Yeah, Gmail got an overhaul. The standard gmail interface has gotten a sleeker, trimmer look and (I think) looks more stylish than ever. In addition to the much cooler look, the details view for e-mails is improved. Gmail now includes domain keys (verifies that an e-mail from bobloblaw@yahoo.com was actually mailed from the yahoo.com domain) and a few other miscellaneous enhancements. Also, the reply button is at the top and bottom of the e-mail, and conversations update as soon as you receive an e-mail. Gmail will notify you that the conversation has changed―even if you are in the middle of a reply. Also, Gmail is now available (for those with cool phones) for download at gmail.com/apps. This only works for cell phones, but you basically download a gmail app so you can use more advanced functions of gmail through your phone. You can even open sound and picture attachments!

Yeah, so check it out today by logging in to your gmail account and check out all the new features!

Ok, instead of using my Wake Forest Take Down blog site to tell about the latest breaking WF news, I've decided to just use this blog to keep all my thoughts and such together.

Many people in NC are band-wagon fans. They like whatever school is doing well in whatever sport. For example, a band-wagon fan loves Boston College or Miami during football season (ACC teams only) but can't get enough of Coach K or the UNC tar heels during basketball season. However, very few people are die-hard fans. A die-hard roots for Wake Forest during football, basketball, golf, and chess seasons. I am a die-hard WF fan and have been since 5 or 6. And since I have been 5 or 6, I've been accustomed to cheering for an often loosing team. The other kids at school would rabidly cheer on J.J. Reddick while I would lamely add, "how 'bout Eric Williams?"

However, now that I am away from my beloved NC, WF is going on a rampage. I'm just going to comment on the WF football season. Their current record is 8-1. Do you know the last time WF went 8-1? That would be 1944. Do you know what else? 8 wins ties a school record for most wins in a season. Holy Cow! I've got to say, fate, it would seem, is not without a sense of irony. The first year I move away (and to Idaho of all places) WF has an absolutely record breaking season. WF is ranked 22 in the nation. That's absolutely amazing!

Next, WF just played BC (no 16) and won 21-14. Many people said that WF was having a fluke of a season and that the honeymoon would end with a loss against Boston College. It would appear not so. With an end zone interception, WF kept up the pressure against BC all through the 4th quarter. I'm just in awe of this WF team. It's about time WF got some intercollegiate respect. Is WF number one in the nation? Probably not. Could they beat the no. 1 team in the nation? Possibly. Many people would disagree. They would scoff and say "when the planets align, yes." Well, WF is 8-1 and if they win another game it will be a first in the entire history of Wake Forest University. Now that's saying something.

Who knows where this season will end? I certainly don't know, but its gonna be awesome!

Hey everybody, how’s it going? Yeah, it’s getting kinda late here, but I wanted to make a posting before going to bed. For all parties concerned, I’m posting this article from MS Word 2007. Yeah, what a cool feature. You can register your blog account through MS Word 2007 and then write an article from Word and then post it. How friggin awesome is that? So your typing a journal entry and suddenly you realize you’d like to post it to your blog. And for me, I often post my paper and such on my blog, so this would make that incredibly easy and efficient. Plus my grammar is atrocious, so typing the post with Word will make my articles infinitely more readable.

Anyway, those are just my feelings on the matter. With Word you can also set up a workspace so several people can view and edit a paper as one. Mom, if your writing a family newsletter, you can create a workspace and set it up so certain people can edit certain parts. That way I can edit the section dealing with me while Ethan can only edit his section.

So I’m not completely 2007 (Beta 2) pro, I will say that I have encountered a bug while printing. There’s a simple workaround and I think it’s just with my printer driver/setup. Also, compatibility with previous versions can act up, but only with documents with funky graphics and such. Overall, Office 2007 looks pretty amazing. It has a lot of features missing in any current-gen office software. Check out the beta if you want. Tomorrow’s post will have more day-to-day info., so stay tuned.

Ok, this should be a record short post, but I just found a really interesting article about a cloak (more or less) that bends electromagnetic waves and microwaves (plus visible light) around an object.

Right now, its only partially invisible in 2 dimensions and there is a slight shadow, but the researchers (from Duke Unviersity) said the ultimate goal is invisibility in 3 dimensions with no shadowing.

