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Kenya Journal Decides On Its Own Accord To Be Done Already

Tue, 20 May 2008 07:23:52 GMT

I took a handwritten journal over many of the Kenya trip events, and have compiled a final draft of the 50-page journal (that, if printed out, comes to around 33 pages typed). It's really really long, so except to come back if you plan on reading the entire thing. It took a long time to finally get hammered out, so I wouldn't be surprised if it necessitated bookmarking and checking back later!

Journal Entries of the March 2008 Kenya trip with Building Bridges Ministry.

Creativity 83%, HTML x31

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:52:33 GMT

83%

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Thursday, February 07, 2008

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:09:42 GMT

Important News about the Africa Trip!

We had a last-minute meeting about the Kenya trip on Tuesday night, where the leader made the tough call to swap out the destination -- changing it from Kenya (now too embroiled in nonsense) to Nigeria instead. He and another admin had planned to go to Nigeria later on after the Kenya excursion but opted to swap them out and go to Kenya after they settle down more. Nigeria is the most populated country in Africa, and is in need of water wells to be drilled, which we will be doing. There is no change in cost, but will require us to leave two days earlier than planned, so that the outgoing flight will be cheaper, to compensate for costs of an otherwise unnecessary local in-country flight by planes that do not normally fly on weekends. The leaders have both been there multiple times, and know all the stops and many many of the locals. I spoke with a fellow newbie who took a similar trip in 2000 to Nigeria with them (Building Bridges Ministry) and she said it was amazing and loads of fun. The water wells we will be drilling will give access to about 5,000 people per day that were otherwise without a clean source of water and had to dip from dirty open wells or directly from rivers.

http://www.buildingbridgesministry.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nigeria_sm02.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeria

Part of the trip will involve rummaging through deep-woods jungle area to visit villages and speak with/encourage locals. We are advised to wear khakis instead of jeans, for in case we were to somehow get them wet (such as wading across a stream) jeans take excessively longer to dry out. The ladies will be required to wear either capris or below-the-knee dresses due to local dress customs and having to wade through water on occasion. Many of the villages have never heard of Christ at all, and worship idols they make out of sticks and keep in their huts or front yard. One part will involve us traveling by native-fashioned canoes down a stretch of river (and thus having to travel back up the same way) but I think locals will be doing the navigation and rowing if any. Of the people going are at least 5 or 6 adult males (incl. me =P, two of which are age 40+), at least two high school gals (one of which has been to Africa before), and one or two women. We will be drilling water wells with man-powered equipment into soil that is largely sand and fairly pliable, then leaving the equipment with the locals to drill their own after we show them how to do it. They will also get a water tower (not much taller than a common american house's chimney) that will provide great water pressure for the thousands of villagers who will trek to the well for fresh clean ground water each day.

The weather is expected to be borderline sweltering tropical, comparable to Texas in mid-summer, but humid since it's on the coast. It is currently in the low 90's. We'll have plenty of purified bottled water, and you can bet I'll be keeping my hair tied up most of the time. I have read that taking garlic pills will keep insects at bay without smelling like garlic to humans, but we are advised to take plenty of pump-spray repellent. You can go to this link while we're gone and see how hot it is while we're there.

http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/NIXX0012.html

There will be cell phone reception nearly everywhere we go while we're there, with periodic shady spots, and opportunities to charge batteries and electronics where we will be staying (concrete/cinder-block houses). Although I can make international cell calls from my phone to outside the USA at no greater usage cost that a normal call, mine won't work with any of the towers once we're outside of the US. I plan on taking my GPS device.

I told the leader about my tremor issues, to see if I could avoid doing anything that required much brute strength else I might scarcely be able to stand up much less walk the distances needed (but I am good with walking/hiking normally) and he said I could film the experience (although I am still wary of that because of my unsteadiness =P) with a camera they always bring along. Washing will involve dipping water from a bucket and pouring it over oneself, in an enclosed area. We're advised to keep a few rolls of TP with us, although I have experience using leaves when out in the brush before (although I am not certain which leaves in Africa would be advisable!). The food will be chicken-rice-beans everywhere we go. I am a rice fiend, so it all sounds good to me.

The flights/journeys in the plan include from here (WFTX) to Dallas, then Dallas to London, London to Lagos (the most populated city in Nigeria), then east to Benin City (Nigeria), and then possibly to Warri to the south. Total travel time appx 24 hours. I'm not sure which parts will be flights once we get to Africa. BBM paid to have a boat built by locals for missionary use some time ago, that took months to construct, and cost around $300.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lagos+nigeria&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=0&ll=6.009459,4.86145&spn=4.167322,5.141602&z=8&iwloc=addr

The currency there is Nigerian Naira ("NGN") and the symbol looks like an N with two horizontal lines through it. There is presently about 117.55 Naira per $1.00 USD, making 1 Naira equal 0.8 (8/10ths) cents. There are 100 kobos in a naira.

http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi?Amount=1&From=USD&To=NGN

There was an issue of me having misplaced my passport, but I found it. It was still stuck in an image scanner I had used to scan/copy a picture of it to give to the leader for record-keeping, instead of where I usually kept it. The living room got mostly cleaned up in the process =P

A big chunk of the group that was going to go has decided to pass up Nigeria. The Mosaic bible study (that I'm a part of) had quite a number going when it was set for Kenya, but pulled out when the destination was changed. They had raised a fair sized amount of money to send their group to Kenya (by church member donations and fund raising) but instead opted to direct their funds to a feeding program in the same Kenya location that had already been ongoing (still thru BBM who doing the trip). Whereas before there was to be 20-30 people going, there are perhaps 7-9 still ob board. Even still, it should prove to be quite a good and worthwhile experience.

