bass/jdubs/other stuff

Sitting in my room on a sunday night. Just played a whole bunch of bass guitar. Felt good to sit down with my new stuff. Here are some pictures!

Same speaker cabinets and preamp, just a different power amp. It is a crown xti2000. Dissimilar to most power amplifiers, it is digital, so I can do a lot of tone shaping stuff with this software that i downloaded on my laptop.



I didn't plan this, but the power amplifier and the pre amplifier have lights that MATCH PERFECTLY!!! Here's a night picture!!



what to talk about...what to talk about...ummmm

last weekend 7 guys that were driving from georgia to philadelphia for a christian hip hop concert made a pit stop at my house early on saturday morning so that they could get some rest before the last leg of the trip. As people were starting to doze off, some Jehovah's Witnesses rang the bell. We invited them inside and spent about 2 hours going through scripture. I did not really want to invite them inside, but when you have a house with 8 christians that know the word, why not? We spent most of our time talking about the trinity and salvation by grace (Jdubs deny the trinity and they are functionally works righteous - they've also got a bunch of other weird doctrine, but that stuff is secondary). The two guys promised that they would return to talk to me. I don't know what else there is to talk about...maybe I can memorize the false prophecies that the watchtower made (like the return of Christ in 1914 or something like that...)

Today after purchasing a sunday newspaper, some Jdubs that were sitting in a car in the parking lot of the supermarket that i went to asked me over to their car to show me a watchtower article on 5 steps to financial success (or something like that). They must have a Jdub Joel Osteen writing articles for the watchtower now. I wasn't particularly nice to them. The conversation went something like "I'm a christian...you all are not christians...Jesus Christ is God - the bible clearly teaches it...the watchtower society is a bad organization, *dueces*" (all in <1min). There was grace in my speech, but there really wasn't. I feel like I should have a more patient disposition when confronting people like them. I have a better track record with mormons. Pray for me.

also:

I was given an opportunity to lead my monday night bible study last week. The guy that taught the week before me came out of james 1:1-12, so being uncertain of what I should do, I decided to continue from where he left off and in doing that, I focused on the 12th verse:

Blessed is the man that remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

...yeah...a really rich text.

ALSO - it is going to cost me something like $400 to get my spark plugs changed. Apparently, three of them are located under this humongous intake manifold (or whatever it is called) and the labor will take about 4 hours. I'm going to look into doing it myself. I'll prob go to an autozone to buy/rent the tools for the job or something. I refuse to be a victim of "4 hours of labor". It'll probably take the mechanic 1 hour to do it...

accepted and rejected

Currently sitting at my kitchen table. I just finished writing up a bible study on james chapter 1, verse 12 (in light of everything around it, it is a very rich verse...the guy that lead last week taught on verses 1-12) for my monday night bible study. Initially, I had plans to do a study on Numbers 22-24, but I eventually came to my senses and learned that 3 chapters is very infeasible for 40 minutes of teaching.

So, first the acceptances:

I was accepted to both NYU and Yale!!

The Lord is gracious (i would be able to choose to attend either school w/o having to take out loans!!). I'm really partial to NYU, but i'm still planning to attend Yale networking events so that I can meet, greet and learn. My goal is to hit the ground running no matter where I go. A lot of the people that i've spoken to about my admissions decision don't understand how I could ever pick NYU over Yale. What most don't realize is that the ivy league does not have the corner on the top ranking slots. The top business school in the country is the university of chicago. who knew?

-------------------

Now the rejection:

At the suggestion of a friend from my monday night bible study, I pursued an opportunity to preach at the Baltimore City Rescue Mission. I showed up before their evening worship service to take a guided tour with the chaplain. He and I got along really well. I could tell that he really had a heart for the men that came out to the shelter (the shelter feeds and houses about 250 [*i think*...maybe 300] men nightly). Talking to him in the hour prior to the worship service was like speaking with an old friend. At one point he asked me if i wanted to preach that night. I didn't have anything prepared (preaching the gospel is something i'm always prepared to do, but all i was thinking when he asked me was "too soon").

I did introduce myself to the men from the lectern. I also took that time to encourage the men with phillipians 1. The sermon was awesome. The singing was awesome (ever heard ~250 men sing "I love to tell the story"?). I was really excited for the opportunity to minister in such an environment.

At the end of the night, the chaplain told me that I would need to send a copy of my church's doctrinal statement. I sent a copy of my church's doctrinal statement and i also included a note in the email that clearly stated my confession of God's sovereignty in salvation (my church does not confess this - so i felt that i should give full disclosure). I didn't think much of it since my friend who suggested I pursue the opportunity teaches on women's side of the mission and also goes to a church that has a confessionally reformed statement of faith.

I got a call on friday night, while i was in bible study, from the person who runs the mission (not the chaplain) to inform me that my statement of faith disqualified me from teaching at the mission. My friend didn't understand, so she called the guy's wife to ask about me and get this...

THEY GIVE HER WALKING PAPERS!!!



I was really shocked by all this. After speaking with my friend, we came to the conclusion that they have a poor understanding of calvinism and that they have probably had bad experiences with calvinist.

