Ever since I’ve been web-savvy, I have occasionally searched for… myself, just to see what’s out there about me.  I would usually find my yahoo website, some devotionals I wrote at my church’s website, a cathedral project I did in college, and the M.O.F.L. site (The Mt. Olive Football League, which I ran {and often won} over the past 15 years).  With the advent of Google Scholar, I have recently found my Master’s Thesis online as well (wow, I’m published!).

One day, there were additional entries – entries I couldn’t connect to me, something about coaching soccer at a Michigan university.  Someone else was using my name!  It turns out that there was another “me” in Michigan.  For years, I thought I was unique; after all, there aren’t many people with my last name in the world.  Now there was at least one other on the web, a verifiable presence, and alternate me.  How strange!

With the advent of Facebook, I decided to “friend” him to see what he would do.  He accepted, and we were, for a time, Facebook friends.  It was weird – the other “me” thought so too, which is why he eventually un-friended me.  Now, we just continue to live our parallel lives, and try not to think of each other too much.

These days, there are even more “me’s” out there.  Some have come late in the game with regards to the internet, like “me” of Wisconsin (he spells his name wrong, so Michigan “me” and I will have nothing to do with him!) and… “me” of Wisconsin (two in one state! – this guy’s a bee keeper).  We’ll call him me2.  Then there’s the “me” who runs a laundry service in Pennsylvania; there’s a “NASCAR me” in Indiana; and one, we’ll call him “ludite me,” who does not have much of an internet presence at all – he may not even have a computer – but he got listed in some work-related document.  That “me” works for the Tennessee Valley Authority.

And then there’s a “me” with a one letter difference in the last name who is an author of Windows XP books.  If I ever get published (like, for-real; not just my thesis), boy will people get confused!

Alas, I am hardly unique anymore; I am pedestrian…

Sigh.

As I was going through all the recent comments in Facebook, it occurred to me that for many of these folks – those I know well – Facebook is like catching up.  I know what they’re up to in real life, and their Facebook comments reflect that.  It’s sort of like an extended party, and I like it!

Then there are those I don’t know well – acquaintances.  We rarely speak in public, and I often have no idea what they are up to.  I certainly don’t know what they are thinking.  But when I read some of the stuff they publish, I am amazed.  It all seems so intimate.  He or she would never tell me this in public, yet in written form, their mind is revealed.  It makes me feel like we are closer than we really are, which can make things very awkward in real life when we meet.  We may pass each other on occasion and barely give a nod, yet I know what they are thinking, and they may be thinking the same thing about me.  We know a part of each other, but not the whole thing.  We know secrets.

I sometimes feel like a stalker or a voyeur when I’m on Facebook, especially with some of the younger kids who are on my friends list.

Is it my fault that they are so open with their thoughts?  No, but I also really, really shouldn’t know some of the stuff I know thanks to their posts.  Some of their secrets should be kept secret.  They have no filters (yet) for appropriateness, and even though I love how young people think, I sometimes see things I probably shouldn’t.

It used to be that I had to invest a ton of time in a person’s life to get to know them well; now, all I have to do is get them to friend me.  It’s instant intimacy… without true intimacy.  It’s “plastic” intimacy, which has no substance.

I think that in the next 10 years or so, we will see an increase in the number of extremely lonely people who can’t function well in the real world.  Facebook is great and all, but it can never truly replace live contact.  People will eventually (re)discover this fact, but I think it will take time – a breaking point of some sort – before the pendulum of societal norms swings back.

Our youth were part of the sermon on Sunday.  I highlight this in my blog because what they did was amazing – they stated a problem (a sin most often) on one side of some cardboard, and how God took care of it on the other side.  The Youth were forthright and very, very honest – I doubt you’d find 10 adults in the whole church who would have been that honest with their sin-issues.  It was moving.  Issue after issue was shown, and some pretty spectacular, life-altering changes were shown on the reverse side.  God was clearly touching these youth, and the youth in turn were clearly touching us as they made their presentation.  Most of us were crying by the end.  Thirty-five youth, and five adult leaders showed how God can change lives, and how He can do so in very specific ways.

Young people experience some very unique struggles – they are faced with all these adult things, yet really have no expertise on the subject or past experience to fall back on.  They rarely know what to do (I sure didn’t when I was growing up!), and without an adult mentor of some type, they are forced to rely on less trustworthy sources for their information – themselves, friends and acquaintances.  This never works out well!

It has been a long time since I was a youth, yet I remember all the problems I faced as I struggled to become an adult.  Nothing has changed, and in fact it has probably gotten more difficult.  Growing up in a church youth group myself, we often talked about relationship issues, abuse, drinking, sex, drugs and rock & roll and how our realities often differed from what God would have us do.  In my formative years, I was truly blessed to have great church youth leaders, great Boy Scout leaders and great parents.  They all kept me on the straight and narrow.  They also answered a ton sometimes uncomfortable questions (like most youth, I had no “filter” for what was appropriate to ask, so I asked!). When I got older, I became a youth leader so I could mentor the next generation of kids.  I did this for ten years and would do so again in a heartbeat!