I plan to keep a handwritten journal throughout the journey as a bit of a keepsake and start it pretty soon. I've got to get a Hepatitis A immunization, and it is recommended I get a Yellow Fever and Cholera immunization also. Fun fun! We'll be taking Malaria pills a full week before the trip, the week during, and a week after. Apparently there is some kind of special med they will be bringing that is basically a catch-all just in case. They mentioned the name of the med to a nurse who was at one of the earlier meetings and she was like, "yeah, that'll pretty much cover anything you could get there" but I don't remember what it was called.

In addition to our regular baggage, we'll be taking along a slough of donated LifeStraws, which are drinking straws that have a super-efficient filter that you can use to drink river water or stank well water. They are designed to last from several months to a year, and are powered like a regular straw, through mouth suction. The contaminants stay within the straw's filter and can't pass through it. We won't be using them (we'll be taking here-locally bottled purified water) but will be giving them out to locals.

http://www.lifestraw.com/en/low/specs_low.asp
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4418/picture/13888/

The project leader will be making this trip his seventieth (70th) short-term mission trip, and naturally has oodles of experience going through international airport routines, issues with visas and passports, baggage weight limitations, logistics, etc. The official language of Nigeria is English, so there is not anticipated much of a language barrier. There are 4 primary religions in Nigeria, and the Islam sector seems to center largely in the norther regions. There is a sect of people who follow "Chrislam" (a funny combo of Islam-Christianity) that was founded in the city of Lagos in the 80's, the city we'll be landing in from the London flight.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0126/p01s04-woaf.html

The trip will be appx March 10 thru 25th, with the precised dates yet to be determined due to flight planning logistics currently ongoing. This permits the high schoolers/college students to not miss any/much school due to Spring Break. I'll update once more details are known =)

Teh boringest update yet

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:45:29 GMT

I'm currently hooked on yet another Facebook App, this one being the Scratch-and-Win app. You get 10 credits per day starting out, to buy some flash-based scratch-off tickets. There's three kinds of tickets that cost 1 credit each, one or two that cost 2 credits apiece, and another that costs 5 each. It's basically a matter of scratching off 9 spaces that contain a number, and matching three prize amounts. I win about 4/10 of the time. You win tokens, used in the game to buy prizes. Once you buy all of a certain type of prize, your daily credit allotment goes up so you can buy more per day. I've been shying away a little from Scrabulous, considering they're doing some lawsuit thing and I'm sure if I started up a bunch more they'd pull the plug in the middle of a game =P Don't let that stop you from requesting one from me, though!

I made a little ablestmage.com blog post in objection to the Scrabulous lawsuit, expressing my angst in Scrabble-tile messages. I've also uploaded a ton of trick/glitch/oddity videos for Halo 3, at my YouTube account. I'm up to the middle of season 3 of Grey's Anatomy, so I'm catching up fairly nicely. I finally found a Firefox plugin that lets me download items one at a time that (at last!) works with Rapidshare, so I'm not hogging bandwidth all the time with multiple files and I don't have to get up every few hours to set the next batch going. I had an issue today with Vista's DEP junk, and had to disable it. Which reminds me, I need to re-enabled it. Yikes.

I've been getting fairly odd sleeping hours lately. Last week or so I was staying up until 4am and waking up around 2pm. Lately I'm conking out at 2am and getting up around 12 noon. A night or two ago I could barely even sleep a wink, the twitches and tremors were on something fierce agsain. I slept some in the afternoon, but didn't get a whole lot the next night. It's 10pm now and I'm about to fall over I'm so sleepy =P

Good Idea Bad Idea: Weird eBay auction

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:55:15 GMT

I just have some unintentional knack for making people fussy with me =P heh

Wasted the entire day yesterday doing generally nothing at all. Developed an insane headache all of a sudden but it went away fairly quickly. Found a new favorite flower: the orange gerbera daisy. I bought two artificial ones at Hobby Lobby when their stems were half-off last week, and have them on the desk here. There sure are a lot of cuties at Hobby Lobby, too. Discovered that a guy I'd met once before works there, met him at a friend-gathering of sorts (mostly friends of a mutual friend) and we hit it off somewhat well considering we both speak French, although he is insanely better at it than I am. I can come up with a good response in French after like 4 minutes of figuring out what was just said in an "oh, duh! I should've known what that meant way faster" reaction =P

This week I hope I can get scheduled for two shots, a tetanus update and a Hep-A shot for the upcoming Kenya trip. The trip still seems half-and-half as far as whether it's on, although I know it is still full on, because I keep getting mixed impressions about whether the civil unrest is just overblown or really is something to avoid. In some articles, all the stores are closed.. but in others, tourists aren't having too much trouble with it.

