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!

Oral Surgery
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No, that's not me being dirty, I'm getting my wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow morning. I totally forgot about it until today. The suck.

So, I'm out for two days while I drool blood and saliva uncontrollably. Oh happy day.

I might come to regret slapping Paul all those times after he got his out. :(
Doubt
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Interesting two days. I got in the mood to take pictures again, although these really aren't as great as they could be - if I had a clue what I was doing with the camera I could probably make these a bit more accessible, but as is, they're best viewed in a dark room, and the thumbnails don't even come close to doing justice.

South Hill:


A kind of bizarre tree/street light shot:


My favorite, just the road and some lights:


A tree against the night sky:


Another road shot, the house at the end is mine:


The moon, obscured by trees:


Student housing, obscured by chain-link:


The moon, obscured by clouds:


An apartment complex sidewalk:


Mmmm. I should really invest in some better equipment for this, very few of those shots came out like I wanted them to.
Uncertainty
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Certainty is a rare and valuable thing. How often are you positive about anything? Everything comes with its share of doubts and potential pitfalls. Those, I don't particularly mind. It's only when those potential pitfalls are things I can fix, that I can change, that I can prevent. It's not out of self-loathing or self-doubt that I say this, but merely because I acknowledge that I am imperfect and capable of screwing things up, especially when I've recognized my previous patterns for screwing up and I'm afraid of making the same mistake yet again.

This is something that's only truly become apparant to me in the past few months, as I begin to understand the value of experience. This new-found respect for experience is not out of a sudden wealth of it in myself, but of the realization of what little I do have, and what there is in others. Last Sunday was a pretty interesting experience (lol) in this regard.

A fellow pastor from across the state came and preached and did some official duty related to my church's recent election of elders (essentially the governmental body of the church - irrelevant to the story at hand). In our typical fashion, we (my parents, myself, and said pastor) went out to lunch and had a fairly nice time chatting and such. Somewhere along the conversation my dad started explaining the events that stopped us from moving to Tempe, Arizona in the summer of 1997.

A lot of the details I shouldn't, and won't share, because it's a pretty personal story. What I can say, though, is that it's weird to stumble across a whole new realm of respect for your own parents. Some of you may, or may not, know that once upon a time I was destined to move to Arizona, where my dad was going to start a new church. He had the financial support, the manpower, and we were just about a month or two away from moving. Our destination, to us, was quite certain, but everything fell through. In essence, they were backstabbed by their own church and fellow (quoteunquote) Christians, in a pretty clear-cut way (meaning, this isn't just the bias of the son talking). I really wish I could describe it all, but perhaps another day.

Anyways. I had a whole varied amount of conclusions about everything after sitting and watching my dad almost drop to tears. The first was, as originally mentioned, about respecting experience. I came to realize that my parents had experiences that strongly affect how they act - for me to be as critical as I often have was, in retrospect, quite unjust, when taking into account where they're coming from. I'm known to be especially critical of my mom. Some of it's justified. Now, I realize, some of it's not, and I should have questioned myself a little more harshly when others told me it wasn't.

The second was one of the value of bad experiences. At the time, there was little good behind the emotional, financial, and practically physical abandonment my parents faced, and yet, there is much good that has been wrought of that ill. I wouldn't live in Ithaca, for starters, and I don't particularly enjoy the thought of not having the friends and experiences that I do now.

And the third, of course, was of certainty. As much as I'd love to be certain about something, anything, there's nothing around me or within me that I can trust to provide certainty. Thus, I just have to suck it up and trust God that it will come out for the best, regardless of how I want to screw it up. And maybe try to minimize my capability of doing just that in the mean-time.

*hums softly*

I feel really, really good. This break has been wonderful, for myriad reasons. Some of which I will teasingly not mention.
Meaningful
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Despite not being in a particularly thankful mood, I realize the importance of trying anyways. As such, I will provide you with the now-rare bulleted list.
  • God ftw, however screwed up I may be
  • family ftw, however screwed up it may be
  • friends ftw, however screwed up they may be
  • this mp3 player. yes, this is fourth on the list. that's how much I use it.
  • in tandem with the mp3 player, running. in particular, I'm thankful for the two guys I ran past thirty minutes ago, while going from Ben's house to mine. the quizzical expressions they give me as they see a guy in shorts and a puffy vest running at 3 AM make it all worthwhile.
  • the internet. in particular, YTMND, Zefrank, EGM, Gamespot, Bash, SK, Slashdot, Fark, Google, and halo.bungie.org.
  • science.
It's a little short, but like I said, I'm not particularly in the mood.

