First stance taken by the new pope.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI warned in his first encyclical Wednesday that sex without unconditional love risked turning men and women into merchandise.

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Chicago

i'm in Chicago right now visiting Kelly. Lindsey and I drove down last night. The drive itself was an adventure with seven inches of snow falling over a period of four or five hours. We were driving through 3-4 inches of standing snow on the interstate at 35 mph. Hence it took us almost twice as long ~11 hours to get here. Today, however, the temperatures were decently above freezing and most of the snow is already gone. Kelly and I went to the Water Tower and the Hancock building. Tonight we are attending a house party and then going to see the Sports Comedy Improv troup at midnight.

Quotes

A friend of mine sent me the following quotes (my initial thoughts in
() ):

1. Nobody is perfect, until you fall in love with them. (how true!)

2. The hardest thing to do is watch the one you love, love someone
else (?!?!)

3. Don't cry over someone who isn't crying over you. (k... easier
said then done)

4. Everything is okay in end. If it's not okay, then it's not the
end. (naively optimistic)

I wasn't sure if those were suppose to make me feel better or
worse?? I suppose, if read in that order, they offer some positive
reassurance. Cliches are a dime a dozen when the rose colored lenses
fall off.

New Years Eve

New Years Eve
Originally uploaded by jrossjr.

We watched the fireworks show from a hilltop Church in a large park in Stockholm. Click on the picture to see a movie clip!

New Years Resolutions

To my knowledge, this is my first New Year's resolution of my life. So, I will make it nice and easy:

I 'resolve' to make 2006 better than 2005

What are your resolutions?

Sweden

Today is our last full day in Sweden (Adam, Scott, James and I), and the first time that we've had internet access. In checking my email, I found that I missed a credit card payment, have a million ebay questions/complaints to address, and have a pile of work waiting for me up at Tech. Instantly, all of the daily burdens that i've shed since break started landed back on my shoulders. I forgot how nice it was to be without worries. Oh well, for the next two days, I will do my best to ignore all of my problems since I can't possibly do anything about them right now anyway :)

New Years Eve here was amazing. Easily the best of my life. We were standing high in the air at a Church perched on the top of a hill in a park in central Stockholm. Fireworks were going off all around us on the church grounds as well as over the whole horizon. 360 degrees of lights and explosion for almost an hour with champaign to boot. Not a bad night overall. Pictures to come. Tonight we are going out on the town. Our first chance to experience the night life in Stockholm through local bars and dance clubs.

Two days ago we woke up at 9am and went to bed at 10am the next morning (25 hours). Yesterday we woke up at 6pm and went to bed at 2am (8 hours). Much of our vacation has been in entire desregard of scedules, clocks or any other patterns that might inhibit our desired activities. It's been great, with more card playing than you could shake a stick at. Where did that phrase originate??

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.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope that everyone is able to
spend today with the people they love. Eat lots of Turkey, get tipsy
on egg nog, and watch its a Wonderful Life.

Christian Children's Fund

Christian Children's Fund
Originally uploaded by jrossjr.

I have always said that I planned to use my extra money to help others when "I grow up". But I have some money now, and I would be lying if I said that I couldn't budget at least some of it to better causes than my electronic collection. So for Christmas, Darby and I sponsored a little boy named Reuben (4 years old) from Honduras. If anyone else is interested I encourage you to visit www.christianchildrensfund.com

Purpose Driven Life

Darby and I have been reading "The Purpose Driven Life" by Rick
Warren. In the last chapter I read he writes: "In worship we are to
offer our bodies as living sacrifices. Now we usually associate the
concept of sacrifice with something dead, but God wants you to be a
living sacrifice. However, the problem with a living sacrifice is
that it can crawl off the altar, and we often do that". It made me
laugh

Quiz time

Quiz time
Originally uploaded by jrossjr.

My last entry seems to have sparked many questions, which I will politely ignore for the time being :) My apologies.
Moving on: Where have you seen this Cafe before? Quiz for all of you trivia buffs out there.

In a blink of an eye

I have always felt that I had control of my life. Every now and then a surprise would come my way, but never anything to entirely derail me. I never worried about the unknown, the unpredictable, or how integrated my life is with others. Now, more then ever, I realize that I am at the whim of the hand of fate. Barreling forward without a plan or direction to go, and only a prayer that God can see the road that I cannot. It is very humbling.

Vacation

Vacation
Originally uploaded by jrossjr.

6 days in Princeton, 3 in New York.

“Every day is like a week, and every night is a weekend”

“One minute, one block too late”

I don’t think I could ever summarize everything that happened in the past week. I’ll try and fit a couple stories in over the next couple days. I managed to see three shows while in NYC: Rent, Avenue Q, and Mr. Marmalade. I would have gone to a Sunday matinee but our flight was at 5:30 and the show would have been at 2:00, a little risky. For many of the shows they have “The Lottery” where they raffle off the front two rows of seats 2 hours before the show for only 20 bucks a piece (as opposed to $105). I won the raffle for Rent the first night we were there, lost for Avenue Q, Wicked, and Spelling Bee. I hated to have to leave, but even if work wasn’t demanding my return, my finances would not have sustained much more abuse.

Originally uploaded by jrossjr.

Ny