The basic idea, is that carefully constructed materials can bend light around itself, making it invisible. We see things when light bounces off the object and some of it reflects back to our eyes.

Anyway, check out this article, its pretty interesting.

Hey guys, I'm just dropping a quick note on this one. I installed the rest of the MS Office 2007 apps and one of the ones I tried was Microsoft OneNote (which is like a really beefed-up, super cool version of Google Notebook...it even includes all the cool sharing features plus some new ones). Anyway, I have to write an Ensign article (not really, but that's the premise) about a topic in Alma chapters 13-29. Here are the notes and ideas I've collected thus far. If you happen to have MS OneNote, then use this link.

Anyway, any feedback or cool ideas you have or thoughts to share I would really like. Oh yeah, download MS OneNote...it's really cool, well worth the $1.50 download charge.

Oh yeah, if you're wondering why to download OneNote, a couple of these features might entice you.

• It's just like writing notes in a notebook...anywhere you click the cursor, you can write a note.
• Sharing, you can share/collaborate/anything you want with other OneNote users.
• You can use OneNote to create a picture file from a portion of the screen...see a picture you like inside a flash application and you can't download it...now you can.
• Text recognition from pictures---this makes it super easy to convert text documents or pictures with text in them into actual text.

So yeah, check it out and check out my notes from Alma 13-16. I'll probably publish my notes for the rest of these chapters as well.

Ok guys, I know that I'm a huge procrastinator when it comes to posting. Things have been extremely busy these past few weeks up here at BYU-Idaho. However, once this week is over, things are gonna be niiiiccceee.

First up, quick little dating review. I've officially gone on my 3rd date with Marianne, and I still can't tell for sure if she likes me or not. For my parents, especially mom and dad, I'm not too worried about the girl situation because I know that I'm going on my mission in a year anyway. However, thus far, I've really enjoyed the dates that I've gone on with her...oh yeah, and she's gorgeous. Enough about that though. The girl that hit me with her car (while I was on my bike) happens to be in my ward and the roommate of the girl I usually sit beside in Book Of Mormon. Craziness there ;)

As far as school goes, I got a 94 on my first physics test, which counts for 20% of my grade and I had my world civ presentation today, which counted for 25% of my world civ grade. Let's see what happens there. Also, I have a presentation in Physics on work and motion, etc. this Wednesday. I'm kinda dreading it, but oh well.

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On to other news, like the new Office 2007 Beta. So everyone who knows me that I seem to keep decently current with technology related info. For those of you who don't know, Office 2007 and Windows Vista (the new operating system, like XP) are coming out to consumers early next year (January or February). Also, if you didn't know, you can download both Office 2007 (beta of course) and the 1st release candidate of Vista. I'm a little too timid to download Vista since there could be some major issues with compatibility with my current software, but that means Office 2007 is fair game.

True to Microsoft's word, Office 2007 is a huge improvement over previous versions. 10x shinier, it has that "new software" feel to it. That's not what's most impressive. I have not conducted any tests, but it appears that Office 2007 loads a tad faster than 2003. Another neat feature is the absence of traditional menus. They are gone. Instead is a more streamlined and intuitive interface. It might take users a few minutes to become acquainted to, but it has a lot of new features that are easy to use and understand. Another cool feature is the level of integration. It works better than you imagine it could. One cool example is when inserting a table into PowerPoint. You click the button and in a few seconds your looking at PowerPoint with Excel open right beside of it. It gives you full access to Excel features and as you edit the tables in Excel, it changes the graph in PowerPoint. Its cool.

I haven't tested compatibility with previous versions of office, but I imagine it works smoothly with Office 2003 and Office XP. Its a cool download, although it does cost $1.50. I justify this by saying that I'm downloading a refreshed Beta 2, which is decently close to release software. Office 2007 will cost between $200-$400, and I've got it for $1.50. This should hold me over until I buy a new computer, in which case it'll come bundled anyway.

So yeah, check out the link/title of this post and see if you'd like to try out the Office 2007 beta. It's worth it, or at least I think so.

