once a week, elaborate on one observation without whining, bitching, moaning, complaining, etc.

I don’t know why, but I found this stuff to be really interesting. It’s made out of recycled glass, CDs, and rock. The cool thing is, unlike cement or asphalt, it lets water go through it rather than turn into run off. Doubly environmentally friendly!

The picture is from SureSet paving in London that I stole off of their website.

If you haven’t heard, Iowa is the next Great Lake. The state ran out of “Road Closed” signs.

Yesterday, I was privileged enough to drive in this lovely situation. I started the trip out by missing a sudden downpour by about two seconds. I couldn’t see to the end of the parking lot, so I just kind of sat there for a while. I got out of the city and through the first hour of the trip dry, but when I started heading west, I hit the line of storms that made sandbagging down the Cedar River impossible. It was raining so hard at one point I couldn’t see my side mirrors. I didn’t know clouds could hold that much water. It took me about an hour and a half to break through to the other side of the storms, and then I got to watch a beautiful sunset the rest of the way home.

I stopped by in a town that got ravaged by a tornado earlier this year. There are hundreds of unidentifiable vehicles and several monstrous piles of debris. It looked like a war zone. Street names had been spray painted on whatever people could find, and every house in town whether it had been hit or not had a large X sprayed on the front, green if the people were found alive the night of the tornado, red if they weren’t. Some had one line of each color. I almost cried driving through.

I’m just glad I got home safe, and didn’t hit any closed roads. Almost got stuck on one side of a river near the beginning of my trip, but since there wasn’t any water on the bridge yet, they were letting smaller cars through.

This book has struck a chord with me.
I swiped the next bit:

In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to and end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers of all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an airplane they had to make four.

Back to my own thoughts:

This is only one of the passages that has made me think about our current culture. I have not lived when there has not been war or talk of it. This most recent war, like the wars in the book, seems to have no direct consequence which makes defeat undesirable. Nor does this war have a definite end or a definite enemy. The purpose of the war seems to change with every day and people tend to forget the past.

The only difference I see from the book to our lives is that we are not willing to make sacrifices so that the war might continue. We are not blindly and desperately loyal enough to our country to do so, and I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but not necessarily good one either. We have lost some of that military efficiency that the above passage talks about (think of the point of the draft), but we have retained the ability to think for ourselves (most of us anyway, but the media is a different story).

My favorite part of this passage is the last line. It kind of sums up the differences between engineering and the social sciences. Social sciences are hard to learn because they aren’t definite. There are so many different views and you must continue learning forever just to keep up with what you’re an expert at. Engineering, however, is hard because things are so black and white and must be that way. Mistakes can’t be tolerated. Of course, on the other side of the coin, these are the same traits that make these fields desirable. I couldn’t live in a 2+2=5 kind of world. I require that definite security that things can be right and wrong, that there is a definite goal I’m working toward.

I’m going to try my hand at analyzing the passage, even though I kind of suck at that sort of thing:
It says that life is made what it is by conflict and resolution of that conflict. Later in the book he states that A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a perpetual war. You can’t live forever in one state or the other because it doesn’t make rational sense, nor can it be real. Society’s movements; as well as each individual’s, are dictated by the need to define themselves by conflict and its resolution.

I don’t generally watch the idiot box, but I’m addicted to House. This past season was leaving me a little high and dry with the games at the beginning, but toward the end, the creative genius of the producers has astounded me. The visuals, story, return to House’s subconscious as a plot piece, and new camera work was astounding. And now, House has done something that sappy movies, war movies, and tragedies have failed to do. I cried. Bawled in fact. I was genuinely upset at the end of the season finale. It’s…interesting to feel real emotions for perfectly non-existent people. I’ve been angry or bored with characters in books, but that was more because the writer was bad, not actually toward the character. I’ve never upset about the death of any character.

These past two days have been interesting. I showed up at the office at the appointed time (on the nose!), with all of my paperwork, and ready to go.

No one knew I was coming.

My contact “forgot” to tell them that I was showing up for my first day, and left for the week for meetings in another state. So, after a few confusing moments, I was welcomed in, given a full tour and introduction frenzy, and set up in a cubicle.

The next problem was figuring out what to do with me. Luckily, there’s a lot to learn before I can actually do any work, so my wonderful coworkers each spent about twenty or thirty minutes showing me what they do, and something that might be helpful for the rest of the summer. It was kind of a head-spinning day, but well worth it.

The second day, I showed up again just in time for “coffee” which is where everyone ignores their phones for a few minutes to come and talk to one another and catch up (and get coffee, of course). It was very informal and not all about work, so it was a pretty good time to arrive.

