At this time of year, the blog is usually full of ruminations on the birth of Christ (like this entry) or self-pity wallowings (like this rather plaintive entry or this poem from last year). But right now I have neither the time nor energy to be deeply profound nor (believe it or not) deeply self-centered.

So I thought I’d share, as rather paltry gifts, a few links to things I’ve loved recently; you may find them interesting!

First, for anyone who like me has been completely annoyed by (what I am calling) the “Dawkins Meme” of recent months, I want to give this article–a review of Dawkins’ new book by Terry Eagleton (who’s not, I don’t think, a Christian). The problem with Dawkins is not that he’s wrong–if we were to quantify beliefs, I’d probably agree with more of his than your average fundamentalist Christian–though certainly some basic ones differ. The problem is, as Eagleton says, his unwillingness to see surfacely-nuanced differences in “religious” systems that actually have huge under-the-hood ramifications.

Second, to all and sundry, I want to gift two podcasts done by St Paul’s Theological Centre in London, which happen to be interviews with NT Wright. The first podcast is on gnosticism, and the second podcast is on, among other things, “apocalypse”. I would go so far as to make the second one mandatory listening for any thoughtful Christian; it’s that good.

I have to admit, of course, that I’m drinking the NT Wright Kool-Aid at the moment. I’ve been reading his Christian Origins and the Question of God series, and am almost done with the second (long) volume, on Jesus. It’s been one of the most groundbreaking works I’ve read in a while. Last year I read some Kierkegaard and reflected that he had done more than anyone to re-affirm my love of Scripture as something worth remaining conversant with. Now, I’d say the same thing about NT Wright; I feel that I’ve been given a whole new (and better) way of reading the gospels (and much of the Old Testament). It seems as though I was dealing with something two-dimensional, and now the text has sprung to life amidst a vibrant and colorful context. My exegeses of almost every parable and saying of Jesus have been subtly, if not fundamentally, alered, and many things now just make sense that were opaque before.

This isn’t to say that Wright is correct on all his points (though as a novice in historical studies it’s hard for me to launch a critique), but rather that the overall story he is weaving answers, it seems, more questions than any other view I’ve come across. It has the result, of course, of turning much conventional “Christian” (particularly western fundamentalist) wisdom on its head–a result I’m amenable to in any case. So, if you are a Christian who cares about the content of your beliefs and whether or not they make sense, read these books.

Third and finally, I have a gift for lovers of language learning. I recently discovered that the iTunes music store has many language-learning podcasts available for free download. I found one for German that has 100 lessons, each ~15 minutes long. That’s essentially a 25-hour language course, free! I discovered these podcasts from a very helpful list of language-learning podcasts. From what it looks like, iTunes has a lot more that didn’t make this list, so I’m sure further exploration would be fruitful.

So again, I wish all of you a very happy Christmas, focused indeed on reflection on the having-already-come of the Messiah, and the having-already-been-inaugurated of the Kingdom of God. I leave you, therefore, with this excerpt from an article by CS Lewis (one that my family reads every Christmas Eve), which pretty much sums up my feelings about this time of year:

But I myself conversed with a priest in one of these temples and asked him why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas; for it appeared to me inconvenient. But the priest replied, “It is not lawful, O stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left.” And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, “It is, O Stranger, a racket”; using (as I suppose) the words of some oracle and speaking unintelligibly to me (for a racket is an instrument which the barbarians use in a game called tennis).

But what Hecataeus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the same, is not credible. For first, the pictures which are stamped on the Exmas-cards have nothing to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Crissmas. And secondly, the most part of the Niatirbians, not believing the religion of the few, nevertheless send the gifts and cards and participate in the Rush and drink, wearing paper caps. But it is not likely that men, even being barbarians, should suffer so many and great things in honour of a god they do not believe in.

First, in trying to assist Nyffy with his desire to one day become the Brewmaster of Heaven, a contingent of my friends spent some time this last weekend brewing a batch of Futurebeer:

The current state of Futurebeer

Futurebeer is beer, after a while. It is not yet, however. It’s that same mysterious “already but not yet” we find with the kingdom of God. Anyway, it was fun to go through a process involving (mostly) natural ingredients that will culminate in pure enjoyment after a period of care and waiting. Being a creative person who works mostly with digital or musical media, I was very glad to work with actual substances to create a product. It’s sort of like the joy I have found in cooking nice meals, only greater due to the extended period of time involved in the process.