Or leader dude, who will be making this March trip his seventieth short term mission trip, says he has near-daily contact with a bunch that are over there and they keep emphasizing that it's still OK to come down it seems. He said it's largely an issue between two major tribes that have a disagreement on a recent election tally, but that both tribes recognize the dire importance of missionaries and foreign assistant (like tourism) and have no issue with visitors bringing aid, since both tribes benefit. They agree than tourists and missionaries are off-limits from their political issues, so it seems like safe passage is very plausible. The lead guy also noted that our lodging is guarded by security personnel, so overnights should be no worry.

I'm considering making some sort of atypical eBay auction for messages that will be written in a notebook that will be taken to Kenya with me and then shredded and thrown into the landfill. They can be confessions, prayers, proclaimations of love, etc, and charge like $2 for each message, to help offset the costs of the trip. Good idea? Bad idea?

Kenya, dang it

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:31:05 GMT

The Kenya trip seems up in the air, for the moment. I don't have any new details, but at the moment many news outlet report the state of Kenya's civil unrest is anywhere from "the brink of civil war" to a few gang fights. There will be a meeting on Jan 3rd to discuss travel specs and answer questions. And a new twist has been added -- Charlotte Hoffman from KFDX is now on board to go, with cameraman also. And camera. I got into print journalism because I have a rather unbridled perturbation for broadcast journalism, but, we'll see what happens. Despite the turmoil in Kenya these days, the trip is still 3 months away, lots of things could happen by then. I may have to bone up on some Splinter Cell before I go, just in case things get.. unpleasant. heh

I was at Lowe's with dad to get a plumbing flooglebinder, and I was eyeing the PVC pipe section that is near there. I'm thinking of making some kind of lounge chair out of PVC pipe sections that would contour to a sloping lying position like some varieties of slick deck chairs. Because I can. I've long wanted to break into the wacky furniture scene, and just experiment with oddball materials. I'm a bit of a coffee table nerd, and one day asire to create some kind of table that is surfaced by Scrabble tiles, perhaps with legs that are in some shape evocative of the tile stands. I've bought old-timey Scrabble sets from garage sales for less than a buck each (maybe even total) and have quite a fatted ziplock full of tiles.

The topic of short stories came up during the regular Halo3/GuitarHero3 banter when Aaron & Kristin come over, to remind me that I have quite a number of them up online that I've neglected. I got to reading a few of them again, and suspect that sometime this month I shall submit them to a fiction magazine or two. I've submitted two in the past, and still have both of the rejection letters as a monument to actually having sent something off =P One of the rejection letters was for a story I really enjoyed writing but I can now no longer find any hint of it in any spiral or notebook I've written in, it seems completely and hopelessly lost. It was of a scientist aboard an orbiting space station witnessing a giant comet/meteor destroying earth, which was set on its particular earth-splitting trajectory by the deliberate harnessing of another comet and thus throwing off the pattern of the others. The captured comet's innards yielded a new revolutionary substance that transformed economic development on earth due to its widespread applicability to current technology, ended hunger, etc, but ultimately wiped us out because of the keystone-ness of that particular comet in maintaining a non-intersecting comet community, and this one scientist is presumably the last person alive to witness their final undoing, from orbit.

Other stories I've written include a college guy learning for the first time that there are tiny elephants living under kitchen sinks in north american households, but thinks his fellow dormmates are simply trying to prank him, to the overt contrary -- his dormmates routinely bringing in student after student to confirm their astonishment that the narrator never knew about them, eventually pressing the guy to call home to confirm the truth.

The story I want to submit is the arrival of a peculiar slip of paper in the mail, simply stating C2-C4, nothing else, no return address. The husband receiving it is perplexed and begins asking around to see what it means. Eleven days later, a chess piece arrives via duplicate packaging. Strange things begin happening when each piece arrives and eventually the police and media become involved in the perplexing issue, eventually turning into a chess game with a presumably supernatural opponent, upon which lives are at stake.

I've got a handful of movies to watch this week, which has been cutting back my keenness for updating the website. Had about 660 hits last week. On the agenda to watch is "Becoming Jane," the rest of "A Scanner Darkly" (which so far hasn't been even close to a thrill), "Protagonist" (one of those film festival types), a hideous-quality of "The Golden Compass" via cam rip, and "The Last Mimzy" which so far hasn't been very glorious unless you're into such cinematic vomit as "Zathura" -- it seemed to promise to be along the lines of "Matilda" but so far has been boring. Anyhow, perhaps more on those later.

Also for this week I've trying out a 6-pack of glass bottled Henry Weinhard's "Orange Cream" Gourmet Soda, for appx $4. Compare this price to Jones' Soda, at around $4 for a 4-pack. The labeling copy seemed a pinch impressive, so I decided to try for it. "We proudly present our Orange Cream Soda, hand-crafted with the finest and highest quality ingredients including a blend of select oranges, mandarins and real vanilla. Added complexity and character come from a blend of lemon, lime, Chinese ginger, nutmeg, and botanical extracts including lemon grass and angelica root," claims the label on the neck. It's caffiene-free and the only unusual items on the ingredients list are Erythorbic Acid, and Ester of Wood Rosin, which sounds like something one might brew in a cauldron with some webbed foot of newt. The taste itself is immediately recognizable as the pleasant taste otherwise better known perhaps as Orange Dreamsicle, and there is a bit of a middle-of-the-tongue aftertaste that is enjoyable. It's not as sharp as say, Barq's or Jones' Cream Soda, but it's good for the most part. It just doesn't really jump out at me as awesome, necessarily, but at the same time nothing to demand a refund over. Not the greatest value for a soda (but being better than bottled Jones is notable, though).

