Another week gone

Another week has flown by and the semester is coming to an end quickly. This week I've mainly been sick (strep like thing) and working on research. I FINALLY (hallelujah) finished the Wavelet transform for my research. I also have finished writing and testing about 2/3 of a new Neural Network. After discussing it with Dr. Tag, I decided to sit down and write a new one from scratch. I was a little terrified at first, but its going really well so far. I hope to be done by the end of the weekend.

I had my interview at PPD on Wednesday, it was interesting. First, I was really sick. Second, even though I'm only interviewing for an internship, I was there for 2 and a half hours, and met with 3 groups of people. Turns out they take internships really serious there, because unlike GE or Corning, they almost always hire interns when they graduate. In other words, PPD treats internships like apprenticeships, the way its supposed to be done.

I'm not sure about the other candidates, so I have no idea what my chances are, but the interviews went well. Everybody was really friendly, and most of them were UNCW graduates (obviously encouraging).

My new laptop should be here any day now, so I can finally put that whole situation behind me. School is going pretty well, finally getting close to caught up with everything. Next semester is going to be so nice, I've been way overcommitted for the past 3/4 of a year. It will be nice to have a managable load again.

Still haven't gotten the New York stuff up (obviously), will try to soon, just really busy with research right now.

Hope all is well with you all.

words of the past

Honor. Courage. Discipline. A few of many words that sometimes seem to no longer have any meaning. Once it was a time when great battles were fought, and one could make some sort of stand against the evils that work to enslave us. There was a time when one could swear by an oath to protect all that is righteous, and if need be, give their life to defend it. But these days the forces to be opposed are not so obvious. Forces that are just as dangerous as those of the past, and perhaps even more so. For these forces are unseen by most, and therefore can continue to exist without opposition. Occasionally we catch a glimpse of them, and we do what we can to oppose them, but it is little.

And why should we oppose that which is wrong? How do we know that it is wrong? We have our morals and our ethics, and we are willing to kill in the name of them. But what right do we have to kill in the name of these, our beliefs? What right do we have to kill at all? The only thing separating us from those we kill, is our beliefs. They wish to kill us for our beliefs, and we wish to kill them for their beliefs. Who is right? And by what proof are they right?

So what are we to do?

The end is coming!

Sorry I haven't written recently, things are getting pretty busy around here. The end of the semester is coming up fast, and I'm not ready for it. Research is coming along, but whether I will be done is unforeseeable right now. I talked with Dr. Tag and we have a few options, so I'm a little less stressed, but finishing is the only option that allows me to graduate with honors. So even though I have options to protect my GPA, I could lose my honors. Therefore I guess I'm still just as stressed. I really don't think well unless I'm writing or speaking, I always seem to figure things out when doing either. As soon as I open my mouth and let everyone know what I'm thinking, I realize its wrong! Usually I know how to fix it, but once everyone hears you're dumb thinking, its too late!

Anyway, things have been going pretty well. Evie and I are both extremely busy, but we are doing things now and then to de-stress. I'm still trying to get my research to a point that I can write an abstract and submit it by November 1st to go to the IEEE Southeastcon (http://sec05.nova.edu/). I have an interview at PPD next Wednesday for 2 hours! Hopefully to get that internship position which might lead to a permanent job when I graduate. I had a long talk with D the other day (one of the profs in the Psy dept), and he apparently has been doing a low-carb lifestyle plan also. He lost over 90 pounds! When I saw him a year or so after I originally met him, I thought he had that gastric by-pass surgery where they cut off 2/3 of your stomach. He lost a dramatic amount of weight, visibly, not just on the scale. We talked about a lot of the issues I've been having like slight depression and fatigue, he said he experienced the same thing. Gave me some pointers, thought I'm not sure I'm going to try them. I don't like messing with body chemistry, especially brain chemistry.

In other news, I have been reading The Users Guide to the Brain, a book by a doctor from Harvard that got excellent reviews. Its basically a manual on neuroscience for the lay person. Very interesting stuff, you all should check it out.

Well, gotta get back to research and work. I'm really trying to get the NY stuff on the website, just too damn busy right now. I'll get it up ASAP.

Take care.

A day at the lake

Last night was great. I almost forgot to talk about it. We had dinner at Atlanta Bread, hung out at Barnes and Noble, and then went to UNCW to see a play. We saw Shakespear's Twelfth Night which was done by the Aquila Theatre. We had to leave half way through, but it was a really great performance. Definetly not what I expected, especially the music. It was really neat.