Just a quickie for tonight. It's kinda late and I just want to share a quick little snippet into campus life here. Wierd though this may seem, there are hand sanitizer dispensers near every building entrance and exit. I think mom would be in heaven here. Even outside some bathroom/interior doors there are little dispensers to keep things squeaky clean. So yeah, if you're ever on campus, don't worry, because things will always be clean.

Anyway, physics and calc are pretty tough, but not impossible. My computer class is easy and fun, while religion and world civ provide a neat balance. Catch you guys round

So I bet everybody has been eagerly awaiting my next blog post to see what I've been up to in college. Hold your breath no longer! I've finally gotten settled into life here and things are returning to a sense of normal.

First off, I would like to say thank you again to all those who have been praying for me over the past week or so. Moving off to college was a million times harder than I thought it would be. Leaving my family at the terminal was hard enough and then Ethan dropping me off at Rexburg was the final straw. It finally hit me that me living by myself would become the norm. I mean, I know that I have roommates, but I still feel like its mostly me watching out for myself. The best way to describe it is being independent.

The good side is that the homesickness has finally started to wear off. Not that I no longer miss my family, but the sadness I feel at being far away from them has been reduced to a manageable portion. Life has to go on and I've got classes and such to do here. Speaking of classes, I'll give everyone a quick little run down on my schedule.

My schedule is obviously posted above, but that doesn't explain what my day is like. Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays are the hardest, but still quite fun. I actually really enjoy all of my classes so far. The class I was most scared about was my Calc II class which start right where my high school AP Calc class left off. Fortunately my teacher is super nice and I think I'm really going to like her. My Calc I teacher (which I only had for a day) seemed mean and determined to make Calc I a difficult class. She even promised 3 hours of studying per hour of class time. yikes! I mean, I know I need to study in order to do well in my classes...but there is no way I need to study that much for a class. Especially not on average. Anyway, Calc II is way cooler and its exciting to start learning where AP Calc left off. Physics is probably my toughest class because it applies a lot of things that I didn't really learn in high school physics. In high school physics I learned several topics really well, but in college physics it looks like I may need to understand a lot more. Potentially my favorite class is the Intro to Software Development. Before we even got into how to actually program, I was writing some C++ code in the Linux lab. For those who aren't familiar with computer programming terminology, C++ is a Object Oriented (OO) programming language. Linux is an operating system much like Windows XP or Vista. Linux is common among programmers. Anyway, its pretty interesting to start learning a few things about how to make programs. Thus far all I've done is make the computer display some text and create conditional statements based on user input. Don't worry, it sounds way more complicated that it actually is.

The religion class is great as is World Civ. Both teachers are way cool and know their stuff. I especially like my World Civ teacher because he doesn't even need to look at a book to teach us stuff, he just knows it that well.

Lastly, I want to slip in a quick technological update. If any of you are using the internet (which all of you must be in order to view an online blog) go to this website and download the Google Toolbar. Granted, I have to really like a browser plugin before using it because I hate any performance slow downs and I hate plugins that take up precious viewing space. the Google Toolbar does neither. Once downloaded, check out the "Send To" button. Find a web page and click the "Send To" button and then click "Gmail." Basically, you send a copy of the web page you are viewing via e-mail to anyone. It's really a neat feature to show someone exactly what you are looking at. Anyway, that's all I've got for you guys today. Stay classy San Diego. I'm Ron Burgundy?

Where to begin....hmmm. It's hard to pick a starting point for this epic saga. I'll try my best to give a brief narrative of the events of the past couple of days and give some commentary without getting too emotionally involved.

As (hopefully) most of you know, I am no longer in North Carolina. I'm going to school in BYU-Idaho this fall and (probably) winter semesters. Anyway, my adventure started on thursday, August 24th. My family drove me to the airport in Raleigh where my flight was delayed from a 4:05 departure to a 6:50 departure. That meant that I would miss my connecting flight in Chicago. It ended up that I hung out with the family for awhile before returning to the airport and rebook my flight for the next morning at 6:45am. The only really bad thing about the early departure was that I had to get up at 4:40am EST. I honestly didn't feel too sleepy. The morning flight was nearly empty and went from Raleigh to Nashville and then to Las Vegas and then to Salt Lake City. On the way from Nashville to Las Vegas, I pulled out the laptop and watched several episodes of TV shows I had downloaded to my hard drive. It really helped to pass the time.