I've being playing loads and loads of "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" on the 360 lately, and even made a few video tutorials of how to get a crazy amount of gold and the best armor in the game within 15 minutes of starting out =P I've gotten pretty good feedback on it lately, actually, which I suspect may be due to the fact that lots of people probably got it for Christmas and want to figure stuff out faster. The trick to getting gold quickly is exploiting a glitch that lets you select a collection of the same scroll type (say, 12 of a kind) and then going to another item in the inventory and dropping it on the ground. The item you drop will actually drop the scroll multiple (in this case 12) instead of the single item you meant to drop. Therefore you can buy an expensive sword from a merchant, put it in your inventory and then drop twelve of them and sell all twelve back to him at a hefty sum, each. Once you've got enough gold, you go buy a certain staff across the street and go zap this one enemy that doesn't even put up a fight, and steal all her armor instead. Riches and power in 15 minutes! Here's the video -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGHP74tpqwk -- the drop down notes are me guiding through the process =DD

Kenya dig it?

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:38:23 GMT

t's been since December the 6th that I've been done with my regular job that I'd held for 6.5 years. It was something that I really felt needed to be cut off, because I'd gotten stuck in a never-ending cycle of "I can't stand this anymore" and "well, it's a job at least" and "yeah but it's not really at all enjoyable" and back again to "but it's money." To give me the genuine fire lit under the posterior that I needed, I decided to actually scrap it so that when the money pinch does come as I'm sure it will, I'll have a hard an true motivation instead of complacency. And I'm feeling loads more happier and rested since leaving. I had pretty good cow-orkers, but I'm glad to get out of the politics. The work itself wasn't necessarily difficult (which is a downside of some variety, to be honest), but I just really felt dragged down by it, and pinned to the floor by staying there.

In other news, the Kenya mission trip is coming up in March. I plan to have the entire dues sum paid off within the week or so and from there it will be largely self-enforced preparations for it. I have been learning incidental Swahili (Nimefurahi Kukutana nawewe, pleased to meet you; Ninakupenda, I love you) phrases, and have been trying to think up ideas to bring there. The place we're going is Korogocho, a giant slum of 100k+ pop that lives directly on top of a giant landfill. The dumpster-treasure hunter myself, I think this may actually be my kinda place in some respects (aside from the free-flowing sewage factor!). We're going through Building Bridges Ministry, the leader of which will be making his SEVENTIETH short term mission trip as of this trip. He's actually going to India in early Jan '08, even. BBM is in the process of constructing a combination medical center, adult vocational training and children's school, and we're along for the groundbreaking and labor aid. We'll be on the ground there 10 days or so, including Easter Sunday. I've asked if there's some kind of non-labor aspect that I can participate in due to the tremors issue (which is slowly getting worse). We'll be taking anti-malaria pills, loads of mosquito repellent, and will probably have to get an immunization or twelve (kidding) before heading out. The prospect of getting plenty hugs from complete strangers had me interested before I knew the cost ($4k, which by the way, I could use some help on if you can spare a few).

I'm currently developing the website ABLESTMAGE.COM as a timewaster, silly news, word game and wacky video posting site, and I'm getting upwards of 850 hits per week, up from 150+ when I left my job. Soon I will register as a business, and be able to put up advertising rates through adbrite and actually make a few bucks off this little enterprise -- which is partly why I parted ways with CIE, so I could further develop the site more efficiently. It's been great fun so far, and enjoyable to get feedback about the articles and to test the waters with what gets hits and what doesn't (a few of which being surprises).

I'm slowly getting rid of a bunch of junk that had piled up since working at the old job. I would often just amass project upon project to spend time working on at work to pass the time since there was often so little activity to actually perform on the clock (more of an emergency job for quick response than a time-consuming job) so I'm gradually figuring out what exactly I had meant to do with trinkets and oddball things I'd collected to do but had long forgotten about in the pursuit for more and more timesapping activities. I have way too many books, and just a bunch of nonsense that has accumulated that is starting to make the bedroom a much more pleasant and less cramped area to work in (since the website is pretty much done from a computer with Net access, can be done anywhere I guess technically).

The handwritten journal has suffered a bit since leaving work, since on of the pasttimes was to write down my thoughts of the time in a journal by hand, and has over the years come to be one of my greatest treasures to read back to see about what I was thinking those many years ago. Previously making daily entries, I'm down to about 2 per week these days, if barely that. That'll be something else on the agenda to create a greater structure through. If I could just get to bed soon enough! heh

Advanced Global Personality Test Results

Extraversion	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	60%
Stability	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Orderliness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Accommodation	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Interdependence	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Intellectual	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Mystical	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Artistic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Religious	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Hedonism	\|\|\|\|\|\|	23%
Materialism	\|\|\|\|\|\|	23%
Narcissism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Adventurousness	\|\|\|\|	16%
Work ethic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Self absorbed	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Conflict seeking	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	83%
Need to dominate	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%

Romantic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Avoidant	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Anti-authority	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Wealth	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Dependency	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Change averse	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Cautiousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Individuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Sexuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Peter pan complex	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Physical security	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	90%
Physical Fitness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	57%
Histrionic	\|\|\|\|	16%
Paranoia	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Vanity	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Hypersensitivity	\|\|	10%
Indie	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality test by similarminds.com

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 04:32:12 GMT

Well, I'd been meaning to make an entry for some time now, and since I've got a minute, here goes.

