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I apologize if I havent gotten to tell you personally yet, or if you didn’t get the mass Text message I sent out. Becca and I are engaged! Friday December 17th at around 7:30 pm I “”popped the question””. We had just finished eating at Bottacellis in Sioux City and we exchanged Christmas gifts. The final part of her gift was the ring.

So now the madness begins. Planning a wedding is going to be fun and tiring. They say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Let’s hope that “”they”” are right.

It’s finally starting to sink in that I am an engaged man and that Becca and I are really going to get married. It still seems a little unreal. I am very excited. More details will be coming here as the clock winds down to August.
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I didn’t have any news for a while because I didn’t really have the energy to expend on typing anything. I was pretty busy last week with midterms, and other miscellaneuous stress. On last friday, right before fall break I was about ready to snap, I had spent all day typing essays for a take home test and then rea;lized that I forgot to go to a meeting with the teacher of a class that I am barely passing.

Needless to say I am muych better now. Graphic Design 1 is my big headache this semester, it’s requiring the majority of my time. I’m running into the same old lesson that I thought I had learned my freshman year. If I stay up past 1am, 2, or 3am every night for a while everything just starts to fall apart. Woirk, school, friendships, it all suffers when I don’t get enough rest.

So, I’m back now and things are going better. A prank war has been disrupted with a third party entering the fray unexpectedly. Pranks are awesome.

So, in general things are going pretty good, and I am totally pumped for this weekend, which is the Kearney Iron Man Retreat. Fire, guns, and meat.
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“<span style=””FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-fareast-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA””>

< ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags”” /><st1 :date Month=””10”” Day=””5”” Year=””2004””>10/05/2004

<span style=””FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-fareast-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA””>I intend to upload this, along with another philosophy journal as soon as I find a connection to the internet. I’m in my Grandma’s house right now, I just came back from the visitation of my grandfathers body. Tomorrow is the burial and funeral. It all seems to be a bit much right now. It’s odd, the reaction I felt when I stood at the door to the funeral home sanctuary. It was fear.
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<font face=””Times New Roman”” size=3>I received the call at < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags”” /><st1 :time Hour=””13”” Minute=””30””>1:30PM on Sunday. I was in the park enjoying a pizza with Becca. In a few short sentences that I cannot now recall, my mom told me that Grandpa, my Dad’s Dad, had passed away. The whole family knew that it was going to happen, he had been steadily declining in health for the past 3 years. In the past few months he had been in the hospital recovering from surgery. He never really recovered. The doctors realized this and did what they could to keep him from getting worse, and ease his suffering. He was suffering. I’m sure that most people do suffer before the end, too often people suffer for great lengths of time fighting a battle which everyone eventually loses.

<font face=””Times New Roman”” size=3>When I first saw Grandma this afternoon she said tearfully, “He just couldn’t breathe anymore.” I held her close, the way she had hugged me when she was as much taller than me as I am to her now. Painful words, those words that Grandma uttered, feeling the need to explain what had happened. Why hadn’t seemed important to me before, I only had thought about the fact that it had finally happened.

<font face=””Times New Roman”” size=3>When I looked down from my phone after I hung up with my Mom Sunday afternoon, I noticed with the one part of my mind that wasn’t numbed that my cell phone said <st1 :time Hour=””13”” Minute=””30””>1:30 referring to the total length of the call, and then the numbers stayed the same when the display switched back to showing the current time. That’s one of those strange minute details that my mind picked up on and it will probably be burned into my memory for a long time. One minute and thirty seconds was all the longer it took for me to find out about the passing of my Grandpa. One hour and thirty minutes past <st1 :time Hour=””12”” Minute=””0””>noon on October Third. There is no real significance to that, other than the fact that my mind felt it necessary to catalogue a little detail like that. Was it some sort of psychological defense mechanism perhaps? Give me some coincidence to process while I try to absorb the raw fact of what I just learned. I was really in pretty good shape the whole time up until I got here this afternoon. No real heavy feelings of hurt or depression at all.