It was funny landing in Vegas. I (not having left NC much) thought it was funny that even the airport had built-in casinos. I even saw a 90-year-old woman staring down her slot machine. From Nashville to Vegas I sat beside a really nice couple. We talked about college and what not and they related to mom in being sad when children leave home for college. The last of her children had just left for college and she sympathized with my feelings of sadness at leaving home.

In Vegas I spent the better part of my time charging my laptop battery for the flight from Vegas to Salt Lake. In turned out I didn't even get to finish one episode of the TV show I was watching. Oh yeah, if anyone is looking for gift ideas...House Season 2 is looking really good right now. Or software to decode DVDs and copy them to the hard drive.


Anyway, I made it to Ethan's apartment successfully then I had to drive him to work. I went from there to Best Buy and bought a wireless router for his apartment and since I would need one in Idaho anyway. Probably the craziest part of the day was how little food I had. Kristen bought me a biscuit that morning around 5:30am and the next food I had was in Vegas at 9:30 (12:30 EST). All I had there was a pink lemonade and a handful of combos. My next meal was a chalupa at Taco Bell...weeee!

I'm starting to ramble, but I would like to share a few of my thoughts before I close. Leaving for college is scary and daunting, yes. But through hard and difficult circumstances can come great joy. As I used to quote "I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it." This applies to me, I know. One "known" blessing is the blessing of coming home for Christmas. I know that the absence of college will make the reunion much sweeter. Of course other blessings may occur while at college, but those are up to me as I allow the Lord to work through me. My attitudes and desires will bear the greatest effect on how sensitive I am to the Spirit and how much I learn and grow from my surroundings. Life is like dinner. If all we ate was dessert (even though it tastes amazing) we would be unhealthy and suffer in the no-so-distant future. However, struggling down fruits and vegetables (although not as tasty as pie and ice cream) helps us both mentally and physically. Adversity can equal tremendous growth. It's all in how we handle the situations we face. Maybe leaving home and going to BYU-I isn't cake, but I can still enjoy the BYU-I broccoli salad. Just as long as it doesn't become celery, we should all be fine ;)

Hey everybody. Continuing the my new tradition of late blog posting, here I am. But I bring a new song called "Don't Wait" by Dashboard Confessional. Check out the music video above. It's really interesting, especially if you watch it all the way through.

Anyway, new laptop. I just bought a new laptop a few days ago from Dell. I wanted to get a 14.1" screen because (instead of the 15.4" or 17") for battery life reasons. Plus it's a little more mobile than the larger laptops. I had been eyeing this one for awhile but it just didn't have as good of deals as its cousin laptops ;) ironically, one night when me and logan we're up kinda late, I looked at the laptop again (a little after midnight, August 1st) and it had identical deals as the other laptops. Cautiously I decided to go ahead and buy the it. $700 later and that thing is all mine!

The cool part of the story is that the same morning (about 9am) I checked Dell.com again and all the deals of the previous night we're gone. I don't know what happened, but for just a couple of hours I was able to get the deal I'd been hoping for. Yeah for me!

For those curious about what kind of laptop I got, here are the specs:

1.86 GHz single-core processor (Intel)
60 GB Hard drive (5400rpm)
1.04 GB of DDR2 SDRAM
533 Mhz FSB speeds
802.11 b/g network card
DVD/CD burner @ 8x (dual-layer burning support)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I think I'm forgetting something, so just comment any questions. My next post will follow the trend of the "Love" post, meaning it should be a thoughtful and reflective post of a different topic altogether. Oh and mom, go back to the top of the page, unpause the video and watch it. I think you'll like it.

Perhaps such a post as this should be written at a less cynical time in my life. Fear not though, for my dissertation is like a scary bedtime story. No matter what happens, it always ends happily ever after.

I was thinking in the shower about 10 minutes ago and my train of thought led me to love. I cynically remarked to myself that there is no such thing as true love. The more I thought about it I began to realize my own error. Among teenagers, true love is a rare thing, in fact, its practically nonexistent.