I am currently on week 2 of a two-week notice I turned in earlier, to get out of my current job. I started it, what was supposed to have been a temporary job just to earn some dough while I looked for the "real" job, over 6.5 years ago! Over the years I had just become complacent but still unhappy with it because it neither appealed to me in any certain respect other than I didn't have to actually do much of anything, but the times I had to do things were not something I'd particularly enjoy. I rationalized that since there's so very little of the unpleasant stuff and so much of the timepassing do-whatever-you-can-think-of section of the job, I figured I could hold out for a while until I found that real one. However, I just kept falling back on it too much. I was growing more and more displeased with it (the subject matter, notably) although I really enjoy the 3rd-shift time of day. Since I'd amassed a fairly comfortable cushion to live off of, I've opted to just turn in my 2 weeker and see if the crunch for cash lights more of a fire under my hind quarters to really get out there and hunt something down that would be more to my liking. My brother is currently renting a room from me, and that covers my atypically low mortgage payment. I've got enough to manage to live off for a whole year, give or take a few months, if I really crunch the numbers. I've got a website I'm trying to work on getting more active and popular, ablestmage.com, and make money off advertising revenue from frequent visitors. If I get the momentum I'm looking for, I could potentially make around $500/mo per ad box. If I were to get a whopping 3 or 4 ad boxes going at that rate, I'd be making more than I am now. And to me that sounds easy, if I really get after it -- but having the time to hunker down and work more on it was one obstacle the current job was keeping me from, so perhaps this will help me get that straightened out quicker.

I've got a mission trip coming up to Korogocho, Kenya (Africa). It's near the capital of Nairobi, and is the 3rd largest slum in their nation. It's situation directly upon a landfill, so they're living right smack ON the garbage. The group I'm going with, with the aid of Colonial Baptist, is in the process of completing a structure of some kind, one facet of which will offer job training classes to people of the 100,000+ population, not to mention act as a missionary locale for more effective Christ-motivated endeavors. The trip costs will cut my savings cushion nearly twain, making my cushion-riding adventure be trimmed significantly -- and for that reason, I've considering ducking out. A running gag of the trip fare terms was that the first half of the tab is due December 31, 2007, with the second half due January 1, 2008. I've still got a little under a month to find some way to offset my fare substantially. I last minute Christmas bonus was generously proffered which will help a handy portion. I'm not really at all worried about aspects of the trip other than its funding -- I guess it just hasn't really sunk in yet perhaps. There's currently a homeland security travel advisory out for Americans regarding less-than-favorable terrorism-related circumstances, and I've got to get a passport pretty quick. I definitely plan on chronicling the journey, and have speculated about drawing much of the scenery and events on paper as well as with words instead of taking pictures, as I'm sure there will be loads of picture takers there anyway, with the group that's going already.

One thing about the job situation just hit me a day or two ago -- that I'll be losing a major element of structure that is not self-enforced. I get up everyday by the alarm clock so I'll get to work on time, but I may rarely even need to use an alarm clock now. However, I think I'd like to still maintain this third-shift mode of operation, because the very fact that there is just about nothing to do at night in this town could actually be a more motivating factor to get stuff done instead of mess around town or something.

I'd also like to get back into the copywriting scheme of things. I had taken a mail-ordered course of copywriting from American Writers' & Artists Institute about such a topic, and really learned a lot from it. The short version of the copywriter market explanation is that it's all of the letters you get in the mail -- Geico snail spam suggesting you act now and save 20%, Little Billy & Susie Children Hospital asking you for a donation, and all of the unispaced typewriter-font letters that go out through direct mail like for oddball things from virility drugs, to magazine subscriptions, to credit card ads. It's the process of writing those letters. Once you're good, you can command a hefty thousand-plus check just for writing one of those letters, plus you would get a per-letter-printed royalty (in the $0.01-$0.05 range) but if your letter is good enough and gets sales to come in, then you can keep getting royalty checks from the mail company that contracted you because it gets them more profits just the same, so you may one day discover a check in the mail for $2k just out of the blue from a letter you wrote months ago. Some places even offer sales commission incentives, on top of that. I'd be glad if I could just manage to bring in $20k year. I imagine combining the website advertising concept with copywriting, I could be able to break that, surely.

