What happens to good ideas when reason departs?

Sometimes I'm floored by the brilliant reasoning on the part of our illustrious leaders.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-molest01.html

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A Major Victory

When I first got out on my own, and when I was still very young, I got myself into a great deal of credit card debt. I was working one dead-end job after another, and falling deeper and deeper into the chasm of debt. I decided that a change was in order.

I began studying programming in a bid to start a career. Very soon I found a @#$%-job working as a programmer, making very little money--but gaining experience. I joined a debt-management company at the same time to pull myself out of debt. In the last 5 years, my career has taken off, and I have been siphoning off huge sums of money each month to pay back my debt. I set for myself the goal that I would be out of debt and into my first home by the time I was 30.

I made my last payment to my debt on June 15th.

I closed on a house yesterday--exactly 1 month prior to my 30th birthday.

This is time of celebration and pride for me, as well as a time to plan my next major goals.

A Salute to Mr. Kilby

I salute you Mr. Kilby. If you are reading this post, or have checked your watch in the last 50 years, or have ever microwaved food, or have done anything at all besides living in a hut in the middle of the forest, you owe this man a great thank you. As inventor of the integrated circuit, he has touched just about every piece of electronic equipment in your life.

A name such as his should not pass into anonymity.

Hallelujah

"Well your faith was strong, but you needed proof,
then you saw her bathing on the roof;
her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya'.

Then she tied you to her kitchen chair
and she broke your throne and she cut your hair,
and from your lips she drew the 'Hallelujah'

well there was a time when you let me know
what's really going on below
but now you never show that to me do ya'
but remember when i moved in you
and the holy dove was moving too
and every breath we drew was hallelujah ".

--Hallelujah, Leanord Cohen

This song is fabulous. The Jeff Buckley performance is really the best. I love it because it takes a word that normally refers to religious ecstacy and transmutes it an expression of intense, nearly unbearable this-wordly pleasure! Hallelujah!

Update

It's been awhile since I've posted. Things are rockin' and rollin'.

I've been enjoying my summer so far. I've become addicted to the World Of Warcraft MMORPG. I think that this game may server my D&D fix. If I can just get a couple more of my friends playing it, it may replace D&D altogether for me.

In other news, I put an offer on a house yesterday. It's kind of a nerve-wracking experience. If the offer is accepted, I'll have to take complete responsibility for a building. One of the benefits of renting is that if something goes wrong, you just call someone and they fix it. This is a little scary--but I'm ready for it. I've been looking for the right house for the right price for awhile. I think I've found it.

I realized that Jessica has been gone for a year. I've been a single guy for a year. The truth is that the time has gone by very fast. I'm not feeling lonely--and I'm not in a hurry to find/start a new relationship. I'm a happy man living alone with his dogs. I'm sure that this will change at some point, but for now the status quo is good.

The Summer Off

I'm finished with finals now, so I've got the summer off. I purchased Worlds of Warcraft to give me a fun way to spend some time this summer. I'll see if I can hook up with M. and E. in Atlanta on this front.

I'm also thinking of taking guitar lessons for a couple of months. I'd like to work on my finger-picking skills.

The other major thing that's going on is I'm in the market for a house again. This time I think I'll be able to see it through. I've already gone through the loan approval process--now I just have to see if I can find a decent house not too far from where I work.

I did the uber-geek thing and bought opening night (midnight) tickets to see the next Star Wars movie. I'm pretty stoked about that.

This is Mother's Day. I've been thinking about my relationship with my mother and the issue of whether or not there's anything to celebrate in that. I think there is.

When I was growing up, she did provide for all of my material needs. My emotional needs on the other hand were not only not met, but damaged. I recovered from that pretty quickly when I got out on my own, but the end result was that I never really had a close relationship with my mother.

One of the other things that happenend when I got out on my own is that I got in way over my head in credit card debt. I've spent the last four-and-a-half years paying that off, and I'll be done with it in June. My mother has always had perfect credit, so when she offered to "buy" one of my credit cards (basically putting it in her name so she can get me a 0% interest rate) as long as I made the payments, it showed an enormous amount of trust and respect for me.

I can see now that she is (and has always been) an emotionally damaged woman, and that she's trying to do right by me. While I don't think we'll ever be extremely close, I think we can at least move past the hostility and guilt engendered by my disastrous childhood. Now that I'm a happy, healthy adult, the things I went through as a kid don't seem as important to me. I guess if she can let go of it the way I have, she can start to find happiness. So, for this Mother's Day, I wish that my mother will find happiness for herself.

For the ladies...

Why Geeks Make Good Boyfriends

Chainfire

Book 9 in Terry Goodkind's series is fabulous. Chainfire is the first of a trilogy that will purportedly end the saga of Richard Rahl. I believe that TG is ending the series with the same conflict that started it, but only time will tell if that is true.

I read the entire 650 page book in one sitting on Saturday, after studying for Accounting of course :).

Aristotle Rules

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.
-Aristotle