I know I'm rambling, but I will make my point. There are a couple of kinds of love and all of them must be examined to understand the point I'm making. Teenage love should be more appropriately called infatuation. Although not always the case, teenagers often mistake infatuation for a purer form of love. Infatuation is a physical love, with no roots in traits of personality, character, humor, etc. Infatuation is skin deep and both comes and goes as fleetingly as the wind.

The closest mortal approximation of true (or perfect) love is unconditional love. The best example of this is the love parents have for their children and the siblings love for another sibling. This kind of love is always present and based entirely in personality traits and not at all in looks. Unconditional love is loving someone for who they are, not how they look, dress, or act.

Now I'm nearing the realization I had in the shower. Unconditional love is not perfect love. Unconditional love can become perfect love, but it isn't always the case. Perfect love can only be felt in a state of Celestial glory. Because perfect love must be perfect, it must be eternal. The closest mortal approximation of perfect love is true love. Eternal marriage paves the highway for an eternity of perfect love between a family, but it is only a highway. It must be followed and each of us has the agency to choose that path or not.

My point is that perfect love is felt on earth. It is almost only found in marital relationships (especially the eternal variety) and between the members of a family. However, because of our mortal state, I believe a more appropriate name of perfect love is true love.

True love is like a seed. Just because its planted doesn't mean it will become a tree. Under proper conditions a seed can become a tree, living for hundreds of years (mortal eternity). Ok, that's as far as I got in the shower. A bit of a ramble, but still the good ending.

Ok, first off, I'm going to give a paragraph synopsis of the last three or four weeks.

New Mexico Trip: C- this trips gets a C- because I don't like camping...at all. One week spent without modern conveniences...of which I am a huge fan. The only reason this trip didn't receive a failing grade is for two reasons. One reason was getting to spend some time with logan and my dad. The second reason was getting to spend time with my friends. Ok, the scenery was decent, but I spent the week looking at the person's feet in front of me. I would glance up to stare at 300ft high canyon walls! WOW! and the second day, guess what I saw when I looked up? Yep, you guessed it, 300ft canyon walls! WOW! and the third day, guess what I saw when I looked up? Yep, you guessed it....you get the picture. The canyon walls were kinda interesting, plus we saw some cool cliff dwellings. However, it is unlikely I will go on a camping trip like this one in the near future.

EFY: B+ EFY gets a B+ for being EFY. The reason it didn't get an A or higher rating is because I felt a noticeable maturity gap between me and some of the other participants. It wasn't terrible, but it was there. I just can't figure out what was missing. Plus, girls are gay. I apologize to all feminine readers of this blog...but its true. I have a few stories to tell, but they're too long and drawn out to write out here. Suffice it to say I was out-flirted by a friggin candybar. Ok, so he was human, but his name was Heath. Exactly...friggin candybar. Oh well, I'm over it now...but it does help to vent with writing. Hanging out with Logan and my friends was exceptionally cool.

Work: F- Yeah, work sucks. I mean not good. I really don't enjoy work because it's a complete waste of time. Free movies are nice, but the tasks I do are menial. It's like getting paid to do 3rd grade math for 10 hours at a time. It's ridiculously easy, but you know you have sooo much more potential yet it's not needed. Frustrating!

Ok, why MySpace is stupid:

1. You can only upload 12pictures
2. Picture must be less than 600KB
3. MySpace makes you compress the files to a size under the 600KB mark
4. MySpace uploads only one photo at a time
5. MySpace uploads photos until it gets to the 600KB mark before telling you its too big.
6. MySpace uses a billion subdomains to process server requests (purely technical complaint)
7. MySpace doesn’t allow scripting
8. MySpace doesn't utilize active scripting (check out picasa web albums---the comment feature)
9. MySpacece doesn't fully support IE 7
10. MySpace is home to hundreds of pedafiles
11. MySpace doesn't always work...MySpace screws up. Other sites don't.
12. Everyone has one...and no one shares my overwhelming hatred of it...thus I am doomed to communicate with others through the "Cursed Network" as I will now refer to MySpace as.