I am actually the current registered owner of areyoumyperfectmatch.com and am debating about whether to just let it expire, or to auction it off. I'm not sure about transfer fees and such, either. I may try to auction it just to see what I can get =) It was a long-forgotten attempt of finding a special gal online, one of those seemed-like-a-good-idea-for-some-reason things but now only seems to bear only comical significance to even mention =P

I've recently come under the impression that I may be what's called a hoarder. I had always just considered the stuff I keep as contextually valuable -- in the sense that someone somewhere might want it (especially since I have actually sold a bunch of it on eBay) and instead just consider it stockpiling inventory rather than being a packrat. My dad is much the same way, except he says he just enjoys the concept of ownership, which is not how I feel so I assumed his deal was not the same as me. My brother thinks I'm a hoarder or at least have the foundation for becoming one. I just like making collections of things, kind of as a way to illustrate to myself just "how much" (as in quantity) something is, such as my collection of 2-liter bottle screw caps. I had originally kept the empty plastic bottles themselves with the rationale that I would someday use them in a project of some kind with the intent of giving them away, but my brother convinced me that they are so easy to come by that I needn't store up a bunch of them because it's fairly implausible that I'd really need that many -- so I've been throwing them out but keeping the little plastic screwcaps as an illustration to myself of just how much soda I drink. I have a bit of a thing for containers, and my dad has told me he does too. He saw my collection of empty 2-liter bottles while over at my house one day, and without even asking what they were for, simply stated, "You can't make a raft out of that," which caught me totally off guard because I had actually speculated on that very possibility! heh I also collect what I call "the smelly samples" from magazines partly because it's free perfume/cologne right there for the taking, and if you never open completely them they last way longer -- so I made myself a plastic-canvas container (complete with a button on the face and a lid that has an errant length of yarn to wrap around the button to keep it closed) and I think there's at least 250-300 of those samples in it (but takes up relatively negligible space). Most of the things I collect are based on possibilities for future sale.

I recently bought a small portable nebulizer (a device that turns a medication into a mist that is gradually inhaled over a period of time) at a garage sale for a whopping $2 with intention of selling it on eBay. I was about to put it up (saw some listed in the range of $40, nice profit margin) when I noticed a notice (har) on the inside cover to the effect of "federal warning: unit is not for sale unless directed by or under the advisement of a physician." Oops. So, I called up the hospital and asked if they could maybe find a patient who needed one, so I could give it away instead of selling it. Considering it's for people who have lung issues (I used one once at the doctor's office when I had an asthma attack as a lollypop guild member) I figured it might even have the potential for life-saving possibilities. They directed me to call a business they have frequent dealings with locally, so I called them and they said they could certainly give it away to someone who needs it in the Hospice accounts they have. So I dropped it off and they were pretty glad to get it (and I was pretty glad to get it off my hands). That's the kind of things I keep things for =P

Rider's got some kind of playoof in Dallas this Saturday, so me and the maternal unit will likely be going along. Supposed to be at whichever stadium the Cowboys play at =)

My Name Is Mike Strangelove

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:59:06 GMT

I had a really incredible dream that may have favorably altered my perspective of a number of wacky perceptions I have that, since becoming aware of them ages ago, haven't been able to make reasonable sense of them.

As you may know (the LJ people anyhow, since this is crossposted) I have been having semi-violent jerks on mostly my left side. In Oct of 2006 upon returning from a wedding of my cousin, I began to experience periodic light jerking motions in my left shoulder, as if it were just seizing up suddently. Fast forward to about March, when the jerks show up in my left leg (in a kind of motion as to suddenly, as if in a seat position, engaging the muscle used to lift your knee higher in the air, but for less than a second, as if someone had spooked you). The jerking motions usually come timed properly for left shoulder and left leg, but sometimes occur independently. I had a doctor's visit with a neurologist, who did an EEG and a brain MRI to see if any of the hardwires were crossed, as it were, to no apparent success (of finding anything screwy) which is good, I guess, except that now we don't have many potential clue treasure chests to pilfer. Pardon my comma splices! I haven't really been able to make sense of them, suspecting they may actually be psychological somehow.

