A Tidbit.

Sometimes life throws a few curve balls at us.  Sometimes lemons.  Sometimes bricks.  The point is to make the most out of it.  There are so many parts of life that are taken for granted.  Those who have vowed never to forgive should seek to learn the ways of forgiveness. This would relieve the burdens from everyone involved.  But blinded by a vow of greed, hard-heartedness, and grudge, these unforgiving people are most unpleasant to themselves.  They stand there, in their proud stance.

Those who never forgive rarely seek forgiveness themselves... for they do no wrong.

There have been accusations... concerning a few important people in my life.  I feel as if I stand in the middle, having to decide between truth and untruth, right and wrong.

And I find myself reading a scripture in Proverbs 10:12.

"Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins."

These accusations, founded or not, do not change the outcome of a most crucial decision on my part.  And that is to continue to love whom I love.  Because I am human too.

The Elena Saga

Last May, my laptop suffered a terrible accident. In the days following the incident, I documented the events of her demise, treatment, and partial resurrection. What follows is a slightly-exaggerated tale of betrayal, remorse, repentance, and forgiveness that will last through the ages. Maybe.

Actually, that would be kind of pathetic. But then, stranger things have happened.

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It was my fault, really. My own negligence or carelessness or some other equally ignorant trait. One moment, she was perfect, doing everything I told her without delay. The next, she was drowning, all because I was dumb enough to keep a full glass of water where I could knock it over.

It only took a second. My hand slipped, the cup fell. I grabbed for it desperately, but in doing so I only splashed more water all over the keyboard. I'd learned from an episode of Arthur that pouring coffee or tea or some other liquid on a keyboard makes a computer short out, and as I returned with a towel I expected to find myself facing a blank screen. What I found was perhaps more terrifying. The screen was completely frozen. I typed and clicked, but nothing moved. Realizing that the flow of electricity was probably making things worse, I hit the power button, not caring that I was about to lose a lot of unsaved data. My computer was in trouble, and a few hours of labor could easily be made up.

Her screen was dark, her innards were silent. It was time to get to work, clean her up while she slept. I wiped the water off her keys but soon realized that the water inside was a much greater threat than whatever moisture clung to the keyboard. Plastic doesn't care much about getting wet. Circuits and wires do. It was obviously that there was no way I was getting under the keys with my towel, so I unplugged her, picked her up, and tilted her to the side. Water ran from beneath the keys like so many tiny streams, already warm from its brief stay in her innards. I put her back on my desk and pushed the power button. Nothing.

Well, obviously there was still a short somewhere. I had to get more water out of her, that's all. I tilted her more strategically this time, channeling the water away from the power switch and into a corner of they keyboard. I even pushed all the keys to shake loose any moisture clinging to them. Another tiny rivulet ran out of the keyboard and onto the floor. I held her like that until I was sure all the water was gone, and then pushed the power button. The light flickered dimly but did nothing more. That's when I realized that my mistake was going to take a while to repair.

Still, I've always been the hopeful type, so I held down the power button a couple more times, thinking that eventually some kind of connection would be made. If I'd known anything about computers, I never would have pushed the button in the first place. Certainly I would have realized the faint crackling sound was a bad sign if I'd been in my right mind. But I wasn't, and so I kept pushing, persistently causing who knows what kind of damage to the circuitry inside.

Obviously, she wasn't turning on, and fortunately for her, I wasn't insane enough to keep trying. I eventually came to the conclusion that there was just too much moisture and that I'd have to give her some time to air out. I knew putting her out in the sun was a bad idea, so I put her, keyboard-down, on top of our air conditioner. The cool air would blow up into her circuitry and dry it out in no time, I thought. I amused myself by reading a book as the hours passed, until I impatiently decided that it was enough. Again with the power switch, again to response. Only this time, the LED switch lit up for a second before promptly darkening. This, I thought, was progress. Now I must be doing things right. After a couple more futile attempts to boot her up, I returned her to the air conditioner to dry out some more. Surely she'd be up and running again before the day was out.

No such luck. After several hours of sitting on the air conditioner, she would still not turn on. It was then that I started to panic a little. Was this more serious than water shorting out a few circuits? Was my laptop stuck in some kind of coma? My mind quickly cataloged what I might lose if she never woke up. I thought of at least three long-term assignments I hadn't bothered to back up on my flash drive, and of course the booklet I was laying out for the writer's workshop. Those assignments were important, but one would be easy to make up, and the other two would just be difficult. Everything else was backed up on my flash drive or somewhere on the internet – or both. But that was hardly consolation for the fact that my computer was lying helpless in a coma because I was dumb enough to keep water nearby. A part of me knew that I shouldn't blame myself, that it was just an accident, but the other part needed to blame something, and the laws of physics couldn't really be held responsible. My computer was dying, maybe already dead, and the best I could do was dry her off after drowning her because of my own stupidity. I could handle losing files, but losing her... that was something I could not accept.