Oh Yeah, by the way, check out my pictures from EFY and YC here. Yeah, and you can still comment on my pictures. They're good

Ok, before I get started into the New Mexico camping trip rundown, I'm gonna do a quick software review. I'm taking a break from my typically Google oriented reviews and branching out into another software provider. Skype. Skype can be downloaded here. Skype is similar to other programs that allows you to talk to other Skype users (over the internet at 256-bit encryption) for free. This means a hacker would have 1.1 x 10(to the 77th power) different combinations of numbers to guess before gaining access to your private conversations. The best thing about Skype is that now you can make free calls to any land-line phone in the US for free. Just download the program, dial the number (in the +1336123456 format) and wa-la---free long distance. For all those with any connection faster than dial-up, I would recommend checking this out. At the very least it will save on long distance calls.

Anyway, on to New Mexico. I'll get around to posting some pictures today or tomorrow, but for now I'll have to paint a picture of the trip with my own words (ahh, I sound like a poet). The trip started at 3am in my house, where we left for good ole' RDU airport. 2 hours early for our flight, our time was spent sleeping in the terminal (of which I have many pictures). The flight was fun and within 10 hours we we're safe in Arizona's Tuscon Intl' airport. Our two guides picked us up and drove us to one of our guides grandparent's home---in the 109ºF heat. Yikes! That's like 42ºC for any who care (give or take a degree). We spent the night in the basement of the grandparent's house and the next morning---Monday morning---we we're off into the deserts of New Mexico. After a three-hour drive, we arrived at the drop-off point.

Enough with the minute description. To make a long story short, the week was hot, long, and tiring. It was also a lot more enjoyable than I thought it would be. Don't misunderstand me---it wasn't spectacular, but it was.....almost fun....at times. I will only admit this one---and grudgingly at that---but parts of it were genuinely fun. The only thing I didn't like about the trip was our guide's sense of direction. He was always wayyyy off when it came to distances. One morning he told us it was 1 mile to the nearest swimming hole. 6 miles later, we reached the swimming place. Yikes again! However, the place where we hiked was really pretty. Most of the week was spent in a narrow canyon with 300ft. high walls surrounding us! One cool point in the trail came when we found a hot springs deal. Heated by magma deep within the earth, hot and fresh spring water was delivered to us in a 4ft deep pool. It was really nice and everything. Without the natural setting, it could have doubled as a sauna. The only downside was the brain-eating amoeba that lived there. For that reason we couldn't dip our heads beneath the water as the amoebas would crawl up our nasal cavities and eat our brains. Yeah, I'm serious about that. Oh well, it was still fun.

Coming back to civilization was also weird. After being away from girls for a week, I found myself checking out the 40 year old waitresses at the Golden Corral. After a few hours my senses returned to normal.

Well, that's all for now. I'll post the pictures from the trip in the slide-show or in the blog for everybody to check them out. One other side-note (in the life of Adam) is that I've got my job orientation at 3:30pm at the movie theatre here in town. Looks like I landed my first job! Everybody wish me luck! Aurvoir!

Wow, where do I start? It's been four years at Mount Airy High School and now I'm done with high school---forever!

In case you didn't guess from the title of this post, the new pictures in the slide-show, or the new song playing called "Graduation Day," then I'll tell you. Friday, June 3rd was my graduation from high school.

I've got to admit, actually being here feels a lot different than the journey. From as far back as I can remember, I really hated school. I had friends and everything, but I just didn't get excited about the whole concept. However, now that I've actually graduated I have a slightly more bittersweet outlook on the whole thing. Sure I'm glad to move on, but high school was fun. More precisely, senior year was fun. All my classes were with people that I enjoyed being with and the atmosphere had a maturity I'd been waiting for for four years.

Aside from all that, I'll be the first to admit I'm a little scared/nervous about heading out to college. I mean I've never been away from home for more than a week at a time to EFY. Now I'm living on my own some 2,000 miles away from home. And the next time I see my family could quite possibly be Christmas. Yikes! Ok, enough sadness. On the positive, I'm closer to serving a mission. That really excites me. I've been waiting to serve a mission ever since I my family sang "Called to Serve" in the car to keep me quiet. I'm also closer to coming home from my mission, getting married, and raising a family! No need to look too far into the future though =)

Let me describe my actual graduation and then I've got to head out. At graduation all the seniors took balloons and placed them on my Principal's podium while she read out the names of the graduates. It was pretty funny when she became buried in the balloons and no one could see her. I don't do the scene justice but it was hilarious. Also, when my principal pronounced us graduates the silly string was everywhere! Volleyballs, toilet paper, and streamers was flying everywhere! The coolest part was throwing my own hat in the air! That was such a cool, rush-like feeling. You see people do it on TV all the time, but actually doing it---it was cool!