Second, I received in the mail from Amazon the first three books in NT Wright’s massive “Question of God” undertaking, beginning with The New Testament and the People of God. After hearing much about these works and reading some other stuff of Wright’s, I’m very excited to go on an extended journey of engagement with history, theology, and literary criticism on issues surrounding the origins of Christianity. Thankfully, I’ve finished Alister McGrath’s likewise-authoritative critical-realism-inspired trilogy on scientific theology, so I now have room for another expedition. You will no doubt be hearing various thoughts on the books here, which is why I thought I’d give forewarning. As a bit of a taste, here’s a paragraph from the introduction:

The New Testament has not been around as long as the land of Israel, but in other ways there are remarkable parallels. It is a small book, smaller than anybody else’s holy book, small enough to be read through in a day or two. But it has had an importance belied by its slim appearance. It has again and again been a battleground for warring armies. Sometimes they have come to plunder its streasures for their own use, or to annex bits of its territory as part of a larger empire in need of a few extra strategic mountains, especially holy ones. Somestimes they have come to fight their private battles on neutral territory, finding in the debates about a book or a passage a convenient place to stage a war which is really between two worldviews or philosophies, themselves comparatively unrelated to the New Testament and its concerns. There are many places whose fragile beauty has been trampled by heavy-footed exegetes in search of a Greek root, a quick sermon, or a political slogan. And yet it has remained a powerful and evocative book, full of delicacy and majesty, tears and laughter.

What ought one to do with the New Testament? We may take it for granted that it will be no good trying to prevent its still being used as a battleground. No border fences would be strong enough to keep out the philosophers, the philologists, the politicians and the casual tourists; nor should we erect them if they were. There are many who have come to pilfer and have stayed to be pilgrims. To place all or part of this book within a sacred enclosure would be to invite a dominical rebuke: my house is to be a house of prayer for all the nations. Past attempts to keep it for one group only–the take-over bids by the scholars and the pietists, the fundamentalists and the armchair social workers–have ended with unseemly battles, the equivalent of the sad struggle for the control of Holy Places in the land of israel. This book is a book of wisdom for all peoples, but we have made it a den of scholarship, or of a narrow, hard and exclusive piety.

Inspiring, no?

Third, I am going to Switzerland next week. I would like to get a good digital SLR camera before then. Anyone have one they want to sell? Or any recommendations?

Fourth, I wanted to upload something to YouTube, but only have 3 or 4 home videos on my computer. Only one happened to be appropriately flattering of myself, and since the purpose of the Internet is for people to upload flattering things, I chose to throw it in to the churning mill. It’s from last year in Costa Rica when Justin turned on the camera and told me to go catch a frisbee in the ocean. You can see the video here. After uploading I found many videos of real ultimate frisbee layouts, which were much more impressive. So watch those too.

Until next time, this has been your beer, academic theology, travel, and sports update. Cheers.

In roughly chronological order:

• I went to Colorado for the Oltrogge family reunion (that’s my mom’s side). We spent most of our time out in the mountains near Winter Park. It was great to reconnect with family I hadn’t seen in a long time, and see places of importance from the past (my great-grand-relations were more or less ranchers in the mountains of Colorado, which I suppose I knew but never really considered). One day we took a drive through Rocky Mountain National Park, and it was breathtaking:

  

• The day I returned from Denver, I hopped in Trent’s car, and we drove down to Santa Barbara in order to prepare for his upcoming bachelor party in Mexico. The following day, we caravanned south, through dreaded LA, San Diego, and across the border. Our destination was 30 miles south at a hotel called “La Fonda”, where we had an intensely awesome weekend with close on 40 guys. Highlights included “La Fonda Trifecta” (a very serious volleyball, horseshoes, and bocce ball tournament, in which my team got 2nd place), eating every meal in the hotel restaurant which was set on a cliff overlooking the ocean, unlimited margaritas and beer, shooting very dangerous rockets into hotel rooms from the beach (accidentally?), and 18 holes of beautiful ocean-side golf (at which I sucked very badly).

  La Fonda from the beach

  Our base of operations

  One of many beautiful sunsets

• Upon return from Mexico, I noticed that my Powerbook was not charging correctly–one of my batteries was dead and the computer would not run with it in, or charge it. With another battery in place, the computer would run, but the battery would not charge. After a phone call to Apple support, during which they had me press many combinations of buttons, the computer would no longer start at all, regardless of battery or adapter state. This was worrisome, because everything that I create or produce, whether for work or otherwise, is done on that computer. So Apple said they would fix it, and sent me a box in which to mail the computer to them. Of course, I foolishly hadn’t made a backup of my hard drive before talking to Apple on the phone, and they make no guarantees that your hard drive will not be wiped, so I was in a pickle. While figuring that out, I began using my PC laptop for e-mail and such things. Less than 24 hours after my Powerbook died, my PC hard drive inexplicably started making loud clicking noises, and died. The BIOS couldn’t even recognize it in order to format it. Thus a week went by computer-less while I tried to figure out how to get the data off my Powerbook drive before sending it to Apple. In the end, I bought a small hard drive enclosure, took apart my Powerbook and got the drive out, put it in the enclosure, and was able to use a friend’s computer to transfer data from the enclosed laptop drive to my backup drive. (After I bought one enclosure which was faulty, of course, causing me to fear my data had been lost forever).

  As it turns out, it’s kind of a delicate and time-consuming process to open up a Powerbook

• In the middle of the computer fiasco, a couple cool things happened. First, I got a CD in the mail from my brother, which happened to be significant because it was the final mix of our most recent album, Hope (A Sliver, Like The Moon). Finally, months of hard work was over, and we had 6 kick-ass songs done! I look forward to pointing to some songs from here as soon as some non-recording type work is finished. Also, we’ve persuaded the design skillz master Chris Nyffeler himself to once again work on cover art for us. Stay tuned for more information.

• I also went with Dan to Tuolumne (in Yosemite) to tackle a climb we’d been thinking about doing for a while. It was called Regular Route, on Fairview Dome. It was 12 pitches to the top, most of which were technically easy, but some of which were quite challenging for me (it didn’t help that some residual snowmelt in the cracks meant for some slippery climbing at points), partly in virtue of the endurance, partly in virtue of the techniques required (much of it was crack climbing / laybacking, which I have not done much of).

  Looking up at the second pitch, you can see Dan as the tiny orange blur near the middle

  All in all, it was the best outdoor climb I’ve done, with some very memorable parts, including a 5.9 roof move, which, when performed 500 feet above the deck, was exhilirating. The last couple pitches were simul-climbed, which I’ve also never done before, and so required a great deal of concentration and focus. We took almost 7 hours to do the climb, but it was a beautiful day (I alternated between being cold and hot, so I suppose the temperature was ideal) and was exceedingly memorable.

  Recovering on the top, before the walk down the backside of the dome

  One of many incredible views from the top

• After returning from Yosemite, I conscripted my parents and sister, who were all at our place in SF, to come down to Palo Alto and help me put together my new room. I had been living with 4 other guys, but one was getting married and had moved out, so I no longer had to share a room with Justin. Glorious freedom was mine! I was excited about the prospects of designing my own space, and with the help of my parents and the local Ikea, I dare say we’ve created a very functional masterpiece in the small space.

  The all-important reading area: bookshelf, chair, light, and a place to put a cold beverage

  The under-the-lofted-bed desk, with record player + LPs, my “mega-amp”, importantly-displayed tobacco paraphernalia, bike storage, keyboard, and place to work on a computer or write

  The piece-de-resistance: track lighting from Ikea that I installed! I love track lighting with a passion

• The day we put my room together, I went back up to SF to prepare to travel once more–this time back to Denver for Trent and Natalie’s wedding. I had the honor of being in the (very large) wedding party, and so the weekend was full of meaningful and fun events, as can only be mixed appropriately when two families come together who dearly love both God and light-hearted enjoyment. The wedding ceremony itself was somewhat haphazard, involving a reluctant flower girl, a forgetful minister, a fainting bridesmaid, and an ill-timed best man’s joke, but such variegations were soon forgotten, and the reception was what one might call “epic”. Between the unlimited Fat Tire on draft and the many hours of dancing in the company of friends old and new, the night was both tiring and satisfying–not to mention the pleasure felt to see to great friends begin a new life together. The day after was occupied with the World Cup final, which many of us watched at a crowded ESPN bar in downtown Denver. France, unfortunately, did not win (Zidane??), which gave me the honor of claiming a very improbable personal statistic: in 100% of World Cup games for which I actually desired that the winner be a specific country, the other country emerged victorious. I should have bet some money against myself! Of course, it felt weird to not have more World Cup games to look forward to, seeing as it had occupied so much of my time.

• Since the wedding I have spent my days somewhat less hectically: enjoying the summer, working, and going frequently to the climbing gym. Most of my free time has been taken up with learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails, to further the breadth of my coding knowledge and experience.

