I could be spending time working on the house.. You know, painting, cleaning out the garage, paying bills, selling my plasma so I can pay my little brother for buying electrical stuff, vacumming. You know. That kinda stuff.
So I get home on Friday.
And my wireless isn’t working.
And this is a catastrophie..
Wait. Scratch that.
It’s a national disaster.
So I do what any self respecting geek would do. I go online, get the firmware upgrade for the router, save my old config, and upgrade the config.
I then restore the old config.
At this point, a big red light starts glowing solid.
In my profession, big red lights are not something you hope for every day, in fact they are bad. To give you an idea of how bad, go watch a episode of Battlestar Galactica, which is a geek’s show. Notice the mechanical Cylons.
Do they have nice green eye thingies? No.
It’s a big red light.
That’s the stuff of a geek’s nightmares.
And it’s staring me right in the face.
At this point, I have a choice. Throw the router in the garbage and buy a new one.
Or spend two full days, and a night using a paperclip to short out parts of the flash on the motherboard.
I think you know which one I picked.
And it didn’t involve garbage.
So this morning, I had a idea hit me. And I got in, through a kludgy system of shorting the board, upgrading linksys firmware, upgrading to a mini dd-wrt firmware (all this over wireless, which is a big no no) and finally upgrading to a standard firmware.
And after four days of red light. It’s green. And I’m a freakin genius.
So I mosied myself out of my parents home and gave my aging geriatric cat some excessive amounts of petting (I think he was in total bliss during several parts), and took off for Barstow.
During the trip I found out that the Truck stop I had found a pinball machine (Yes, I know, I am a freak) at had been remodeled. There was no pinball machine. If any of you ever see a “Creature from the Black Lagoon” let me know. I had to drown my sorrows in Taco Bell (I know, I must really hate my body).
I then just drove on, eventually hitting Las Vegas. At this point, I tried to contact an old friend of mine, Jerad, but was unable to find him. So instead I went to gas up and got lost. Thank goodness to my natural sense of direction I was back on the Interstate forty minutes later.
As I passed into California I found a lot of old memories coming back. There were new things (spooky abandonded water park, in the middle of the desert, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!). I got stopped coming into the state to make sure I didn’t have any non regulation fruits or vegitables.
Getting closer to Barstow, my excitement peaked. Then I was in Barstow.. The city has changed, but very much stayed the same. I proceeded to drive around until I found my old chapel, the place I lived at (in the ghetto, so in the ghetto) the elementry school I volunteered at. The hotel I am at is right across from the Supermarket that went under and we bought enough frozen food at 50 percent off to last us a good month (we were so proud of that). Memories of walking by the four square church, the marine recruitment station.
I brought one of my mission journals, and was looking for some names of those I baptised. What I did find out was that one of the guys I knew was on Mission.net but that the girl I figured he’d married, well, he didn’t. She was one of the must fulfilling stories of my mission. So Debbie Martinez, if you every google yourself here, let me know.
I then proceeded to eat at all the little areas I remembered (Carrows, Fosters Freeze). I am planning on gaining like 20lbs during this outing. Ohhhhh I will be slathering myself in In-N-Out Hamburgers soon.
Later on today I’ll be heading to church and then journeying to the Island Empire to take some more photos and live some old memories.
Today is day two. Day one consisted of me working to get out of bed and then packing. As a lot of you know, it takes a lot for me to pack, because, well, I pack everything.
Yes. I really am a freak of nature. I’ve had family and friends tell me this. After getting all the junk packed, I proceeded to hit the road. Seven hours later, I made it to the Parents house. Soon I was seeing grandparents, cousins and uncles. It was a good time, and I particularly enjoyed confusing a little cousin of mine.
Now comes the drive to the mission grounds.
To address some comments. Momma Moore: Not enough time, but next time up here, I won’t ignore ya’ll. To everyone else, thanks.
Oh, and while everyone else in the world was in line to get a Harry Potter book (So, those of you have read Deathly Hallows already, is it worth it?). I was at my parents reading blogs and found “Hung up” by Madonna (via The Voice of Reason). It’s catchy, its dance centric, and Madonna. So be aware if you watch the video that there are things you might object to in the video(I do want that boom box).
This weekend I was at the farmers market because I am all into markets with farmers.
Meaning that I was busy getting myself some expensive fresh bread, some expensive fresh salsa, and some cheap potatoes.
After the buying of the fruit tarts and rasberry confections I wandered around a bit, took my fresh foods and started my trek back to the bachelor apartment.
Somewhere along the way I decided I wanted a health shake so I stopped at the local smoothie place.
After a few minutes of standing at the counter looking for what delicious blend of sherbert, fruits, and powdery goodness I wanted to consume, a cute girl I know comes out and asks me what I want.
Me: *hemin and hawin*
Her: “This over here is good”
Me: *notices a carmel apple shake poster on the wall*
Me: “That looks nasty” *makes gagging noises*
Her: “Oh, its really good, if you like carmel”
Me: “It really looks nasty! Who’d want those two things together”
Her: “Oh no, I really like it”
Me: “Really?”
Her: “Yes, it’s really good”
Me: “Well OK..”
Her: “But you probably want more of a breakfast smoothie”
Me: “Ok. What do you recommend”
Her: “X Smoothie”
And I buy X Smoothie, drink it and walk out the door before I realize
I almost BOUGHT a shake that I was pretty sure was NASTY because a cute girl was telling me she liked it.
All the sudden I realized that poor Adam probably didn’t have a chance…
Lately I’ve been moving from one thing, to another, to another.
I know this is supposed to be good. Having an active social life that doesn’t have me sitting behind a flickering terminal that makes me all white and pasty is good no?
I just realized I have a mission reunion.
In Utah.
Tommarow
at 6pm.
Now I’m getting all stressed because I am such a loser that I haven’t missed one since 1997. And now it looks like I’m going to miss my first reunion.
I recently had a friend talk to me about what boiled down to faith. I won’t mention names (yet again) to protect the innocent. It was a very interesting discussion. The gist of the discussion was how do I believe what I do.
At the end of the day, I believe what I do because I have a relationship with my Creator. Based on that relationship, I have faith that I am on the correct course for my life. That the Religion I follow is the correct one. Do I have some difficulties with the culture of the Church? Sometimes. Do I believe in the Doctrine? Absolutely. There are parts of the culture and administration that have and will change. The basic Doctrines of Faith, Repentance, Baptism and the Holy Ghost will never change. The Atonement will never change.
To me, my religious faith is no different than my scientific faith. Much as I rely on men and women who are experts in their field to understand why principles work, I rely on men who are led and inspired to led the followers of Christ.
* WPG2 Plugin Not Validated *
At the end of the day, I can’t tell you how gravity works. I can’t tell you the mechanics of how God touches peoples lives. I can see how both affect people.