<font face=””Times New Roman”” size=3>I was afraid this evening, afraid of walking through those doors, past those pews to what was waiting in the front of that little sanctuary. I could see his head above the edge of the casket from outside, and I froze. I didn’t want to come to grips with reality. I had avoided the harshness of this particular reality until now. There is something devastatingly real about a dead body. Reality hits you like a ton of bricks when you see something like that.

<font face=””Times New Roman”” size=3>Once the reality set in I was able to absorb the reality of it all and eventually the tears stopped, and I could distract myself by talking to some friends that had come up. It helped to talk to people that I was close with and do normal things at a time like that, It made coping much easier, the whole thing became much less strange, and I no longer feared too look at him.

<font face=””Times New Roman”” size=3>Once the human reaction had subsided I was able to look at the spiritual side and received a great deal of comfort from the fact that Grandpa had come to know Christ a little over a month ago. Dad was able to bring him to a personal relationship with Jesus, and that fact helps a great deal. I know now that Grandpa Bendt is enjoying a perfect body and worshiping with joy in heaven right now. His spirit is secure for eternity, because of this I feel peace tonight.

< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office”” /><font face=””Times New Roman”” size=3>

<st1 :date Month=””10”” Day=””6”” Year=””2004””><font face=””Times New Roman”” size=3>10/06/2004

<font face=””Times New Roman”” size=3>The funeral for grandpa was today. It was much easier to deal with this just like any other sad occurrence in life. That is, after the reality of it all had set in. Grandma was handling things better after it was all over with. I don’t know what she will do once the family slowly trickles away. Mom, my sister and myself left a few hours after the funeral reception was over. I am driving back to Kearney tomorrow morning. At which point I should be able to post this since I didn’t have time to find a hotspot today. I suppose the reason I wrote the somewhat overly dramatic post above this is because this has been first real encounter with the death of someone that I know and love. I wasn’t the closest with my Grandpa, but he was still close family. As one of only 3 grandchildren, we got to spend quite a bit of time with Grandpa and Grandma. In fact my sister and I were the only grandchildren that they saw more than once every other year.
<span style=””FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-fareast-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA””>I’m sure that I will have a lot more exposure to death on a personal level as time goes on. In fact people much closer to me will eventually pass away, it’s the one thing that every human being is guaranteed. Death is such an unavoidable aspect of everyone’s life. Why do we fear it so much, perhaps because it is the one battle that everyone will eventually loose? Our mortal fate cannot be chosen, our time here would be more wisely spent focusing on the eternal fate.“

At one point in the republic Socrates submits the idea that medicine should not be used on those that will not be able to immediately return to a productive role in society. According to him, doctors should not expend their efforts to prolong the life of a wealthy person who has done little for society and will not be able to add something productive to society. The callous attitude of Socrates toward medical care for those of ailing health seems cynical and harsh to me. Socrates is only one step from recommending euthanasia for those who are a burden on society. Americans are wealthy and spoiled, I don’t see why we cannot expend some of our wealth to attempt to prolong the life of a loved one who is sick, or ease their suffering. To realistically carry out Socrates idea, we would need to implement some sort of scoring system. Each person gains credit for the hours of work they put towards the common good. As soon as the cost of their medical care exceeds that which we gain from keeping the ill person around, we would have to cut off care and let them pass away. This type of point tracking system is truly ridiculous and harsh towards any sort of human sensibilities. I wish that I could visit the hypothetical city that Socrates so gladly constructs for the best interests of mankind, and see if much remains that we would recognize as humanity in their hearts.

Propaganda is most dangerous when it is subtle and subconciously sways peoples attitudes. Luckily this particular piece of propaganda has all the subtlety of a 300 pound asian man in a floral print mumu. This video is of incredible production quality. I obviously disagree with the aim of the propaganda, but you have to admire the skill and time it took to produce this video. The animation, modeling, sound, everything is top notch. The artistic value is so high that you could take a still frame of anywhere in this movie and it would be a very strong design layout. Needless to say, I’m impressed, check it out for yourselves.