Ok audience, I must go to bed. It is 2:11am and I'm leaving for a camping trip at 3am. I will be gone until 6/12/06. Sorry guys, no posting or content until then. But I'll post some cool pictures with my new digital camera (thanks again Kristen and Cory). Until then, enjoy the new song, "Graduation Day," by Head Automatica and enjoy the new pictures in the slide-show. Don't forget that if you click on the pictures, it will take you to a picture index if you want to see enlarged versions of the pics. That's all. Wish me luck in the deserts of New Mexico. Aurvoir and Sianara!

Ok, so I just wanted to give this post a cool title when in fact I actually have nothing to post about. Be prepared for intense rambling.

I'll write a few random thoughts about graduation, college, and life in general. First up, graduation. Service of Celebration was (I think) Monday. The speakers were nice, refreshments were so-so, and graduation tradition carried on like always. I only pose one question. Who thought wearing robes, strings, and caps with gay tassels was cool? Forget cool, what about just plain comfortable? As I was "robing up" for the S of C, I felt like some actor out of a bad Harry Potter Movie spin-off. And you know what else---those robes are hot! The air conditioning in that church was nonexistent! And it was wayyy too sunny! Oh well, I will admit that it was cool seeing old high school friends again (woah that sounds weird to say) and it felt like I was finally done with high school. I'm a little nervous and scared heading out west for college...being so far away from home. At the same time, it's kinda exciting to finally be done with high school and moving on.

Ok, that's all the rambling I have for today. I'll try and cook up something especially cool for my next post. Oh yeah, the slide-show should be back up sometime this week. My hosting site is down for awhile but should be back online soon. I'll even throw in a few extra pictures.

One last thought about the heart of my post. You know, life is all about change. Yet, life isn't a mix a "big" changes that alter the course of our lives. I think its more like a slow transformation. Although life still holds key moments---our past day-to-day actions slowly shape who we are so that when we come to big choices---we've already made the choice. Life is a river---always changing yet never ending. Always following the land---but a river does is not shaped by the land. Water shapes the land it runs on. So do we affect the world in which we live.

(I just wanted to write something poetic sounding) See you guys round'!

I'm in a pretty random mood this morning, so this post will be short.

Everyone gets those e-mails telling a brief horror story about "little Susan" who wishes she had only known not to flash her headlights at oncoming cars because it was part of a violent "Blood Gang" initiation ritual. Well, I decided to start finding out whether those e-mails were true, partly true, or straight-up hoaxes. My findings thus far have been very interesting. You can find all the information I've gathered thus far here at my Google Notebook. So far, what I will do to new myths is to post the original text of the hoax e-mail and then post clippings of the relevant information about it, plus Google Notebook automatically includs links to the websites I get my information from.

If you have a Google account you can search my notebook exclusively from the google.com/notebook page. Also, I made a heading for each new myth, so it makes it easy to scroll between the blue headings to find myths relevant to you. Also, if you have some sketchy e-mails, feel free to forward them to me so I can add them to my "myth busting" Notebook collection.

So far I have only busted two myths. One about the Blood Gang initiation ritual and the Dial *677 for emergency dispatch. So far both proved almost entirely false. Anyway, feel free to enjoy my Myth Busters notebook. Btw, prom (Kelsey's is tonight). Wish me luck :)

Ahh, this post will be fun. Ok. Everyone listens to music, right? I know I sure do. Every time I hop in the car, my first move is to lean over to the passenger side and turn on my CD player (I use a tape/CD adapter instead of buying a factory-installed CD player). And I honestly like nearly anything. Notice the nearly. Rap is out, as is almost all country. There might be a country song somewhere that I like, but few and far between. Practically nonexistent. As for music I do like, everything goes. From EFY CDs to classical to hard rock, I'll listen to it all. My favorite genre is some mix of soft rock, emo/indie whatever. However, as my music tastes have matured over the years, I have learned found certain songs that I like more than others. Some songs I really enjoy because they're from an artist I like, others sound good at first but soon loose their "coolness."