I didn't sleep well that night. She wasn't even four months old. I wondered if the computer world would consider that infanticide.

Sometime that night I came to the conclusion that I would take her to the computer help desk. It was a logical choice, of course, but I'm not one to task for help, and besides, I have the irrational fear that people will mock me for the slightest mistake. “You spilled water on your computer? You moron!” Yeah, it's stupid, but I've started to get over it, and besides, she needed help more than I needed my pride. So the next morning, I got up and headed for the help desk with my computer safely stowed in my backpack.

However, two things happened that I hadn't counted on. First, the help desk had moved to the library. Second, the library was closed for the fourth of July. I'd known all along that it probably would be, but a part of me hoped that somehow, someone would be there to see her. If only computers had emergency rooms, I thought as I returned home. I had homework to do, but that could be done with my roommate's computer. If he'll even let me touch it, I told myself. By now he probably thought I was the killer of all laptops.

Fortunately, he didn't share my paranoia, so homework was completed, though with some difficulty. Japanese keyboards can be very confusing, especially when they start spewing characters you don't even recognize. I even had time to post an alert of Facebook: “Josh killed his computer. Turns out water isn't as good for them as it is for humans.” I put a humorous spin on it mostly for my own sanity. One of my friends suggested taking her apart and putting her in a bucket of rice. I was tempted, but I didn't have a bucket, rice, or a screwdriver, nor did I know how I'd put her back together again. I figured it would be best to leave her as she was than make things worse by tinkering. She seemed to be holding stable, and that was fine with me.

The next day, I took her to the help desk the first chance I got. I half-hoped they'd tell me she just needed to dry out some more. What I got instead was a look that was everything but reassuring. “Did you try to turn it back on?” the doctor asked. Yes, I had. Multiple times. “You're supposed to let it dry out for two days,” he explained. “You probably fried the motherboard.”

I'd only heard about motherboards form a kid's cartoon, but I knew it was important and that frying it was definitely not a good thing. What was worse, it was my own interfering that had done it. If the hard drive was her memory, what was the motherboard? Her heart? And that faint crackling, was that the sound of her going into cardiac arrest because her idiot owner wouldn't stop pushing the power button? Before, ti had been an accident. Now... now it was murder.

The guy offered to salvage what he could from the hard drive and transfer it to my flash drive. It was like something from an alien movie. Use the host, kill it, then take its memory. So, naturally, like the heartless beast I was, I accepted. Turns out the guy couldn't get tot he hard drive anyway – something about not being allowed to remove more than one panel at a time. Some surgeon you are, I thought. “No, can't restart his heart, I already have his brain open.” He told me the real surgeon would be in later in the afternoon. When I came back, they told me that the guy who could get at her hard drive only came in the second half of the week and only replaced screens. They couldn't restart the heart or the brain, then. Either way, they weren't going to help me.

I ended up taking her to a practice a few blocks away who could do both, or would at least try. The receptionist, a balding guy in his forties, took down her information as he explained the procedure. “We'll see if we can save it,” he said. “If not, we'll get what we can from the hard drive for you.”

“How long will it take?” I asked.

“Depends,” the receptionist answered. “They'll let it dry out completely before they fiddle with it. Sometimes they just leave them there for a week and a half, just to be sure.”

And that was it. I left her there with the receptionist, hoping that somehow they'd be able to save her from my mistakes. I was going to lose time making up the work I'd lost, and my grades would probably suffer, but I knew I couldn't complain. After all, she was the one whose last memories might be water flooding her core and repeated electrocution. That trumped by far anything I was going to lose.

It must have been my roommate's computer who ratted me out. A bold move, considering he lived in the same room as a known laptop murderer. Or maybe they just all knew when my laptop suddenly disappeared. Perhaps she'd had a chance to scream before the water drowned her out. One way or another, though, all the computers on campus were out to get me.

