Quick Steps Forward

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:42:00 -0500

I got my wisdom teeth out on Thursday the 21st. Pictures of them already cut out and lying on my computer desk pieced back together (with very minimal caked blood) are at the bottom of this post. If you wish not to see them, you now know where not to look. Really, they are not bad at all. They are puzzle pieces to me.

I recovered all day Thursday from the pre-anesthetic and general anesthetic. I was given nitrous oxide (yes, the gas!) as a pre-anesthetizer which I thought was overkill. People who know me know that needles hardly bother me. I give blood, alright. I had no time to enjoy any effects of it because they put the IV in my arm seconds afterwards, and I was as unconscious as a cadaver, reportedly as pale too.

I awoke three hours post surgery with two very short, vague memories of intense pain and coughing up... aha, only joking. My two small memories were of sitting in a wheelchair while being told to get into the car and of staggering to the couch being unable to stand like an inebriated jellyfish.

I am so thankful that the cells in the mouth are the fastest healing of any in the human anatomy. I actually did not even require the pain medications I was perscribed. If you have bitten the inside of your lip (meaning you are now a normal person, congratulations), then this should prove consistent to you. I have nothing else to say if not. I can ecstatically say that I can now eat all foods as of yesterday (Sunday).

My Uncle George arrived on Friday to clean the carpets. I had been highly anticipatory of having them cleaned. I had several, red and green clay stains on my carpet which needed to be eradicated with a vengeance. Okay, they are still there, but even so, it is well with my soul. The house smells nearly phantasmagorical and so fresh.

My stupor- supercomputer's final part (the motherboard) arrived Friday also. I spent an hour connecting everything as instructed by my computer guru (Mattias Haney, now back in the Army). I was in disbelief that I had attached the smelly cables, RAM cards, fans, heat sinks, and processor correctly, but the computer booted—first attempt.

I want to mention that the base score (below) will be upgraded when the four 1TB 7200 RPM harddrives arrive in the mail. I will use them to configure a RAID 1+0 which should at least double my read/write speeds. I venture to guess that it will rise above the graphic score which will bring the base score to match those.

I spent the next two days skipping around the house, praising God and saying, "Let's install Adobe CS 4!" If you think that is heresy, it is nothing compared to updating all the drivers offline for system safety and speed. All updates were successfully installed save the Elemental Accelerator which must be done online. This monster is so bare-bones, the only way to bring up a Web page is to click Start, Run..., and type in an address.

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After Adobe CS 4 was installed, and I had completed the necessary performance tweaks (such as giving Windows 7 64-bit permission to stop asking for my permission to ask permission?murder), everything felt complete even though my mind was speeding to think of something else I could do to complete this process.

I had much fulfillment today in running benchmark tests, and I admit that I installed "Halo 2" to give the computer some genuine graphics assessments. Though the video card is meant to handle video encryption more than 3D interfaces for obvious reasons. I simply need to learn Adobe's interface as the functions I will be utilizing will generally be identical to ULEAD's.

Tyler is currently in California performing at some basketball halftime shows. When he returns on Wednesday, we plan to finish shooting "Survivor Guy" once and for all before this Friday when we will hopefully show the DBC Project to the Nelsons and Sumralls.

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Zoom in on the first two minutes

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Below are my fully extracted wisdom teeth. After I detached them from the gauze, I fit them back together and discovered that the surgeon had discharged me with only three of the four which had been removed. My appointment for a healing checkup is this Thursday; I will ask where my final tooth is then.

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In Christ,

Adam

No, Facebook?

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:39:00 -0500

A belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, everyone!

Without further ado, my practical reasons for not having a Facebook account:

God needs my time.
I spend enough time on the computer already.
I would rather spend my time in other ways.
I am a perfectionist in many ways—especially textually.

Those are just my practical reasons. In addition to these four, several personal reasons also exist:

I like to be different.
I relish the looks on people's faces when I say, "I will not add you on Facebook."
I can do everything Facebook can do without Facebook (obviously besides being on Facebook).
I enjoy knowing who actually made an effort to remember my birthday.
I like completeness, and I enjoy filling out things too much (yes, anything).
I have a strange pleasure in refusing requests when I know I can do no other.
And finally:
I have since repeatedly given my word that I will never get a Facebook account.

If you want to make me smile, explain to me (again) why I should get a Facebook. Oh, and if you're thinking about my business, worry not; Tyler will create the account for me if we thus agree to make a promotional one.

Separately, I started journaling daily on the 1st of this year. I record the main events of the day, and I make sure to thank God for the things that went wrong for me that day. You know the saying, "You don't know what you've got until you've lost it." Therefore, if I have an ache, I thank Him for all the time when it was not aching. By the end of the year, I will have thanked (present perfect verb tense, yes!) God individually for at least three hundred and sixty-five things.

In Christ,

Adam

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No, Facebook?