Based on what I saw yesterday, our church youth – my son included – are in great hands.  It gives me hope.  In five to ten years, the kids in our youth group will be running our church, or other churches depending on where they wind-up.  At least one in the group is planning on becoming a pastor.  I am so proud of our kids, and feel truly blessed to have such wonderful youth leadership; thanks be to God!

My daughter is unique.  In the past, I have used other adjectives like: quirky, odd, and “special,” but for now… we’ll go with unique.  Truthfully, she is exceptionally bright and exceptionally creative, which tends to make her very atypical.  She doesn’t fit well in a traditional educational system, which is geared toward the 80% of people who are “Left Brained” (who think traditionally).  She is Right Brained… way, way right-brained.

Yesterday, she had some free time, which usually meant that she was doing something “artsy” like drawing, or playing with clay, or reenacting an entire book or movie, complete with dialogue, using Poly Pockets and stuffed animals as cast members, but today, she was using my Wii Fit program.  I was in the office writing, so naturally, I assumed that she was exercising.  After two hours or so, as I emerged from my “cave,” I found that my daughter was still in front of the T.V.; Wii remote in hand.  I asked her what she was doing.  She just had to show me; she had created several Mii characters (Mii characters are, generally, avatars of real people – characters who look like you – who copy your movements as you flail on the wireless fitness board trying to beat your kid’s top scores which they achieved easily, but with a great deal of effort you were finally able to beat, letting them know that you’re not dead yet.).  My daughter’s first character, Mary, was tall with long black hair.  She was wearing blue.  Another was Peter, who had really big hair.  Paul had a beard.  I was beginning to sense a theme when sure enough, the tall, bearded, smiling guy next to Peter turned out to be Jesus.  Over the last two hours, she had created a small army of biblical Mii characters.  She then asked me to help her create Moses to complete her collection.  She didn’t know what Moses looked like, and had assumed that I was old enough to remember.  Maybe she thought that my Mii avatar was similar-looking.

Her thinking – the reason she made all these Bible Miis – was that while she was jogging on “jogger island,” she could run with some or see some of them waiving to her, since Wii Fitness characters are placed on the island at random to jog with you or wave and cheer you on.  She wanted Bible folks encouraging her!  Once she left jogger island, she might play doubles tennis against Mark and Luke, or go bowling with Jesus (I did warn her that Jesus would always win – he bowls a 300!  The guy’s perfect.).  She saw Wii Fitness as a world where family, friends and Bible characters could all live together and interact.  She created Wii Heaven.  I must admit that when I jog on jogger island — once a year or so — and I see Jesus waiving at me, it makes me happy.

Engineers have tans that end where their T-shirt begins.  Mostly this is an accident – when an engineer is given an office with a window.

As a IC layout engineer, I have often been accused of being a troglodyte – a cave-dweller.  This suits most of us layout folks just fine because we work on a black background and therefore light is bad.  Unlike most layout engineers, I work on a white background (having been trained-up in architecture, not IC layout).  I can also therefore handle light, but not too much.  Currently, I have a window office.  The light—it burns!  I keep the blinds closed except on rainy days.  It helps me to avoid an engineer’s tan.

For years, I played volleyball with other engineers. We all looked really “special” when we played.

All engineers have the same problem: their body betrays them.  When a normal guy is serving the ball, he’s concerned about ball placement.  But when an engineer serves the ball, he might start out with the basics: F=mA.  He might then do some rough d/v d/t calculations for ball drop, and then add rotational calculations if he’s more advanced and can spin the ball.  Engineers are completely baffled when the ball hits the net and it’s side out.  The calculations were perfect – it must have been the coriolis effect of the earth’s rotation – but alas, their body simply couldn’t do what their mind conceived.

This is also why we have mathletes.

I maintain that “The Pina Colada Song,” written by Rupert Holmes, whose song title is really “Escape,” is one of the worst songs ever written, yet it so fit the period in which it was written – a time of lose morals known as the “me decade” – and was therefore a huge hit.  It is kind of a catchy tune.  The gist of the song is that a lover is dissatisfied with his lady, so he reads an ad in a paper of a gal who is also dissatisfied, and he responds to the ad.  Turns out, the writer of the ad is his old lady.  They discover that they are writing to each other and they laugh about it; presumably staying together in renewed love afterwards.  My guess is that if Rupert were writing about himself in this song, then he’s a very lonely person right now; rich maybe, due to this one-hit wonder, but lonely none the less.  It’s only in the mind of a man that the song’s scenario would have a happy ending.  In reality, once the “old lady” realized that her man was looking elsewhere, and she herself was already looking elsewhere, there is no way the two would ever stay together.  Anyway, aside from the questionable content, there is a line that I have always found quite funny; not because it’s a funny line, but because if you listen to it on a bad stereo, as I did growing up, it sounds like it has a misplaced modifier.  The line I refer to is the start of the chorus:

If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain…

Now, while the lyricist will maintain that there is an “and” in that sentence, but when the song is sung, you can barely hear that “and,” and if you are listening through a poor quality stereo, the song comes out sounding like this:

If you like Pina Coladas getting caught in the rain…

This cracks me up every time… and actually, it’s very apropos: I don’t like Pina Coladas at all, so having them caught in the rain is fine with me – I prefer it!  A watered-down Pina Colada would taste better than a straight-up Pina Colada any day of the week.