Anyway, back to today, after working out, we got lunch and took it to Greenfield Lake. We started out on a paddle boat, but since I had just run 5.31 miles at the gym, I decided maybe we should canoe instead. Fortunately for me, Evie agreed. :) So we went back to the dock and got a canoe. The old man running the place was really nice. I felt bad because he was older (70ish) so I got the canoe down off the rack and put it in the water. We were out about two hours and got some awesome pics. We also picked up trash here and there that was floating by. When we got back we had a whole canoe full (see pic below) and the guy thought it was really cool. Turns out he is a volunteer for the Cape Fear River watch who is actually in charge of renting the stuff. He doesn't get paid, instead the money goes to the River Watch, and is in turn used to clean up the waterways in our area. So it was a pretty cool day.

Check out all the posts below to see the pics and captions. (captions are under the pictures, not above) So the way this wacky thing posts pics, what you need to do to go in order is scroll down to the entry labeled Meditating is hard. Then scroll up one pic at a time till you get back to this one. That way you will view them in the order I put them in, and the comments will make a lot more sense. (in other words, they are in reverse order). One final note, if you click on the picture, it will show you the full size original. Then just click back on your browser to get back to my blog. Hope you enjoy our pics.

And finally, a close up of the water flowing over the dam. We were on the right side for the picture of us together below this one. The camera was on the left side sitting on the bridge. I set the timer, hit the button, ran all the way around and down to the bottom of the dam, and got there just in time for the pic below.

My future backyard (I wish).

Finally, a decent picture of us together. We are on the dam at the side of the lake, you can see a picture of it above this one.

Hey buddy, you better store that nut. Eat it now and you'll be hungry in another month or two.

A close up of the wonderous collection of garbage.

A picture of us taken by the nice old man at the dock. Not a great pic, but the lighting was off. He tried. :)

Evie and the wonderous trash collection we brought back. Let no one say we haven't done our part to clean up Greenfield lake!!

A close up of our first mate on the SS Garbage.

Cap'n Evie and the first mate standing on the dock.

Time to go

Same pick as the next one, but a difference of 12X zoom. Panasonic rules!

Cap'n Evie at the helm.

A group of ducks we floated past.

The ugly duckling?

Mommy and here little fuzzy babies.

A noisy and nosey goose that checked us out.

A japanese maple and a really cool rock. Don't see things arranged this nicely in a US park usually. For a minute I felt like I was in Japan. (if you ignore the truck in the background of course)

Meditating is hard

Hi all, sorry I haven't written in a while. The trip to New York kept me really busy, and then I spent this week catching up, so I didn't get to write then either. I am going to post my pictures and write for the days I was on the trip on the New York blog this weekend. If you don't have the link yet, it is http://nywedding-neuron42.blogspot.com Be sure to check it out soon for the updates.

Just got back from working out, man is it hard to concentrate for long periods of time. I do two 30 minute sessions on the elliptical rider, and I tried to meditate the whole time. The first 20 minutes or so was fine, but then thoughts started flowing like crazy. About that time I was done with the first 30 minute session, so I got a drink and walked around for a minute or so. Then I got back on for my second 30 minutes session. It started out ok, but after about 5 minutes, thoughts started flowing like crazy. Plus, people kept walking in front of me and other visual distractions. I kept coming back to focus, but it was very difficult. I guess maybe thats why normal buddhists do it in a monastery.

Tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the big day! After waking up at 4AM!!! and layovers and such, I'll be in New York City at 10am. This will be my last entry till next Tuesday or so because while I'm on the trip I'll be using a blog I created just for it. The address is http://nywedding-neuron42.blogspot.com or you can also get to it by going to this blog, clicking on View My Complete Profile at the right, on the page that loads scroll all the way to the bottom, and there is a link to the trip blog. If I were you, I'd use the address above!

So, keep your eyes on the trip site, and I'll post lots of perty pictures.

I can smell NY...

Trip time is almost here! I can't wait till we get there. My flight leaves at 6:15 Friday morning. A little early, but I'll be too excited to care!

So Tuesday was pretty cool. Moved the research forward by a big leap. Tuesday night we went to Cinematique and saw Maria Full of Grace. It was an excellent, albeit somewhat depressing, movie. It was the story of a young woman in Columbia that isn't happy with her life, quits her job, and gets caught up in drug smuggling by being a mule. The movie went into erie details about the process of being a mule, from swallowing the drugs and how they are retrieved, to the atrocities that can occur to the person when things go wrong. Very insightful, and very alarming. It also does a nice job of looking at the immigration issue from the non-american point of view.