So the dream today was that I was walking home from something toward an area that (if you'll pardon the likely-inconsequential scenery details) appeared to be some kind of sparsely wooded riverfront with various farming-like structures, but of a tent-like complexity. Allotments of land were divided by a respected boundary where one's belongings simply "stopped at" (as if piled up, like firewood for example) and made their own natural wall of sorts. One structure was a free-standing metal carport that stood out from the surrounding other structures but was not necessarily in a less wooded location, as there were trees scattered about every 8-9 feet, and not in a detectable pattern. Anyhow, I was walking up on the dirt-and-grass ground, approximately early spring, when my dad, who was also there, motioned for me to stop or move away, silently. I stopped abruptly, curious as to the reasonn, without speaking. There was a large (as in tall, not very fat) black bull with long horns (not unusually long, as a longhorn, though) inside the metal carport area. The bull saw me and began to approach me. My dad saw this, as if expecting it, and tried to push the bull back into the carport, which actually didn't have a door of any kind or any means of restraint, but for some reason seemed to restrict the bull by some unseen method. There was a somewhat larger tree in what might be considered a "front yard" type area, so I moved so that the large tree was between me and the bull in a sort-of chess move to block a charge, if one might occur. The bull moved toward the tree pushing my dad back, but its horns got caught on one of the tree limbs and prevented it from moving forward. My dad then grasped it in such a way that he had better control over the bull, such as by the horns, and was able to prevent it from moving around the tree, all of which occured without a spoken word so much (that I recall). It was at this point that I began on a completely new dream scenario of which I recall absolutely nothing except that the fact that a "different" unconnected dream scenario arose. At some point this scene came back into play, with me walking up again as before, the move-away motions from dad, me seeing the bull, moving so the tree was between us, etc. However, this time the bull managed to wrestle dad a little and get the ensnared horn out of the way of the limb/trunk, and began to move around to its left of the tree, so I began to move to my left, keeping the tree between us. Dad finally said, "Alright fine, do that," as if acknowledging the bull was in some degree stronger than he was, but at the same time still managing amazing feats of strength keeping this bull at bay (my dad is fairly strong, IRL). At this point, I moved so far around to the left that the bull turned around (his back to me) and began coming the other way around, in a counterclockwise direction. I took one step back, but to my surprise, and this moment was extremely vivid, to the point of seeing individual blades of grass and patterns of swirled dirt on the ground, that dad took the bull around the neck and twisted it with bizarrely inhuman strength and broke it with an obscenely audible series of overlayed and intertwined cracking sounds. The image that came to dream-mind was that a somewhat rotted tree trunk was being twisted and cracked as it broke free from its root base. The bull fell over on its back near the tree with eyes wide open staring blankly, and I just stood there completely aghast, eyes wide open myself and jaw similarly agape. I recall that my hands were on my neck (similar to the familiar but improper "sit-up" configuration) as I stood there, elbows sticking out in the air, as my dad walked past, saying nothing, but seeming to imply that it would have had to been done sooner or later. I was still amazed beyond belief, and held this position for quite some time before, staring down at this possibly dead, possibly just inordinately stunned, likely paralyzed bull who was in a complete state of unmoving shock. I began to get the impression throughout my gawking that an amount of time had passed where it would normally be necessary to move by now, but discovering that I could not. It was at this point I woke up, but eyes still closed and still mostly-dreaming mode, that I became spatially aware of where my limbs seemed like they should have been. They FELT as if they were in the position they were in the dream, but I could not detect by normal senses where exactly they were (or where anything was from the neck down) without moving. I tried moving my hand without success, but the attempt alerted me to the actual position of my left arm despite an overwhelming "belief" that it was actually in the situp-style position as in the dream. I laid there for quite some time being perceptively incapable of moving any of my limbs although I could detect what seemed to be an unusual amount of heat, but one of the jerks came up on me again as usual, which naturally illustrated my spatial awareness to where everything was. It turned out both my hands hand been bent downward (as if you were trying to reach your elbow with the same hand) to a slight extreme, almost cutting off the blood flow. I tried moving them again but they seemed heavier than lead. I eventually woke up completely, although my eyelids seemed strangely needful to stay closed. Eventually I was able to move around normally and got out of bed and moved around. While lying there, though, I had some of the most violent jarring-jerks I've yet experienced, during one of which I felt/heard a crackling kind of noise in the back of my neck (not unusual) but seemed remotely sharp at that moment but immediately went away. I've got a follow-up appointment scheduled for the neurologist so, I may mention these events (but perhaps not so much the dream).

Somehow I was reminded a little later on about a documentary I'd seen about epileptic patients who had undergone a surgery to disconnect the brain hemispheres from each other by severing a particular small central connection between the two. Many of the patients began to exhibit (later on) and unique condition where one side's limbs would move independently of the other half, whereas being interviewed on camera, one side would be resting normally as for an interview, but one hand for instance, would move up so that the hand was blocking the view of the camera as to obscure the person's face. The person would move use his/her other hand over to forcibly push the arm down, in some kind of real version of the wheelchair-bound scientist from Dr. Strangelove, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. It was at this point I wondered whether I had a particular kind of condition where this particular brain-connecting passage might itself be deteriorated -- since the point at which I began having jerks and such was at the point I began to think logically and with spatial awareness (which is 98% of my waking moments, with little to no emotion). I experimented by thinking of an emotional type event that would bring about a situation that I'd normally get choked up about, did get a little choked up, and the tremors were veritably silenced. At the moment that I began to consider this as valid evidence for the brain-connect supposition, again thinking in logic/spatial terms, the sudden jerks near-immediately returned.

Incidentally, I actually was hit rather hard in the head as a kid, by a neighbor by accident who was foolishly demonstrating her golf swing to me, insisting that I sit behind the line of sight the ball would travel and upon the backswing hit me directly in the forehead, knocking me back out of my little chair and I didn't wake up until I was in the emergency room. Feasibly, at that point, damage could have occured. I have always been aware that I am very predominantly spatially aware and visual to a degree of being near-exclusively what I call "clinical", attaching little to zero emotion to any given event but perceiving it in an existential capacity of "it is what it is, 2+2=4" type memory, rather than assigning a favor or disfavor at all to it. Having known that the hemispheres generally (supposedly) are seperate centers for emotion and visualization, that guys generally have less connectivity between hemispheres while gals generally have significant communication between them, has led me to suspect that I may have perhaps an even more significant lack of communication betwixt.

I can get emotional, but it generally requires, so to speak, to, "get up out of my chair, walk down the hall, open up the closet, unlock the file cabinet, and pull out the appropriate file folder, and look at the one sheet of paper within it." I have long suspected this is the reverse for some women who are largely or more significantly emotional to participate in spatial-awareness-requiring tasks such as video games, whose file folder contains one sheet on how to perceive visually while suppressing otherwise spatial-blocking emotion (which futher provides foundation for my "opposite opposite" theory of intergender communication woes).