And, I have also realized I have a favorite song. One that hasn't gotten old through the many years I have listened to it. Ironically the artist is probably my all-time favorite artist as well. Anyway, the song (which is the only song currently playing on the site) is "Ocean Avenue" by Yellowcard. I realized it was my favorite song because I always seem to be humming it when no music is present. This thing is just classic. For the blog "Romantics" this song can literally be applied to any girl in some way, shape, or form. It doesn't really work so well for girls singing (or thinking) about guys. Sorry.

There you have it, the Theme Song of my life. A good soft-rock beat in combination with all-too-catchy lyrics makes an amazing song. Maybe if you guys (the blog readers) play your cards right, I might do a recording and put it in the blog play list instead :)

Happy Mothers Day everyone!

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Ok guys, here are 22 of my favorite prom pictures. I included a random splattering of me, Kelsey, and the two of us together. If you click on any of the pictures it will take you to an index of all the pictures so you can browser through them. I'm trying to post some enlarged pictures along with the index, but it isn't going so well, but it should be up soon. Anyway, enjoy, and to view all the pictures you can also click here.

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Touchy subject eh? Made even more so by the fact that I cannot discuss any multiple choice questions for the rest of my natural life. Well, at least that's what the AP booklet/packet/instruction thing said. So if you ask me about second derivatives and answer choice "B" on my death bed...you will hear nothing from my lips! Ironically, the free response questions can be discussed...now. The actual time frame for free response questions is 48 hours before ones vow of silence can be broken.

Ok, this year I only took one AP class, although that one teensy-weensy AP happened to be AP Calculus. Ouch. Two semester class, 270 in-class hours, 180 days. That translates to approximately 16,200 minutes of sheer pain! Seriously, my AP experience was pretty good. The class was very mature and enjoyable. My teacher was absolutely awesome. She was the nice and kind Filipino lady and just a lot of fun. More interesting was the math that accompanied the class. It's amazing how fun math can actually be. Ok, maybe not fun, but interesting. Calculus seems to be a math of approximation. It works through estimation of a sort. In calculus we find the area under any curves. The trick is to get infinitely close to the right answer. Kinda hard to explain, but it's an interesting math.

Anyway, on to the exam. I took it Wednesday about 830, although it lasted until around noon. I won't divulge any details about the multiple choice, mostly because I can't remember any of the problems :) I will say that I felt fairly confident about the whole thing. Until I got to free response. On multiple choice, I answered almost every problem except for about two or three out of 50-something. However, on free response things work a little differently. Each question is worth nine points, and each part of each problem is worth a varying percentage of those nine points. Anyway, I started to work out the first problem and answer the whole thing under section 1a. Terrified, I marked out my work, and placed it under 1b and 1c---only to realize I had done the whole thing wrong. More marking out, and I've already used half of my available time for this one problem. To make a long story short, I think I still did well on the exam. Also, on one problem, I was give an acceleration function and I had to take it's integral to find velocity and the integral of velocity of to find position. I finished the problem and found velocity to be -7/3 all over 523 feet/second. That was wrong. I took the derivative of acceleration to find velocity. Once i got that wrong answer, I heard the ominous sound echoing around the room---"you have ten minutes left." Uh-oh. I have never worked a problem faster than in those ten minutes. Like a little child hitting a pinata at a birthday party, I attacked that problem like no body's business. I finished the problem and think---think---I got the right answer. Overall it was one crazy day! So that's my exciting AP story of the day. By the way, prom pictures will be posted soon, I'm at my sister's house and have a complete lack of prom pictures. Don't worry though, first thing monday the pictures will be on the blog. I'm trying to do a slideshow type thing on the blog, so hopefully I'll have that up and running by monday. Aurvoir and Audieu everyone!

By the way, I actually didn't describe any problems from the AP exam---they were all from a dream I had. Yeah, that's what it was. Because I would never discuss anything about the AP exam. Never. Oh yeah, it actually wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare :)