2010 Goals

I guess it's already a little while into the year, but I have several goals.

Technical goals: Learn HTML and SQL

Academic goal: Learn German

Physical goals: Work out at least three times a week, swim for a half hour without dying, bench 1.5 times my body weight

Musical goals: Learn the Bartok Viola Concerto

GRADUATE

All goals subject to change. Except for the graduation.

Conspicuous

I didn't think I was being inconspicuous, but apparently, I'm easily found. A lot of people have figured out who I am!

Sexist

Gays are the ultimate chauvinists. They only love men, want to be with men. No women.

Re: Honor Code Office

When I got your email today, I almost got an instant stomach ulcer. My entire body got a shot of adrenaline and fear permeated my mind. I looked at your subject line and it said "Honor Code Survey." HOLY CRAP. PHEW! So, I went along with my merry life. Didn't take the survey. It was ridiculous.

What I'm Thankful For

Well, I thought that there would be a flood of "I'm thankful for..." posts yesterday, but maybe you were all happily (or maybe not?) with family! Well, it offers me a perfect time to reflect on the past year.

It was just a little over a year ago that I was officially suspended from BYU. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I just went to the Talmage Building and cried. It was one of the most difficult times of my life. I felt that my direction had been abruptly taken away and that I would be socially ostracized. I sent an email to my parents about what had happened. They had no idea that this (or the Church discipline) was all going on.

A year later, I'm back at BYU (a blessing? NO, but I'll be out of here soon enough) and reasonably happy with how my life is going. All of the horrible things that I thought would happen didn't actually happen. I have great support of wonderful friends all over the nation, a loving family, and my future seems bright. I'm truly thankful for the blessings in my life. Do I attribute them to the Church? Not at all, but to my loving Heavenly Father. God has a plan for me (that I have always known), and I can't wait for the day when the Church will get out of the way and let me fulfill it.

Boys I Like

What can I say? I like nerdy boys!

The Future

I don't think that there are many like me. I'm a very forward-thinking individual. I tend to get focused in the future and forget about the present! But I guess I'm different because I stay up thinking about not only my future, but our society's future. I think about whether America really is in a decline. And if so, who is on the incline? China? India? Korea? All of the above? Do we care that we are declining? Are we just preoccupied with what we feel that we are entitled to receive from the government that we can't see that our own selfishness is getting in the way of the greater good for our society? I guess I just see a lot of individual aggrandizement in many Americans. They want and they want, but don't want to give back.

One of my favorite time periods in history is the Roman Empire. I read Orson Scott Card's Empire a while ago, which I found quite fascinating and I definitely recommend it. Well, anyways, I constantly think about the collapse of the Roman Empire. What were the conditions surrounding it? How do those conditions compare to current America? Card actually asserted (whether it was his opinion or not, I don't know) that the current state of America is more correlated to the transition between the Roman Republic to the Empire. I guess no matter how many parallels we can make to any of them, I still worry about the current state of America. And I wonder if America even notices or cares.