My current theory can be represented by a box drawn on a piece of paper, divided into quadrants (4 equal squares within a larger square). Male goes in the one corner, while female goes in a diagonally-opposite corner. An arrow points from male to one adjacent square as being a "default idea" of what something naturally means to him (such as, what "a lie" means), while an arrow draw from the female box to the remaining square represents what she naturally intereprets something to mean (such as what "a lie" is). The male and female in this case refers specifically to the extremely-clinical and extremely-emotional, whereas most people probably fall somewhere more in between. The difference is that both default beliefs are largely opposite but not necessarily either incorrect. I theorize that proper communication can occur when one or both male or female deliberately recognizes the pattern and either temporarily concedes the default as plausibly faulty in order to ascertain the rationale (whether logically or emotionally). It's much different from empathy, because for women it would involve "not feeling" but for men would require "deliberately assigning emotion" (whereas emotions may not be assigned to something unless provoked somehow to make an assignment, but out of a perceived logic necessity).

I think largely communication breaks down when this recognition of default awareness deteriorates to the point that both are approaching a subject from their own default perceptions -- such as the woman improperly interpreting literal statements as purely emotional and internalizing the statements made particularly by the voice inflection and perceived attitude rather than the intended literal definitions of the word the man gives, and in like manner the man improperly interpretting the emotionally-driven communication through inflection and implied expression of feelings instead as actual literal translations of the dictionary-defined meanings as he understands by default.

I have speculated that I might not particular be the best husband in the sense that my emotional capacity is fairly difficult to reach (although is profoundly impacted by hugs, I must admit, like some kind of override code), and that a more closely ideal mate would be generally more in tune with spatial awareness or a more clinical assertion of true/false.

I read too many "men are waffles, women are spaghetti" books =P heh

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:06:41 GMT

Please take these White Cheddar Cheese-its away from me. I'm at a conflict on whether buying them was actually a good idea!

On a slightly unrelated note, I'm wondering if I somehow contracted some variety of gastro condition, because, how shall I say this clinically yet tactfully.. An event that normally occured once every 2-4 days now occurs within 1-2, and I've been experienced this upsurge (or downsurge, as it were) for over a week at least. And more often than not, a certain scarlet fluid escorts the package in its delivery. Not cool.

Now that I'm within a week (Nov.1) of changing over both the first and second digit of my two-digit age up an increment (instead of merely the last digit), I'm beginning to feel the pinch. I will suddenly be in a new social category. No longer will I be associated with the cool age bracket, but now into the supposedly career-embedded future-geared sector. I used to think, oh, what's the big deal, it's just another number. Ah, but they actually have separate Sunday School classes for these people. I'll suddenly have to, when asked my age, state that I am a number divisible by ten, which to me sounds like I'm not really admitting my true age (the odd numbers except for 29 sound like real ages to me). Speaking of which:

For the upcoming decade, I intend to not spend so much money. I'm still the savingest person I know, but I plan to spend even less and keep even more -- but at the same time, grow more generous. All of my eBay sales will no longer be geared toward an "up-in-the-air" fund that covers Paypal purchases and whatnot, it will all be refocused into a retirement fund project I've begun. We'll see how long THAT lasts. In this decade, I hope to meet an snuggly hugglesome frugal Christian cutie with whom I could share a childfree marriage with. I hope to ramp up output on the content for the ablestmage.com blog, including Podcasts and YouTube authorings about topics from media reviews to apologetics discussions. I hope to acquire a bunch of advertisers willing to plop down $500+/mo (cheap by many industry standards) once I get the site really amped up strong. I also hope to be well on my way toward a $300,000 savings goal. I hope to finish Halo 3 on Legendary on Campaign on solo and manage to get at least to Captain on multiplayer experience. I hope to develop a to-me-significant number of friends that are at least within 2-3 years either way on age proximity (the bulk of them are now 4-8 years younger), but still keeping the ones I have =) I hope to sell at least half of the books I now own (well over a 150 currently), and further de-packratify my motivations to keep and hoard. I hope to get a different, higher-paying job that I can firmly consider my "career" job (in lieu of the blog taking over that role), and learn to be a better party host. I hope to finally watch all of Full Metal Alchemist and Naruto. I hope to get so many projects, the list of projects upcoming is longer than the list of projects unfinished -- including getting a real rough draft of my sword-n-sorcery novel completed.

Speaking of Podcasts, the new blog media machine I bought (translation: new desktop PC I bought for the basic purpose of making new blog productions on: podcasts, youtube video editing, etc) has just recently a Podcast making program. I only came up with the idea of podcasts like 2 days ago, and just yesterday on GiveawayoftheDay.com up comes a podcast publisher program. Sounds like a confirmation from upstairs to me =P I plan to also issue a number of apologetics-related videos that are basically an essay I've written, read by a computer voice, put to images in a YouTube postable format. I'd like to address the "10 Questions Every Intelligent Christian Must Answer" video which irks the Cheez-its out of me because of the wretchedly unthoughtful amount of research the producer made. I'd also like to discuss/introduce the Childfree issue to a broader audience, but not necessarily to recruit followers but to inform on what the deal is.

Year number 30, you better watch out.