Other than that I've just been working like a maniac trying to get my research done. Should have a lot of great pictures and things to talk about starting Friday. Keep your eyes peeled! (have you ever thought about that saying? really kinda scary)

Monday Monday Monday

Well, I won't attempt to follow up last nights super rant, just an update tonight I guess. Got my new luggage for the trip to NY. Getting kind of excited now, its just days away. Not looking forward to finding my luggage in LGA, but other than that, the trip should be awesome.

I made some major progress on my research, and I'm closing in on being finished with the coding part. If my damn new laptop would get here, I would be making a lot more progress. This transfering crap across the net from one office to another is getting to me. I keep working on copies of code that aren't the newest ones and then having to re-incorporate the code. Oh well, it will soon be over. I'm also starting to get a little stressed about the conference deadline. I need my paper written by the end of the month and I haven't even finished the experiment yet. Its definetly crunch time now. I think I'll be able to pull it off though. If not, theres always next year.

Went to Evie's first concert of the year tonight. Lots of different kinds of music, it was pretty cool. There were a couple pieces I could have done without, but most of them were very good. You could tell the ones they had practiced, and the ones they had not. Most of the ones Evie played in were good. I'm just not a big fan of smaller groups, and that was part of the problem with some of the pieces. But when the whole symphony played, it was great. In particular, they played a piece called October by Eric Whitacre that was phenomonal. It starts out very similar in sound to the score from American Beauty. Then it branches off in a totally different way. I'm going to try and find it online or somewhere. Thats the only thing I hate about finding new music I like, especially orchestral, its usually hard to find anywhere to buy it (much less download it). There was also a great piece called Mayflower Overture by Ron Nelson (who happens to be at Brown University!). Both of those pieces were enough to make a great concert alone. I had a good time.

Guess I better get to bed. Gotta get up at 6am. Dreams of NY...

The normal, the not so normal, and the possible redemption

So today was the usual Sunday. Sleep late, work out, do some research. Evie got back at 2 or so, so she was home when I got back from working out. We had lunch and now we're at school working.

An interesting event today, a pro-life rally along college road was going on when we went to lunch. From what I could see, tens(and maybe hundreds) of people lined college road with anti-abortion signs. [Abortion kills children, etc...] I had mixed feelings about the display. On the one hand I think it takes a lot of courage to get up there and stand up for what you believe in. I mean, to stand on college road and hold a sign saying what you believe, no one will ever question that. Every person in this town knows what you believe now. So for that, I salute them. On the other hand, I have two problems. One, being a pro-choicer myself, I disagree with their cause. And two, I don't think that people should be submitted to something without a choice. (Course, I guess thats the fundamental problem isn't it?) The point is, that some woman who had to choose abortion and hates herself every day for that, shouldn't be forced to view signs calling her a killer. I mean, its one thing to say Abortion is Wrong or something like that, its another to stand on the busiest road in Wilmington and say Abortion is murder. Which obviously implies that those who do it are murderers. So here is poor miss x that was abused, impregnated, and left by her boyfriend. No social support like we are all lucky enough to have, and she can barely feed herself. Now she has to drive past a bunch of people calling her a murderer? Don't get me wrong, they have just as much right to do that, as she SHOULD have to have an abortion. But then, isn't that hypocritical of them? They have the right to CHOOSE to stand by the road with their signs, shouldn't she have her rights too?

Its interesting that happened today, because while I was working out I was thinking about such things. Lately I've heard the comment a lot that "you need to work on your buddhism", and it got me to thinking. While my worldly goals have progressed a fair amount, research education and the like, my spirituality has practically died. I don't remember the last time I meditated, I haven't been to the temple in a year at least, and I'm definetly not following the ideals that I believe are so important to find enlightenment. So now I need to do something about it. I decided to start by re-reading The Empty Mirror, and A Glimpse of Nothingness. Those are the two books by van der Wetering that got me started in Buddhism(in addition to my brother of course). I'm also attempting to be a great deal more mindful of my interactions with others. I've found out recently that I am intimidating to many, and some even think I'm conceited! I was shocked to find this out, but after 3 or 4 people say something, you start to think about it.