It started in my third class of the day. Our teacher asked us to take a quick online test. The girl next to me finished it in less than a minute. When I tried to log on, though, everything went wrong. The browser wouldn't start. The other reject my credentials the first two times. Then it wouldn't let me on the site because the 'connection' was 'slow.' Homing he was just the only vigilante, I went to the library to find an open computer. The first was locked. The second refused to let me log on. The third cooperated, but very grudgingly. By the time I answered both true-false questions, I was running late for my next class.

As I went, I reflected on how easily computers could take over the world by shutting all the humans out, and tried to shake the feeling that that's exactly how they would punish me for killing one of their own.

A week later, I returned to the clinic. The clerk on duty was a younger guy, probably a student. I told him I wanted an update. H disappeared into a back room for a time. I wasn't sure what kind of news to expect. I still clung to the hope that she would come out fully functioning, as though nothing had happened. The logical part of my brain told me the best I could hope for was a thumb drive with all her memories. The truth was somewhere in between. The clerk told me the hard drive was out, but that there was too much data to store on a mere flash drive. I felt a moment of fatherly pride for her – after all I'd done to her, she refused to be compressed into a mere thumb drive. He told me they were expecting a shipment of external hard drive cases, and that they'd be able to enclose what was left of her within the week. Although as a whole she could not function, her mind could at least be saved – and with it, a part of herself as well.

The next time they went back, they still weren't ready. The shipment had just gotten in, and all the surgeons were on break. An hour later, the balding receptionist called and told me it was done. She was ready to come home.

I paced in the waiting room as the receptionist went to retrieve her. I wondered what she would look like now. What color would she be? What size? How would I carry her with me? I was a little anxious, but mostly excited. Her recovery had come just in time. This time, I would take better care of her.

The receptionist returned with more items than I expected. The largest was the laptop itself, now completely useless. The diagnostics sheet taped to its cover confirmed a damaged motherboard as the cause of death. Then there was a small cardboard box, within which lay the real prize. She was black and smaller than I'd expected – three inches by five and practically flat. A USB cable stuck out from one end, splitting in two at the other. I wondered if both had to be connected and contemplated the challenges that might raise.

I paid the clinic for its services an rode home, heading straight for the library. A blue LED lit up on her surface once she was connected. Navigation was a little confusing at first, but soon I found the hard drive I knew so well. All the files were there. Nothing had been lost.

As I closed out the window, I paused a moment to see what name she'd been given. “OS” - that was hardly adequate. I took a moment to come up with a suitable name and typed it in. Elena. The laptop I'd nearly destroyed. She wasn't the computer she used to be, but she was still there, and somehow that made everything all right. Fear not, Elena. You will never drown again.

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I wasn't really sure how to illustrate that... so... here's a simulation of the robot takeover.

Subliminal Messaging is the Man!!!

So, Josh and I were randomly making up lyrics to well known internet memes and songs... so last night, we came up with some lyrics to "John Williams is the Man!"... if you haven't seen it, watch it here:  John Williams is the Man!

Subliminal Messaging is the Man!!! (brought to you by mostly Josh... who is better at this than I am!)

"You must visit her." (ad nauseum)

(Summer Vacation. Summer Vacation. Summer Vacation. Summer Vacation)

"Kiss a Britny, kick a clown,

take a Greyhound to a college town,

ride some horses, don't look down.

This is true love, it's Kansas, it's August, we love it!

"Watch some movies, eat some pears,

secret message from the guy upstairs.

Being bashfulled, play with hair,

this is true love, it's Kansas, it's August, we love it!"

"You have an eight hour layover.

You're gonna be stuck in Salt Lake!

Try using your phone to call Brit,

so you're not bored out of your mind!"

(it's boring, so terribly bored, it's boring, it's terribly-)

"Nobody cares if you can't ride a horse.

(nobody cares)

That's because Shadow is incredibly lazy

(nobody cares)

I suggest a new strategy, try not to fall off,

because nobody cares if you can't ride a horse!"

(Now we listen to Ed whining

four more red trays four more red trays four more red trays four more red trays)

"I was gonna play canasta with my niece and her new boyfriend,

but he always deals bad hands. Get yer own ice cream!"

Hooooooooorses. Hoooooooooorses.

Shaddow you need to stop eating (Horses! Horses!)

Shaddow you need to stop eating (Horses! Horses!)

"Well I guess... I'll just hang out back here... way behind..."

(Watch the sunset watch the sunset watch the sunset watch the sunset)

"Brit.... ny I love you. I am going to sing a song

that I wrote for you months ago. It'll be quite the show."

"So you can play piano well, would you like to play in church? (I'm a Mormon..)

It would be so cool if you help us out oh nice to see you Brit. Well good-bye!"