I was really crushed.

A whole bunch of other life stuff has been going on. Another blog is forthcoming.

Paralyzed by choice

Without fail this always happens to me. I say to myself "Self you're going to run into [store X] for like 5mins and then get back on the road", but this is never the case.

I always end up standing in an aisle with 3 or 4 products in hand making USELESS comparisons!

I will be straight if there is just one option, but when presented with a choice, it's like i get paralyzed.

Like today, I spent what had to have been 15 minutes in an aisle comparing 4 different brands of glucosamine supplements.

"Oh ok, this is one is buy one get one free"
"But this one is ranked #1 by 9 out of 10 physicians"
"This one has the cheapest cost per pill"
"But this one has a different formula - same glucosamine, different 'extra stuff'"
"Does the extra stuff even matter?"
"Maybe that's why 9 out of 10 doctors rank it number one - that extra stuff could be the bee's knees"
"The generic brand served me well in the past..."
"But for some reason it isn't the cheapest one"

I do this ALL the time...and it BOTHERS me to no end. I figure out the price per ounce when deciding between buying the small size peanut butter as opposed to the larger jar. Then once i figure out which one is more expensive, I then spend some extra time figuring out if the extra $0.25 in cost is worth the benefit (portability) of having 2 smaller containers.

I do this on a different level when i clothes shop, because clothes shopping is like making a multi-year committment to the item that you are purchasing. This is one of the reasons why I choose to shop alone. If any sane person were with me, i'm sure that they would consider taking my life at several points during the shopping experience.

I don't think that this would bother me as much if I were actually on a budget and each dollar really mattered for my "making it through to the end of the month". But the truth is that i'm not on a budget. I rarely spend my expendable income on "pleasure" (i mean...if you don't count the 6 days of the week that I drive 20+ miles to do something (bible study (m) - home fellowship (w) - rehearsal (r) - different bible study (f) - baltimore outreach (sa) - church (su)) as "pleasure"). Is something wrong with me? Is this a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder?

In my defense - there are some things that i can truly walk into and out of a store for. I finished my study on "best bread for price" a few years back, so there is no need for me to waste time when purchasing bread. I also know exactly which milk i want (doesn't hurt that the stores only carry one brand) .

still haven't heard anything back from nyu. tomorrow might be the day...

slumdog *no spoiler* and stuff

Went to go see slumdog millionaire with my bro and my mom this past weekend. Awesome movie. Great action, great story, great suspense and great dancing at the end (well, the dancing was ok, but the fact there was dancing at all was awesome). The love story that is intertwined with the rest of the plot is most definitely one for the hopeless romantics (a group of which i am not a member - i found myself overanalyzing the romantic part of the story for the ENTIRE movie like "wait - there's got to be more substance than THAT...this is just infatuation!" kind of overanalysis). This movie will certainly go on my favorite movie list (maybe higher than "mean girls" but definitely lower than "enemy of the state")

I got into yale!

NYU is still my top choice, but ultimately, i'm going to go to the school that offers me a full scholarship (pray that i get one!). I mean...i can pay back the student loan debt, but it would be awesome to get out of school with $0 in debt.

Now that I have one finalized admissions decision, i'm going to start applying for outside scholarships and reaching out to people that gave me scholarship money when I was in undergrad. About 2 years ago, I actually addressed a group of students that were receiving the same scholarship that i received as a senior in HS - and the people that gave out that scholarship pulled me aside after I spoke and let me know that "If [I] ever need help funding the next level of [my] education, don't hesitate to contact [them]". Trust that i'm calling tomorrow (maybe tues since the east coast is going to be snowed in). Prayerfully the economy hasn't made their scholarship funds short.

I took greyhoung to nyc this past weekend (i was too sleepy to drive up on thursday night - i purchased a ticket for the last bus). On the ride back down to MD, I pulled out my company laptop and caught up on some work. After 4 hours of work on the bus, my laptop still had 54% battery life (which equated to about 3 hours of life). SEVEN+ HOURS OF BATTERY LIFE?!?!?!?!? wow.com/whoknew.html


On my personal IBM T30, i'm lucky (providentially blessed?) to get 30minutes unplugged! There are some times when the battery will jump to empty if I attempt to use it unplugged for more than 10mins. I've had this laptop since 2002...so...yeah.

I'm definitely going to have to buy a new laptop for grad school. I *LOVE* ibms (they're called lenovos now). They have this mouse button in the middle of the keyboard that I cannot live without.



see the red button? that is the mouse. I guess ibm has a patent on it, b/c i don't see it on any other laptops (well, dell's used to have it, but for some reason, they stopped putting them on their laptops). They've made a loyal customer out of me. OH! in addition to awesome mice (mouses?) they also have excellent customer service...so yeah. I can remember getting a <32hr turnaround for mail-in servicing (called on a sunday night, got the mailer box monday morning - sent laptop in, got my laptop tuesday morning).

I'll probably wait until i'm officially a student to purchase a new laptop tho, there will probably be some sort of student discount or something.

to bed i go. RC sproul has some covenant stuff up on the ligonier video. I'll probably throw one or two of those on tonight before i go to sleep.