To analyze the most common methods of advertising on the web. I will examine a random selection of popular web-sites that cover a variety of interest areas. On these web-sites I will record the number of indivudual advertising areas on the front page. Each advertising area will be broken down in to a categories. First being text vs. graphic ads. Of the graphic ads I will record whether they are animated or still images. And I will also record whether the graphic ads attempt to trick the user into clicking them through trickery.

“Soon, I will be getting a roomate. I’ve just finished rearranging my room to make space for him and his stuff. I was really enjoying having my own room for a while this year, but this guy wanted to move into the house and I had never paid for a single room so I get a roomate. Which is actually fine. I’m not too upset about it, having a roomate will be kinda fun again. I won’t be much of a roomate for the guy though, I’m rarely in my room until after 5pm any given day. Thursdays he might see me for an entire hour.

With my schedule, this room is mainly just a place to sleep, and that activity is taking less and less time every week it seems like. It’s a little hypocritical to complain about lack of sleep when I didn’t wake up till 1:30 today.

I have a couple papers to write and another set of roughs for art due early this week. I really need to get cracking on that stuff.”

Seems like there has been quite a few visitors in the past day or two. The hit counter on this site is showing an inordinately large number for only being up a week or so. I mean, I thought that there were just like five fellow nerds living in a basement who read this site, but possibly there are a few other people stumbling onto my insanity lately. Crazy rants, I have been lacking lately. I enjoy switching up my predicate and subject in sentences. I don’t know why, but I think it may have something to do with the influences of the little green jedi master we all look up to… errm, down to I guess. Unless he flys, which he might, I mean he is pretty spanking cool. Do you think that our favorite diminuitive jedi-council-memeber will get to kick some booty in episode 3? The DVD versions of episode 4-6 were pretty sweet. I guess they discovered the color green and artificially added it to the first movie. Weird. I suppose that those of you who are not huge nerds have been frightened away by now. Excelent, that was my aim. Now that all the non-nerds are gone the rest of us can enjoy a good laugh at their expense, I mean, those people probably don’t even know the difference between and ATAT and and ATST! Hahahahararhahrr… argh. Coming up next time, timbly learns how to write a well structure paragraph instead of chaining a bunch of nonsensical sentences together.

“Long sleepless nights of homework are lurking in every assignment. Last night saw me endeavoring to complete today’s GD assignment sometime before sunrise. To my surprise I was finished by 2am. Nyffeler of course was less fortunate, judging by the text message that arrived in my phone at 4:18. Steep, like pilosophy, is an idea i have yet to grasp.

Since my assignment for today is simply a number of inked roughs on paper, I am unable to effectively share this work with you all. I am able, on the other hand, to share the presentation I did for this class 2 weeks ago. This presentation is in flash and I spent nearly 7 hours on it one night. Not that it is terribly complex and worthy of the time I spent on it, but it’s in flash, not powerpoint. This ability to utilize flash is a small point of pride for me, so I try to show it off when I get to use it. Here’s the link.”

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Equality is a subject that Socrates deals with from an interesting perspective. Socrates’ luxurious city has no room for people that cannot add something of value to society and therefore gives them nothing in return. Everyone is not completely equal in all things, opposing the ideas that are indoctrinated into the youth of this country through the government school systems.

Socrates points out that women are not equal to men in all things, in fact women are often more suited for certain tasks above others. Specificly Socrates presents the view that women are best able to carry out the tasks of child birth and rearing, and other household care tasks. Socrates also presents the view that all women should be given the same education and training as men.
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What a unique idea! Women recieve the same training as their male counterparts, but are still tasked to birth and raise children above any physical exertions such as warfare. Personally I believe that this idea is party true and just. Women, in general, are much better at the tasks that are necessary to the longevity of a society such as child care than men are. There are certainly exceptions in both sexes. The question also arises though, why are women more suited. I honestly don’t know for sure, part of it must be physiological structure, psychological structure, and societal training all combined together to produce the confounding creatures that women are.