(Summer Vacation. Summer Vacation. Summer Vacation. Summer Vacation)

"Kiss a Britny, kick a clown,

take a Greyhound to a college down,

ride some horses, don't look down.

This is true love, it's Kansas, it's August, we love it, it's true!"

(Episode 2, Coming to you, This November)

"So let's go get on Skype and watch each other type (GO TO PORTLAND)

May God be with us all! (Subliminal messaging is the man!)"

How Not To Make A Movie - Josh

When we were kids, my brothers and I liked playing with Legos. I mean, really really liked playing with Legos. Our parents would buy us the little plastic bricks any time gift-giving was in order, and once we got tired of playing with them as the sets they came in, we'd take them completely apart and build our own, much cooler Lego creations. If you've ever owned Legos, I'm sure you can relate.

My brother Gideon and I were the Lego-combining masters of the household, though I have to admit he was always better at it than I was. This may be because he was more aggressive than I and thus held a monopoly on all the useful, color-coordinated pieces, leaving me with his leftover rejects. So while his would turn out something like this:

Mine would look something closer to this:

Eventually we collected enough Star Wars-themed sets to have enough gray pieces to go around, but for a while, my ships would look like they'd come from the Happy Rainbow squadron, which is not all that impressive or helpful in space battles.

At some point we created a group of five heroes collectively known as the Super Squad. Gideon had a three-part ship that included a small fighter, a slightly bigger cruiser, and a docking station that resembled a pair of legs. Put together, the thing looked like a ten-inch person. I had my own similar three-part configuration, only slightly smaller and less cool-looking because I was still using leftover blocks. Our sister, who we somehow roped into playing space wars with us, had a little scout ship we build for her. It was pretty impressive for a bunch of amateur Lego artists.

After their first few adventures, we felt we needed to take it to the next level. After thinking about it for a good five minutes, we cane up with the brilliant idea of making a Super Squad movie. However, this involved asking our dad for permission to use his camera. He reluctantly agreed on the condition that only I or my brother use it. Why? Becaue it was a VHS camera. They're slightly less bulky than those cameras news teams have. But only slightly.

Next we had to write the script and assign parts, which went something like this:

Gideon: “I want to be Luke.” (his main hero)

Me: “Okay, I'll be everyone else.”

Oh yeah. You know how I said there were five of them? Well, for the movie version, we decided to introduce about 40 new 'good guys' whose main purpose was to look cool while the five main characters did all the actual work. I'm not sure why we thought that was a good idea. I mean, there were only three of us, and one of us had to hold the camera. Did we think they were going to fly themselves?

Now, remember how I said my brother would use all the best pieces for his ships? Remember how mine would be cobbled together with the leftovers? Now, imagine that we have about forty ships build like that, just for the good guy team. By now we've used up everything even halfway decent. Now try to imagine what the bad guy ships might have looked like.

That's not really an exaggeration, either. Oftentimes the bad guy ships were so fragile they would break on lift-off. At one point, one of the bad guy bosses tries to fight the good guy boss's space ship with a pirate pistol.

The sad thing is, I think the pirate pistol won. Apparently we didn't bother with little details like physics and logic.

Also, with a complete lack of scripted lines, we had to ad lib the entire ten-minute movie. This led to little jewels such as, “We should call ourselves the Super Duper Squad!” and “I shot – YOU CAN'T FLY!” Back then, I had a thing for alliterations, so when the bad guys made their entrance, I gave the incredible non-threatening name, “The Imposter Posse,” which isn't even an alliteration.

Needless to say, the movie wasn't quite as spectacular as we thought it would be. 

Years later, I found out that this was the real reason my dad was reluctant to let us use the camera. But hey, we had a ton of fun doing it. So much fun, in fact, that we made eleven of them. I can only imagine what my dad went through has he mourned the loss of valuable video tape, but I like to think that he consoled himself with the thought that he was a good father letting his kids explore their talents.

Yeah...

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Oh, by the way, all the cool 3D spaceship art was made by someone else, not me. I only do paint.

The first ship was made by Joel Carlo (http://www.joelcarlo.net/ for his website, image found here: http://www.templates.com/blog/striking-spaceship-squadron/)

The giant Lego Star Destroyer was found here: http://www.galaxybricks.com/ultimate/star-destroyer-lego.php

And finally, the space battle image comes from: http://www.wallpaperpimper.com/wallpaper/download-wallpaper-Space_Battle-size-1024x768-id-14668.htm