picture of our final feast:



We left Sunday morning to Denver airport, sent Christopher off to San Antonio, and moved on to Denver. We checked in at the hotel and just...sat, basically. We didn't do anything until we saw Tim and Joyce Hume (this is the guy I'm named after, remember). It was really good to see them back together (they'd been seperated), and with a child no less. I really enjoy my time with Tim, he's an awesome one. No pictures, for some reason. Monday was pretty boring, we just kinda sat around, had dinner with Clair, and that was it. We left Tuesday morning, and got back to Ithaca at 12:00 AM Wednesday. They lost Mom's and Jonothan's luggage though (after the flight was delayed, too), so we didn't get home till 1:30 AM. For obvious reasons I didn't go to school, and that was my trip. Exciting, to be sure.
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments
Death's Sharpies (^^)
click to show/hide the rest of this post
How geek is that - I almost had a semicolon at the end of the tital. This is here to inform you that no, I am not dead, and a post will come soon. Two things will happen before I do this: Jonothan will leave for Iraq (thursday) and I will get the camera from my dad. Apparantly the pictures I took came out spectacularly (I've grown fond of taking digital pictures), so that would be rather nice. No later than Friday - I promise.

Very quick details - I got back wednesday morning, did not go to school that day, Paul spent the night Friday, got some time in with Daniel Saturday evening, went to Greg's for dinner yesterday, lot's of staying after school working, grades are horrid.

Things will get finished on this blog over the weekend, I promise, but there has been a lot of stuff happening. I'm actually busy, so NYAH!
posted by MC Froehlich at with 0 Comments