Then they assigned me a computer and set me up to review software tools that I’ll be using this summer. I actually did real work by accident because while I was trying to make the program demos run for me, I found bugs and user issues that needed to be fixed. I filled two pages full of notes of things that were in error, from complete breakdowns of the software, to grammar mistakes. My notes are going to be sent off to the higher-ups in the IT dept. for review!

While this isn’t my job for the rest of the summer, thankfully, it was kind of a fun day, and rewarding to know that I helped the company in a substantial way on the second day of an INTERNSHIP!!!

The boss is coming back tomorrow, and I’ll be getting full training later this week, so I’ll actually be able to start doing what I signed up for at the beginning of next week. The only bad part of this job I’ve found so far is the uncomfortable chair that I’ve been assigned (which can be remedied soon), and I hope the rest of this summer is as good as these past two days!

Believe it or not, I know someone who hates music. He expertly killed a mealtime conversation with one of the most horrible sentences music-lovers could ever hear: “The Beatles suck and have no relevance to what music is today.” One of my friends almost socked him in the nose.

I took time to imagine why he would have said something like this and realized that music had never played a part in his life at all. It’s almost so sad it’s sickening. I couldn’t imagine my childhood without long bouts of radio tunage, or my school without band, or church without the music school. But his life…he hardly listened to radio, never partook in school supported music, and doesn’t go to church (which is fine, but I’d miss that part of my musical education greatly). He even wrote a twenty page paper on why schools shouldn’t teach music.

This particular rant to be continued later as it is long, the time is late, and I have a wonderful person to warm me up.

I wish a good time to all of those vacationing in those warm paradises down South and good luck to those volunteering their time over the break.

I for one am going home to see my family, which I think is the best vacation I could have. Since I lost my car, I have been away from home for six weeks; the longest time away from home for me. Wouldn’t be too bad, but my parents had a baby a semester into my college life, so I love going home and playing with my new sister. She’s learned how to walk since I’ve been home last, so I think this will be the best spring break ever!

So this time the weathermen weren’t just freaking out, the weather really was that bad. And I drove in it. Until I lost traction and slid into the back of a semi. No one was hurt, but my car is totaled.

The accident itself wasn’t that stressful. We weren’t going more than 15 mph and we had help immediately. The police, passersby, and the tow company were all so helpful that I really didn’t feel like I was ever in any real danger.

The real issues started happening when I had to figure out what to do after the accident. Insurance, towing, the adjuster, and selling my vehicle to the salvage yards has been nothing but frustrating and confusing. I have never been in any situation that requires this kind of work and they certainly don’t tell you what to do in drivers ed.

I have been writing down what I need to do in case this ever happens again. Now I know what mistakes I made and what to do step by step. I hope I never have to use this information again, but it’ll be my mental insurance.

Well, we’re all back and ready for classes tomorrow morning (or afternoon if you lucked into one of those schedules). Things seem lighthearted and stressed all at the same time. I’m looking forward to classes tomorrow, while nervous as well.

I’m also staying up too late for my own good again, so this is going to be a really short entry. Goodnight, all.

I woke up this morning, rolled over and turned on the news to see if the roads were clear. Ms. Morning Meteorologist started telling me how traffic was going to be backed up (I laughed, gridlock doesn’t even happen during multiple-car crashes here.) and visibility was currently near zero (I laughed again, it wasn’t even snowing yet and I could see to the river in the dark.) She then went on to say how three inches of snow was going to fall in the next few hours and how everyone should consider the option of just staying home for the day.

So, now, a few hours later, it is lightly and slowly snowing, painting a pretty picture out my front window. About a quarter inch has fallen and there is no wind. Ms. MM has been replaced by Mr. National Forecaster on the TV, still trying to tell me that the weather is ready to do us all in.

I’ve been wondering… are the newscasters being unduly dramatic for ratings, did they move from somewhere with milder weather, am I numbed to the severity of the weather driving my winterized utility truck, or are they responding to local idiocy? We did have about 30 people die in this state alone during the last “storm” (read: freezing rain and a bit of wind) most in high-speed crashes and freezing in their stranded vehicles.

Oh well, even if it does get “bad”, I’m confidently prepared. Even if I somehow end up on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere I could survive for a few days comfortably (if annoyingly) in my truck cab (not that I’d have to with a little device called a cell phone) if worse came to worst. Maybe the news station should pass out small winter car kits and safety info so less people would die out in the “cold”.

Or, as I just saw on the TV, the quarter of people on the road not wearing their seatbelts should start buckling up!