So I did, and I realized that it is my utter hatered of the ways I'm not accustomed to that is starting to show through. There are many ways to live life, and I have begun to outright despise those that follow a path less noble than the one I've chosen. (now I see the conceteit) What I realized is that I've had that attitude for some time, and now it is starting to show through. Normally I would respond by thinking, so what, I am who I am and I will not let society change that (Popeye preach it). But in this case, I think my attitude is wrong, and that is something I need to fix. When I think about it, I am no one to judge those other people. Yes, what they do iritates me sometimes, but usually in a way that wouldn't bother me if I was where I should be spiritually. So I concluded that I am the one that needs to change. I should not look upon people with disdain just because they choose a different path than me. Even if I feel that path is completely wrong, I should not have a negative attitude towards it. If I feel something is harmful, I should say so and leave it at that. Or, if the person is not interested in my opinion, then its time to move on. In some ways, I'm running around forcing my beliefs on others, even though I don't believe in doing that.

So as usual, the goal is to be more mindful in general. More mindful of my interactions, my thoughts and feelings, and especially less judgemental of others. If something doesn't interfere with my path, I shouldn't even give it a second thought. If it does, then I should thouroughly evaluate it and do something about it. Not just shrug it off and then have animosity for it. So in other words, time to get back on the eightfold path.

On a less serious note, I realized today what an interesting relationship Dr. Tag and I have. We are very much like the Master and Disciple scenario you would find at a temple. Any time I ask him a question, he answers with another question (usually an integral). He is definetly full of koans, in the mathematical form of course, and I meditate all week on research and visit him in his chambers once a week to discuss the current koan. Goofy, but a neat perspective I thought. Course, the fact that he is a hard core christian prevents the idea of him being a master of buddhism, but he could definetly be a master of computer science.

Ok, now I'm rambling so I guess I will bring it to an end. So in the immortal words of G "give in, let go, and take the plunge"...

Friday night is quiet

You know, people always think of Friday night as some crazy time to party. But I always think of it as the calm after the storm. These days weekends don't have much meaning, working 7 days a week is the rule, not the exception. Friday night is about the only time any more when you can just chill out, watch a movie, and relax. Evie is out of town right now, so its just me and the boob tube. I watched Starsky and Hutch(the new Ben Stiller version) and it was pretty good. Not his best work, but a one-timer at the least. It was pretty good and had a cute little story. The Matrix its not, but then we need dumb little movies to make us laugh sometimes. Otherwise we would all go nuts.

I finished the first book of the Foundation series today. WOW! I had always heard about the books, but I have never read them. When I finished it my first thought was, when can I get my hands on the next in the series! It's definetly right up there with Star Wars and the Matrix trilogies. Very good philosophically, as well as an excellent plot. Haven't decided what to read next yet, I want to get the next Foundation book, but I'm broke and there are so many books I have that I haven't read yet, it would be a shame to buy it right this minute. I'm leading toward Neuromancer, a book that got great reviews and was required reading for one of the computer science classes this semester. Looks pretty good, I'll let you know if it is. Supposed to involve AI, wonder why it would be interesting to me?

Health update, South Beach is still going well. I've lost 36 pounds since I started in mid-June, bp is 120/72, and cholesterol and triglycerides are all well below the number my doc referred to as perfect health. So I guess I'm going to live a little while longer. Still working out 3-4 times a week. I'm up to about 5.10 miles Tues, Thurs, Sat, Sun. Don't always make it on Sunday, but I'm rock solid about the other three days. Starting to feel a little scrawny though, so I'm going to start lifting weights again in the next week or so. Being skinny is great, but being healthy isn't just about weight. (for me anyway) I've given up the dreams of being Arnold size, but I would like to be in excellent shape.

Plus, I'm looking to do some new outdoor activities, and muscle is important in most of them. We're supposed to go kayaking on the Dan River at some point, and if I like it enough I'm going to start saving up for a Kayak. Plus, I've ALWAYS wanted to try mountain climbing. Once I lose a little more weight, we're going to try and find a class somewhere to check it out.

Well, I guess that should do it for now. Sorry I haven't had more pictures to put up, but I don't get to take a lot. But if you want to see some REALLY cools ones, check out Mels site at http://iateabugtoo.blogspot.com It's really awesome. She has TONS of great pics from here diving work in Florida. I'll also try to get some more pics, but first this crappy weather thing has to end.

Course, we are going to New York next week for Evie's brothers wedding, so I'm sure there will be tons of great pics from that. I should get to write every night while I'm there, so stay tuned!