Things are good. I'm content.
You Are a Pirate!
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*hums*

Leave it to Iceland to create a song about pirates for children. They breed the pirates early over there. This song is actually quite old (I've known about it for some time), but I felt the need to reprise this for your benefit.

And, to set the election day mood:

BluECliQ: believing that Mcafee is going to protect you from hackers and viruses is exactly like believing that republicans can actually protect you from terrorists

Ninja_P: Okay, I just watched a guy puke in a glass, then drink it again
DragonAtma: Congratulations, you now know how congress operates.

Jim Kuhn: I just think it is silly that if I live in certain states in a 'free country' that I am not allowed to even read a poker forum.
DrSavage: What gave you an impression that you live in a free country?
bigalt: fox news

andyg721: i think it was on CNN
andyg721: Condoleeza Rice went to Asia
andyg721: the headline was RICE IN ASIA

I have this sneaking feeling that the Republicans will lose tomorrow.
About That Thing...
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It's exceedingly bizarre how transient one's outlook on his future can be. For two years I've more or less told myself I'm going to TC3 and then transferring somewhere, heavily based under the assumption that my parents wouldn't be paying for anything. Apparantly this isn't really the case, and I don't know why. My mom just walked in and proposed that I go to Houghton for a year or two and then take IC up on that whole free tuition business for another 2 years. For the unaware, Houghton's a mostly liberal arts school (with some focus on music), somewhere in the regions of the state. I have been, in the past, heavily opposed to going to Houghton because it's a Christian college (there's a certain breed of "Christian" that places like Houghton attract that I find intolerable, even if they're just a small portion of the populace). But, when mom suggested it tonight, I realized I don't actually care that much. It'd be nice to just have a definitive plan for the future, or something.

My only worry is that I, uh, have absolutely no applications or recommendations or anything of that sort. Exciting times. We'll see how this goes.
Psychoanalyzation
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This year's return in candy was, dare I say, pathetic. I'm left with what could barely be called handfuls of candy, disregarding the large piles left from what we didn't hand out. The process of gathering the candy amounted to less fun than desired, as well. Listening to the melodramatic "situations" in other people's lives isn't what I was particularly hoping for in my Halloween night. Returning home was satisfying, though, sitting in the attic and sorting through my pitiful collection of candy, watching the remaining half of the Sixth Sense, which for some reason I saw at the ripe old age of 11, which, in retrospect, might have been a little too young.

Edit: I failed to mention, my costume was exceedingly brilliant. I was, as some of you know, Dr. Schrödinger, the physicist who developed the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. I sort of (not really) attempted to look like a scientist and carried a box labeled "cat", but absolutely no one understood it. No one.

Returning to the melodrama I spoke of; I think people like to psychoanalyze and gossip about other people's lives because their own lives are otherwise too boring and generic. Making a big deal over things that absolutely don't matter is an excuse to not think about that which actually matters. A further possibility is that people just want something to talk about all the time, another concept that I fail to find myself comprehending. Imagine the horror of having nothing to say (or, ideally, just refraining from saying anything) (also, note the sarcasm of this sentence).

It reminds me a bit of the social commentary within the sixth season of the Sopranos. One of the things they suggested is that we, as a people, are bored, and participate in vaguely stupid activities to cure this. The case they cited would be carnival rides, like the generic spinning teacup thingo (we've all seen and/or ridden it, kind of like your mom). The actual event of getting in a metal hemisphere decorated like a cup and spinning around for fifty seconds isn't fun, but the concept of being thrown around by something more powerful than you, that you have no control over, is. More precisely, the possibility of danger, such as the safeties failing, is what makes it fun. I'm not sure I entirely agree, but it is at least somewhat accurate, in that we're seeking to inject something more interesting than ourselves into our lives, as if what we have isn't enough.

I'm not suggesting we should be self-reliant and isolated. It merely seems to me that people are too reliant on artificial thrills. This is a broad statement - it stretches from alcoholism to thrill-seeking to...a whole lot of other things. Perhaps I'm guilty of this as well, but I don't really know. Refer to the title of this post for my justification to speak so arrogantly on the matter.

Oh, in other news, I ran the mile in 6:11 (lol, that's my address number), which I'm extremely confident I can do better on (I'm thinking like 5:50).

I also hit 39 in Wow (shut up, 60s), and have been positively mopping up in PvP. Then again, it's not a PvP server (and the server as a whole suxxors), but has been fun regardless.

As for SK, my enthusiasm has slowed down a bit as of late. You have played 766 hour(s) so far.

EDIT: lolz