The more important question that socrates raises is that of this ideal societies unusual practices of reproduction. I’m not sure if I understand why Socrates is attempting to lead his audience down a fools path. But he is certainly leading their responses through the manner he conducts his reasoning. He is able to show that his audience is unable to think clearly about the subject they are discussing. Socrates speaks of these ideas in broad general terms. And is therefore able to convince them that this society would be better off if there was no marriage and if all the women were owned in common by all the men and that traditional family structure should be removed completely.

The society that socrates has been describing is beginning to sound a lot like the societies that are often described in modern science fiction as a terrifying possibility of the future. The strange removal of marriage and family customs to improve the functioning and efficiency of the whole society is an idea that has been brought up in many cautionary tales in the past century.
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“Moderation is the theme of Socrates guide for producing virtuous men. “”Everything in moderation”” is a commonly heard saying. This idea of moderation is that you should never go to extremes of overdoing a certain activity. Don’t get too much exercise our your mind will soften, don’t exercise too little or your body will become soft and useless.

People in our society that hold to strong moral convictions and reject changes in society are often rejected for not blindly following whatever fads come along. Those people often also fall into the idea that they must thoroughly reject everything and everybody that is part of their modern world.”

“This attitude can often lead to people withdrawing from the world and making themselves completely unable to function among people. This is one extreme.

Socrates presents the idea that Guardians as children should b protected from all sorts of offending material that could corrupt their souls, they would not be exposed to many kinds of music, literature, and other entertainment. Why would Socrates advocate an extreme like this one? Does he not say that moderation in all experiences is the key to becoming a balanced man?

I have to admire those people with such strong convictions that they can pull their children out of the world and away from society’s undoubtedly corrupting influence. At the same time many of them fall into the extreme of shutting the children off from the world that they will some day be forced to enter and live in. These children do not receive the training that they should in the social norms of our world.

Certainly, avoiding extremes of immoral activities such as lasciviousness and drunkenness is necessary to produce a person of virtue. But at what cost? We seek to hide from that which we know has the ability to entice and corrupt, rightly so. Yet, in certain circumstances it seems that Socrates notion of well-rounded experiences with proper teaching will be a more effective tool to producing virtuous men.

Far too often you see people that have been locked away from the world by their parents finally get away on their own and fall into a fascination with that which they have been sheltered throughout their life. Whether is be simply becoming entranced by television, or becoming a heavy drinker. There are countless ways for the completely sheltered child to be snared by the world if they are unaware and unprepared.”

8:00 AM every Tuesday and Thursday. That’s when I need to be at my graphic design class every week. For 2 hours I sit there and suffer through my art professor’s attempt to teach design. Yes, most of us are “just multimedia students”, but we still try to get some education out of the graphic design classes here. The only problem is that this professor, though he may be a stellar designer, is just plain bad at teaching. He never really explains what the assignments are. Just hands out some baffling sheets of paper with instructions that must make sense to someone with a real, artisitic background.

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I try to get all my work done for this class but motivation is lacking. I’m all caught up with the assignment that was due this morning, but now I have 12 more roughs due tuesday that will take me another 5 hours. Plus 2 comps due next thursday. The comps wont be a big problem because they are done on the computer. Usually in Freehand. I enjoy working on the computer and despise working on large volumes of content by hand. This leads to my lack of motivation which leads to late assignments, which leads to bitterness and frustration on my part. It’s really a never ending cycle between myself and the graphic design program.

I feel almost bad ranting this much about this class, but I just needed to let it all out.

So, my day started out bad, I was tired when I woke up and hungry and my sinus’s were congested, I don’t need to paint you a picuture. But my day steadily improved. Geography finished about 10 minutes early, and I was able to catch a few minutes of sleep in the middle along with the rest of the students in there. My meeting for crusade finished up in about half the time I have scheduled for it. My hypertext and multimedia class was only about 20 minutes long because of an easy test. Radio workshop class lasted for about 10 minutes after we were told that the station would be off the air all week due to a transmitter breakdown. So, no radio show tonight means that Timbly can have fun after Crusade tonight and actually get to bed at a decent time. Maybe.
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