The misplaced modifier at least made the song tolerable… as I thought about the demise of the Pina Colada; barely holding together this watered-down relationship.

I’ve been thinking about writing since May of 2009.  I even started a book once and got through four chapters, but then “life” took over and I stopped.  I got busy, and my priorities just weren’t where they needed to be.  I wasn’t ready; I wasn’t serious.  I can’t say that I’ve started the book project again, but I think about it often, and I do add to my outline from time to time as inspiration strikes.

More recently, I have been learning about writing as a craft, and I’ve become more conscious about my own writing as a result.  I’ve been reading a lot too, which helps me to learn the style of other writers.

All the books on writing that I’ve read so far have said that to succeed in writing, you must write every day, and read more than you write.  I figured a blog might be just the thing (I’ve got the reading thing down, but not the writing so far!).  Blogging allows me to write every day, and if I’m convinced that people are reading my blog, and are expecting to read more, then it gives me a measure of accountability.  It keeps me going.

Years ago, I was writing a Bible study/devotional (“devos”) for a friend, and because I knew he was reading it (and soon, about a hundred others were too), I was faithful in writing two devos a week for three years straight.  Those devos can still be seen on our church’s website (at one devo shown per week, it runs a six year cycle!).  Unfortunately, I switched jobs and writing those devos became impossible due to my increased workload.  I actually miss doing them – I learned a lot, and it was fun to translate what I had learned into something a blossoming Christian could understand.  I miss the challenge; I miss exercising my mind.  I hope that writing this blog will also be a challenge, in a good way, and that it will be a benefit you, dear reader, as well.

It was simply horrible…

8:04 PM, I’m at my computer working on my class for this weekend and I hear a sound like an oncoming train.  Suddenly, “wham!” something hits my house and sends it rocking.  I soon realize that it’s an earthquake.  ‘Though I’m being vaulted left and right in my chair, I manage to get up and head towards the family room.  My dog is about as low to the ground as he can get and he’s whimpering.  Thoughts flash through my head.  Do I have enough water?  Where’s my earthquake kit?  Will the house fall off its foundation?  Will the chimney come crashing through the roof? I must remember to turn off the gas, and the water, and drain the water heater.  Shouldn’t I be at a doorjamb, in the bathtub or under a table?  I hope my family is OK at church (gee, should have thought of that earlier).  It’s alright; they are insured and they know Jesus.  Lights are swaying, and I soon realize that my front and back door jambs are directly inline with the P-waves and S-waves emanating from the epicenter of the quake.  They are really moving and pressing against the doors.  Will I ever be able to open my doors again?  Will I be able to escape?

Thirty seconds later, it was over.  Thank God, I still had power.  I could not smell gas.  Good.  I turned on the TV to see the early casualty reports.  I’m thinking it was a 5.5.  I search through all the local TV stations and… nothing.  Perhaps they were down and couldn’t relay the much needed data.  On the web, the USGS confirmed that it was 5.6 — so much greater than I had thought.  Gasp.  Time to assess the damage:  All the curios were still in place; thanks to dusty build-up.  No — one had fallen over; but it was unbroken; and not really my favorite anyway.  Its main function was to provide symmetry.  My TV was still in place.  I would live.  In the bedroom, the VCR had fallen off the stand.  Well, I thought, it’s an ancient technology.  If it broke, I could… still watch videos in three other rooms.  Man, I’ve got a lot of ancient technology.  But it worked.  At 9PM, almost an hour later, the reports came out on Fox, and interrupted the opening of House.  Now I’ll never know how the injured guy of the week got into the hospital.

The news of the quake was horrible:  Olive jars had been sacrificed at a local shopping center; ceiling tiles had fallen; books had fallen off their shelf at the SJSU library (my thesis — on the ground!); the airport souvenir shop had lost a crystal vase; another local airport lost all the windows of its conning tower; all trains were forced to drive at 20mph for the remainder of the evening.

My family made it home alive that night; they were safe.  Courtney, my daughter, had noticed that one of her fifty stuffed animals had fallen on the floor.  What if it had been her?  We slept in fear.

Next morning, I was anxious to get to my fifth-floor office.  Would I still have a window?  Had the building collapsed?  No such luck, but I did notice that… a binder had fallen over.  The USGS guy said that three different faults were 20 years overdue for a quake, and that the Calaveras fault, which had slipped last night, had already sent over 100 aftershocks coursing through the terra-not-so-firma while I had slept.  There was a 2% chance that another “moderate” earthquake could happen again in the next few days.  With odds like that, I was really jumpy.

It makes you think: with life so fragile, and doom right around the corner, could I even think about football.  Sure, I made three player moves today, and almost took a three player trade (from this week’s opponent no less — I must check that schedule before I consider a trade).  Indianapolis and New England are playing this weekend.  I won’t miss that — provided that I make it to the weekend alive! Anyway, be safe tonight at Halloween.

Co-missioner,
Brian

I rest my case.

Co-missioner,
Brian