Which Disney Princess Are You?

Gabe, Andrea and I had an awesome turkey dinner at Mitch and Laurie's
tonight. For evening entertainment we played "Which Disney Princess
Are You?" off the second DVD of Sleeping Beauty. The selection
choices were: Jasmine, Ariel, Aurora, Snow White, Cinderalla, and
Belle. The selection process is a 10-15 multiple choice survey.
Questions included: What would you most like to have in your house:
ball room, library, 7 guest bedrooms, tiger den, view of the ocean...
etc. Gabe and I were determined to be Belle from Beauty and the
Beast and Andrea was Cinderella. I can't say that I agree with my
results though. In Belle's first musical number she expresses her
disdain for provincial life. It has always been my dream to live a
very simple, christian, family oriented, "provincial" life. In
general, it seems that you can either be career driven, or family
oriented. Choosing one inevitably compromises the other to some
extent.

Darby and I

For those of you who don't know, Darby and I broke up one month ago.
She has found someone else in her life whom she has chosen to be
with. I apologize for hiding this from my friends and family. It
has been difficult to accept, and speaking of it, forces it into
reality. I ask for your prayers for the man she is with, so that he
may find God in his life and grow to become a strong Christian.
Thank you.

Thoughts...

Did you ever have something so overwhelming that it consumed 99% of
all your thoughts? Both awake and asleep? I keep managing to follow
through with my daily routine though, which makes we wonder: When I
wasn't so stressed out, what in the world did I think about for that
99% of the time?

Software Pirating

I'm considering selling my PC and just running a MAC only operation.
Haven't decided yet, but in the deliberations I was looking at what
software I would lose. Photoshop is the only critical piece of
software that I don't have for the MAC. Ironic really, since the
program is developed foremost for Apple. Also, I realized that it is
the only piece of software that I have pirated. Everything else I
own, i have purchased legitimately. To purchase photoshop, however,
would be a $300 investment (with student discount, $600 without).
The alternative is to purchase Photoshop elements ($50), which hasn't
even come out for mac's in edition 4.0. But after using Photoshop
CS2 for so long, it would be painful to downgrade. What software
titles do you own that are in the "can't live without, can't afford
to buy" category?

Its good to be an Engineer

An engineer dies and reports to hell. Pretty soon, the engineer becomes dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy. 
One day God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer: "So, how's it going down there in hell?" Satan replies: Hey things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next." 
God replies: "What??? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake - he should never have gotten down there; send him up here." 
Satan says: "No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him."
God says: "Send him back up here or I'll sue." Satan laughs uproariously and answers: "Yeah, right. And just where are you going to get a lawyer?"

Joint Propulsion Conference Abstract

I have to submit an abstract today for a conference taking place in
July! This means there is a fair amount of guessing what my research
will have concluded by that point. I am writing, said abstract, in
Microsoft Word. The farther I get in my education, the more faults
and flaws I realize in Microsoft's prized word processor. The most
obvious: Word has a pathetic scientific dictionary natively
installed. At some point I will see if I can't search out an
scientific dictionary add-on that will help alleviate the hundreds of
red scribbles that are littered on every document I create these
days. The second, and most annoying problem, is Word's inability to
handle figures with any sort of common sense. I spend an
unacceptable amount of time fighting with word's auto formatting.
These are serious concerns of mine since I will soon embark on a
300-400 page thesis. I have received many recommendations for Latec
(sp?). Does anyone else have any experience with latec or other
alternatives?

Red, White and Blue

Red, White and Blue.. and I don't mean the flag. I got pulled over
today just outside the yooper loop in Houghton. I didn't use my turn
signal while merging into the loop. As dangerous as that stupid loop
is, I don't blame the cop one bit for pulling me over. He also
informed me that my back window was not cleaned off (of snow) which
is illegal. I had never thought of that before. It makes sense but
I had no idea that it was a law that all of your windows must be
cleaned of snow at all times while driving. I new that you can't
having any objects obstructing your view INSIDE the car, so it only
stands to reason that the same is true on the outside. In any case,
he was nice about it and didn't ticket me.