• Books: Importantly, I finally finished Alister McGrath’s Scientific Theology trilogy, consisting of Nature, Reality, and Theory. This is one of the more significant works from the perspective of Christian theology which I have ever read. I hope to be able to do an extended review at some point, but for now let’s just say I was extremely glad to deal for an extended length of time with issues at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and science. More than anyone I have read, Alister remains faithful to the central insights of all three disciplines. Remember, we have his Faith & Science course available here at Teleios. I also picked up and read Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church, which I’ve been meaning to go through for years. I was present at the Teleios course he taught on the same subject, but had never read the book. I was immensely glad I did, and anyone interested in evangelism, postmodernity, the heart of “church”, or church formation should read it. On a lighter note, I’ve started the last book of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence–a children’s fantasy series which I hadn’t read since 3rd grade, but had remembered to be excellent. Apparently my taste was good back then too, and I’ve enjoyed being immersed for short periods of time in a world which existed only in my vague childhood memory. Finally (in books), Nyffy and I are almost done reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince out loud (a project we started last summer when the book came out). There was a long hiatus, but we’re back at it, and trying to remember who all the characters are. We’re near the end, and some very shocking things have happened, which we’re not sure about.

• Music: the summer has been good for new music, and I took that opportunity to make a 2-disc compilation for my friends showcasing such new music (and various other tracks particularly appropriate for summer listening, even if from years past). I’m very proud of the compilation, which I called “Summer of Rock”. Anyway, here’s a short list of some bands that have new albums I’ve enjoyed this summer: Band of Horses, Built to Spill, Dashboard Confessional, David Bazan, the Flaming Lips, Josh Ritter, Mat Kearney, Snow Patrol, Splendour Hyaline (!), Stars, The Stills, and Thrice. Check them out!

And there you have it. Summer 2006, so far. Hopefully various non-event-list-type entries coming soon. Thanks for reading!

It should be said also that we did have an excellent time, were in great physical condition (we rocked the climb and the altitude) and health for the duration, and got back a day early, safe and sound. These are all good things, and the whole experience was overwhelmingly positive. I’m sure Dan and I will be writing a full trip report to post at Summit Whitney, so I’ll post here when that happens. At that time we should have a number of awesome pictures, too.

About a day after I got back from Whitney, I left for Florida to be at work and with family for a week and a half or so. Since my brother David has gotten in to Duke law school and will be moving to Durham pretty shortly, we decided that Splendour Hyaline (which consists of the two of us) needed to make a new record, and fast. So apart from work, we’re pretty much in the studio (Spareroom Studios, that is). So far things are going great–we’re planning on releasing a 5 or 6 song EP. The recording quality we’re getting, both mechanically and in terms of performance, is light years beyond our previous attempts, so definitely stay tuned; we might post some unofficial mixes here or at our myspace page.

On another music-related note, you’ll notice a new sidebar on my blog, which consists of recently-played tracks from iTunes. All e4 blogs now have the ability to get data from last.fm if you have a last.fm username and some implementation of AudioScrobbler (downloads here for all platforms). If you’ve never heard of last.fm, you should check it out–it’s a cool web application that tracks your music listening and gives you cool statistics about it, suggests new artists, and connects you with people with similar taste. All that is to say, if I’ve been listening to iTunes recently (and had an internet connection), you should now be able to see that info on my blog! (If you also have an e4 blog, just go to the weblog config page and put in your last.fm username to take advantage of this feature too).

Here it is, exactly as I wrote it out over the 10-day adventure (any editorial additions or comments will be italicized and in brackets):

Things that are true

Things that are true, honest, bare, stripped down, inspired. The result of travel, solitude, conversation, thought, pain.

1. I love languages. I love being in places where there are many spoken. I love learning them. I love reading them. I love thinking about words, their histories, their variants.

2. I love being overseas. I love being in a place where I know so little that my goal is to understand. In the States, I criticize. In Greece, I try to understand. This is better. I don’t know the rules of the game, so I can’t judge people or systems. [For example,] I don’t know what faith means here, so I can’t judge. It is a relief.

3. I love foreign women. I love it when we catch eyes. We can’t understand each other, but there is a connection. I want to understand…I want to progress in knowing. Maybe a foreign woman is not necessary for this, but there is some real, obvious symbolism in the juxtaposition of languages and cultures that makes me think: here, there is something in which I can progress in understanding.

4. I really want someone to love. I long and yearn for the possibility of a caress or kiss–these physical realities are central and important to me, and I feel deprived of them. I know they must correspond to emotional and spiritual realities, but I am blessed with friends and companions so much that I do not feel deprived in those areas. Thus right now the daydreams focus on the physical–not meaning sexual–since it is what I lack.

5. I love solitude. I am beginning to realize this again after years of growing in social skill. I love community, but at the root I am an individual, and I need time alone. To think, to play music [without wondering if I am annoying roommates or neighbors, without being afraid to sing loud], to wonder, to be sad, to pray… I think I have been deprived of this lately. What I need is radical, intense community, and radical, intense solitude. Recently, I have had neither. Even when I am married, solitude will be important to me. Separation and union, separation and union–Riddle-maker of Hed style [which won’t make sense to any of you unless you read this book]. Is this healthy? In any case it is new–in relationships I am usually clingy–tending toward perpetual union. But now I taste the desire for solitude and space even in that [most intimate] relationship.

6. I am ashamed of Christian symbols. The Bible on the table, the “I went to Bible school,” the cross necklace, the mentioning of Christian band names, etc… I am afraid when a stranger sees or hears these things on/about me or someone I am with, they will assume I am a certain way–corresponding to an image of a Christian they have in their head. But I am almost certainly nothing like that at all! [Maybe the more general observation is that] I want no one to be able to stereotype me in ways I don’t encourage. Is this possible? Should I care? Is this feeling tantamount to being ashamed of Christ?

7. In social situations, I am a paradox. I have two contradictory drives. One is to avoid notice and attention–to be like everyone else–to fit in. Another is to insist that I am different–to stand out. Maybe the rule of thumb is this: in situations where people would think I am the same as those around me (church, for example), I insist on my difference. And in situations where people would think that I am different (Greece, for example), I do all I can to avoid this attention–to blend in.

8. In general, I am very wary of people making assumptions about me. In fact, I hate it. For example, I am easily annoyed on this trip with my sister partly because I see people assuming that we are dating/engaged/married (she has a promise ring on her wedding ring finger which could be mistaken for something else). It really rubs me raw–not sure if it has anything to do with Rachel or if it would be the same with anyone. [After reflection, I’m thinking the latter…it is just hard to flirt with girls if they think I am with the person who is actually my sister] 9. I love exploring. I love going places other people aren’t, especially if it involves difficulty. I love doing it alone, and finding secret hidden treasures! (Or places, views, moments…)

10. I love moving. I love motion. Whether running, biking, driving, mopedding, sailing, ferrying, flying, swimming…. I love the feel of wind or water against me. I especially love it when I am controlling the motion–I have a natural affinity for driving, flying, boating, piloting anything [and by affinity I don’t mean skill, but rather something more like “joy”]. And, I always want to do these things as fast as possible. It seems beautiful to combine speed and controlled motion. I will always choose such activities over standing still.

11. When I am learning languages, random words that I recently learned tend to pop into my head, and I roll them over and over–I don’t forget these words, but I do forget others.

12. I need someone who is skilled at drawing me gently out of the depths of myself at the right times. Those depths are beautiful, but can be suffocating. In return I will draw her in to that world where there is much wonder to be experienced.

13. I am deeply and irrevocably romantic (though it may only last until I find a girl, or she finds me). Every time I go outside, or ride a bus, or fly on an airplane, or whatever, I believe with a real hope that girl X who sits next to me has been divinely put there so that we can start a beautiful story. Just like how all romantic movies begin.

14. I do not know if my desire to be in love is selfish. [By which I mean, I do not know if it is purely selfish] 15. I am not accurate at guessing girls’ ages. Or guys’, for that matter….

16. Some people inspire me to think great thoughts–they don’t think the thoughts themselves, necessarily, but rather spur me towards an exciting personal intellectual discovery. Some people inspire me to dream great things in areas other than intellectual (say spiritual, social). Some people, on the other hand, frustrate me, and leave me feeling like I’ve gone nowhere, or backwards. Others don’t have either of these effects. Two observations: (1) After being around the inspiring kind of person, it is such an incredible experience that I unavoidably want that in a girlfriend/wife. (2) I can understand the need to be around the frustrating and ambivalent types, but right now I feel that those are the strong majority of people who surround me. This causes unhappiness.

17. I really want a dog.

18. I have an inflated view of my appearance. On the inside I feel dramatic, dark, mysterious, and enticing. I walk around feeling/imagining myself this way. When I see pictures of myself, I am always surprised at how disappointingly not like this image I am. It does not lower my self-esteem, however, because as soon as my eyes leave the photo, I believe I am the image again. Thus my self-esteem is very good, but based on a lie. That’s referring to my facial appearance, hair, mannerisms, etc… i.e., things I can’t easily change. Things I can change via exercise, like being ripped/fast/strong/sexy, I “fix”. But that’s not what I mean when I talk about “image”.

19. When I hear stories of great and heroic deeds or discoveries, or about great leaders or thinkers of the past, there is a deep resonance in my heart and soul. Maybe I have just read too much fantasy, but I believe I have a high and important destiny. Thus when I look around and see that this is in all likelihood an illusion (there are no more real adventures to be had), I am deeply saddened. The progress of humanity has destroyed the possibility for true individual greatness, and so I feel that I was born for another time and place; here and now, greatness is dead.

20. I identify with archetypes and archaic or mythical roles and persons–not real people living here and now.

21. It is much easier for me to flirt with girls in other cultures than in the States.

22. I have a high opinion of how responsible I would be with a lot of power, and the revolutionarily Christian way I would use it for good.

23. I can do everything, but the world is set up for people to do just one thing.

24. Going out for the sake of going out is expensive and often a disappointing waste of time. But it is all some people do.

25. Music is my great companion and comfort, the way that I believe God loves me. I believe another such doorway will open when I fall in love with a girl. For now, it is music.

26. I love logic, symbols, and mathematics.

27. It never occurred to me until recently that I might not become an academic.

28. Of all the cultures I have traveled to, I find that Americans have the worst attitudes and are the least helpful in service roles.

29. I form habits extremely quickly, but discard them much less quickly. (The first part relative to others). Hence I often force myself to switch things up, arbitrarily, in minor issues.

There ended the list from the trip. But in the last few days, I would have added one more (if only to round it out to 30):

30. For me, joy is inextricably linked to hope. If am hopeful, I have joy. If I am hopeless, I do not. For any number of reasons, I have not been hopeful for over 4 months, and that explains why joy has also been absent. This is kind of a problem–hope has to do with the future, but joy is supposed to be concerned with the present. But it explains why I always like to have some trip or something fun on the horizon to look forward to–it ensures that there will always be a minimum of joy in my life.

I was hoping that maybe the process of creating this admittedly random list might help me with my current life dilemma, which is that, given that there are no practical limitations on where I might live and what I might do next year, where should I go, and what should I do? We could make it a binary dilemma: should I stay here and do what I’m doing now, or not? As should now be apparent if you read the list, there does seem to be something in me that wants to live in another country, for example, or devote myself to learning a new language. The problem is that such a choice would come with all kinds of sacrifices…and I don’t know how to navigate them.

In the end I don’t know if the list helped. As I should have expected would be the case, I just feel more confused. Any ideas? Well, I hope the foregoing has been illuminating as regards my personality; I am certainly happy with it as the fruit of my solitude during the trip.

• Read Reality by McGrath
• Work on a song / play guitar
• Play Half-Life 2 on my newly reconstructed PC
• Go next door and watch the Olympics
• Watch a movie
• Sleep early
• Clean up / organize my bedroom
• Work on my constructed language Enaselvai
• Keep working on my modern Greek lessons (in preparation for trip to Athens)
• Write overdue e-mails
• Taxes
• Put my new budget into Quicken
• Drink alcohol
• Get my old reconstruction of English letters out and re-learn it so I can write in “code” again
• Write a weblog entry on the relationship between physical and spiritual training
• Test the current e4 client
• Get my piano (keyboard) out and play beautiful droning melodies until I am lulled to sleep
• Listen to the new Paste sampler

…and I could keep going. You can see I have literally dozens of options. Unfortunately, I’ve sat here in front of my computer for over 30 minutes just thinking about what to do–and so drain the sands from the hourglass of opportunity. All of these possibilities range from work-related to completely fun/useless, from productive to escapist, but I’m finding it impossible to settle on one thing. Maybe it’s the pain of not being able to do others that keeps me from doing one? I’m not sure. Anyway, I thought that while I was sitting here experiencing that pain I might as well chronicle it, so that the absurdity will be made known to the world.

Well, it looks like salvation has come in the form of a phone call–turns out ski jumping is on the Olympics now, and I’ve been saying all week how I want to watch it, so my choice has been made. But we can make this entry fun yet–out of the list of options I listed, which one would you have picked? Don’t be shy now!

• Semifreddis cinnamon swirl bread
• Drinking tea again, since it’s cold enough to
• The Velvet Teen
• Jimmy Eat World’s Stay on My Side Tonight EP
• Takk
• Jed’s Other Poem
• Installing Kubuntu and trying to get wireless drivers working
• Ndiswrapper (see previous item)
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
• Ruby on Rails
• Cron + PHP for the win in easy archive/backup
• “tail -f access_log | grep IP” for tracking use patterns on this site in real time, and “tail -f access_log” in general for a good procrastination method
• The World of Warcraft grind
• Flaming Dr. Peppers
• The Palo Alto Moonlight 10k (for complicated reasons having to do with not paying the sign-up fee, I ran as “Ryan Frederick”, in the 30-39 division, though I am still only 23)
• Intense ultimate frisbee with friends
• Dropping temperatures and overcast skies
• Pad Thai all the time
• Harry Potter VI out loud with Nyffy (the Chris one)
• The Firefly Complete Series
• Arrested Development - Season One
• favicon.ico
• Pizza + beer + WoW with my brother at my family’s place in San Francisco
• Uncomfortable honesty
• A dream in progress
• Strong community
• Hope that doesn’t die for some reason

(OK, I did get a little deep at the end; I couldn’t help it!)

So while September 26 is no longer a cause for unbridled joy and wondering if I may have some good presents waiting, it is of course a good excuse to do things like take a midnight shot of sub-30-degree vodka. Mmmm.

Somewhat randomly and incidentally, yesterday and today were the first days I’ve taken any time in the last few years to work on Enaselvai, my constructed language. Many people do not know I have a constructed language, and for their sake, I prefer to keep it that way. I find that people cannot handle this knowledge gracefully. Anyway, things have remained largely static over the last few years, but for some reason I felt emotionally compelled to work on it a bit.

Everyone knows that artists create art as an emotional/intellectual response to things they are going through. I do this with music quite often, and understandably, as many artists are musicians. I also have this tendency to create linguistic art–not art with words, but words themselves as art. So cracking open the Enaselvai dictionary and going on a word-creation spree is no doubt my artistic response to something that is happening right now or moving me in some way; not sure what.

But anyway I thought I’d give you all, hobbit-fashion, a birthday present on this day; a fresh, brand-new sentence in Enaselvai, never before existing! It’s always exciting to write these sentences, like fresh tracks in a new linguistic snowfall…but I’ve catalogued this feeling elsewhere.

It’s actually a translation of a Bible verse, though which one I’m not going to say. It’s not a particularly meaningful verse anyway, but I wanted a translation project, and I wanted something that I am in some ways or in some senses hoping will characterize the upcoming year for me. Here it is:

Ecó nai le’potényue se’elódum, lea’beréleose, ter vi vánlea berélec io lairévarse.

Kudos to anyone who can guess what verse it is. I followed the Greek syntax pretty nearly, but that’s not a very good clue. Also, don’t guess out loud.

Here’s a better clue; a veritable Rosetta stone and a marvelously alliterative sentence in Enaselvai–possibly the first one-line poem in the history of the language!

Vi van vódca.

Which of course means, “Vodka is good.” Slainte!

In other news, my theme song has officially changed. For the year following my 22nd birthday, it was the rather in-hindsight-unappropriately-but-hopefully-named “Fell In Love At 22”, by Starflyer 59. Now, it is the more numeric but more appropriately-named “23”, from the recent Jimmy Eat World album. I think it’s going to be a good theme song, and while there’s not quite the optimism in the title, I think I can live with that.

In my however many years of being in Palo Alto for the second half of September, it has never rained even once. And for my however many years of going to Stanford, it has thundered at most once a year, always faint and fleeting.

What does this mean? Nothing at all probably, but it is very exciting to let the imagination run wild (in a Day After Tomorrow sense); maybe this global warming thing is actually going to change our climate… How long can we hack away at our ties to the earth before it comes back to bite us?

Podornot is a fun mash-up of the new podcasting trend (internet buzz, anyone?) and the old Internet time-wasting stand-by, Hot or not.

The idea is to generate a random audio experience; you never know what you’re going to get! But as you go through, you can rate the podcasts you hear, and maybe someday we will use this information to create lists of the hottest podcasts on the web. So go to the site and check it out!

Graphic/visual design right now done by me and Justin, hopefully to be improved in the near future.

Anyway, it’s fun to have an idea, to implement it rapidly, and to see it pretty much near completion in a short amount of time. Go visit!

Recently I’ve taken to a strategy which has been used, to great effect, by almost every software giant in existence. This strategy doesn’t so much solve the workday synchronization problem (as getting up at 4:30 am would, for example), but instead says that, actually, desynchronization is the solution! Namely: around-the-clock development.

This is how it works:

At 6am Eastern, Joe and Pavi get to work at Teleios headquarters. They put in a good 8 hours of work, writing new code and testing code that I’ve written previously. In the course of this writing and testing, they come up with a number of bugs having to do with my web app or with the integration process.

Then, around 12pm Pacific, I stumble out of bed and wander bleary-eyed in my underwear to my computer downstairs, where I check my e-mail and immediately wish I hadn’t. I’m greeted by the results of Teleios’ hard labor the previous day (well, it’s the same calendar day, but I got up so late it’s effectively after their work day), namely a huge list of bugs for me to squash.

So I spend a good 4-5 hours fixing bugs and wondering when it was that I wrote that particular line of code and was I on drugs at the time? About then it’s dinner time, so I’ll do that and hang out with people, play sports or games or talk or whatever. Then around 10pm-12am, I’ll put in another few hours of work, and this is when I code new features, since all the previous part of the day has been spent on fixing old ones.

Sometimes I’ll code (like I did a few days ago) to 3am, which is just about when Joe and Pavi are getting into the office in Florida. Now it’s their turn to be greeted by a bunch of new code which may or may not play nice with their own respective pieces of software!

In this way the proverbial sun never sets on the Teleios workday.

Rawr!

(Can I just say I love that Wikipedia is also a World of Warcraft strategy guide?)

Just wanted to drop a line and say hello–hope you folks get along well without me while I’m gone. Doubt I’ll have internet outside of San Jose here–we’re going to some remote (and awesome) hot springs and beaches starting tomorrow.

So far Costa Rica is a cool place–very Centroamericano, and the country saying is–“Pura Vida”. I love it.

See you guys in some days! (I forget how many)

I was looking at all the different landing sites, and I was surprised to see, as I looked very close, that the moon is actually made of yellow cheese! Who would have thought?

Thanks, Google, for this huge contribution to modern astronomy.

**What follows is a rather uninteresting account of some nerd stuff**

For instance, here I am on a Sunday night in Wisconsin about to go to my grandmother’s 80th birthday. I’ve spent the past few weeks getting this fun server back into shape after it practically exploded with Plesk/PHP5/Apache/MySQL conflicts and incompatibilities.

The kind people at [insert our hosting provider’s name here], where we host, went back and forth, fixing one problem and breaking something else in the meantime, to the extent that I resorted to several ultimatums demanding a working server or I’d take my business elsewhere, etc…

Well, a week or so ago, things finally settled down, PHP started working (which is important, because it is what is running the scripts that make up this application), MySQL stopped not working (which is also important, because it is the database server which holds all the information in this web application), and the little server ecosystem was more or less at peace. So I’d gone back to something I actually know a little about, which is coding, glad that my ignorance at web server administration had ceased being put to the test.

But like I said, here I am on a Sunday night in Wisconsin, and all of a sudden I get an IM from Faith: “Uh, what happened to the server?”. Whoops–all PHP scripts are now returning an error 52, which is a “no data” error. I take a look at Apache’s error logs, and all I see is a bunch of “segmented execution fault” thread errors. I have no idea what this means, because these aren’t sensible web-server errors, but instead just signify that some binary somewhere blew up somehow.

To make things really awesome, my whole team is actually at work on this Sunday night, because tomorrow is a Big Day. It’s one of those Days where the work we are doing actually needs to work, behave, not have bugs, integrate well, and so forth. I can’t say exactly why it’s a Big Day, but it is. And now, my simple little web application isn’t working. It wouldn’t be so bad only from one perspective it’s really the glue that holds a lot of the online functionality for Teleios courses together. Whoops!

So we’re at T-minus some small number of hours, and my server blows up. I’m not too excited about my chances of getting actual tech support anytime soon, since the last time I had a problem it took two weeks to get it worked out. So I called our hosting company and asked about getting a new server ASAP, one with all the pieces working from the factory, instead of one that I hacked for a while then cried for help on, then got help that actually blew more stuff up, and so on. They said it was a no-go, as was our option for an OS reload and reinstall tonight, because, “I don’t even know if there are any guys that do OS reloads back there right now”.

Needless to say, we’re experiencing some major frustrations, as lots of testing needs to be done tonight and there’s no server to test on. So I plead with the tech support guy I’ve got on the phone, and he promises to take a look at things himself and fix it if he could. Meanwhile our backup plan is to hack together an in-house server for the Big Event and get a copy of this application installed there. Only thing is, I’ve never installed the application somewhere else, databases aren’t set up, data is not backed up, and… I can’t even have access to the in-house server because it’s…in-house! Meaning, behind a firewall in Orlando, and I’m in the middle of Dairyland, getting on a plane in a few hours where I won’t even have internet.

So I’m trying to remember how exactly to get this app running on a server, what all the parts are, how to set up the database, and kicking myself for not writing a nice little delivery script which would just install on command anywhere you wanted. I’m writing Joe a very detailed set of instructions on how to set all these things up, and hoping they’re detailed enough to get things right the first time, because if something goes wrong, well, I’m on a plane, and I can’t help.

Then, when everything seems most desperate, I get word from the tech support guys that they fixed the problem! They described it in detail to me, and I realized it’s something that I should have known how to fix myself (just a configuration file misload for apache), but couldn’t troubleshoot because I’m not that smart at linuxy stuff yet. I’d really like to be, so that I could actually handle some of these problems myself, but alas, I am not.

The story has a good ending, and has taught me some very valuable lessons about server administration; most importantly, don’t let them get screwed up. Because if you do that and try to fix them, you’ll probably break things worse. And then it’s all over!