It’s always dangerous for a Computer Science student to do online applications. We’re the most demanding and we’re the least patient when the technology fails. Most of the seminaries have downloadable PDF applications. It’s the standard. When I applied to colleges four years ago, it was the standard then too.

Two of the four I’m applying to do not have downloadable applications. One, Vanderbilt Divinity School, only has paper. That’s become a problem since I’m studying abroad and think it’s pointless to send a paper application overseas just so I can fill it out here and submit it. Vandy is definitely behind the times.

Brite Dvinity School, on the other hand, doesn’t offer a downloadable application because it’s an interactive online process. They give a preview of the process (screen shots), but don’t let you download an app. Where are the letters of recommendation forms? They mail them to me after I apply. I have to then submit them to the recommenders and once I get them back from them, send them in with a bunch of other information. I understand the process in theory because it definitely limits the amount of information Brite personnel have to enter.

In practice, it’s not so great. When I first went to the application, it said that I had a Macintosh computer and was using Netscape (which I’m not: Safari uses a kernel that Netscape also uses … but so does Firefox and others … but back to the point). I chose to take the basic application instead of their special secure version because I didn’t want it to crash. Even though I’ve enabled a feature in my browser (making it one of the best in the world) so that I can emulate six different web browsing platforms, I didn’t know what type of server system Brite was using for the application. I would understand not having phenomenal compatibility with Macs if it was a Windows Web Application. It’s possible to have them communicate well together, but it’s not easy (I had to program around it a lot with some projects I designed).

When filling out my application, it gave me an error, saying it couldn’t insert my record. That halted the application process and wouldn’t let me advance further. So, I went to the application page and sent an e-mail to the link they gave. I immediately got an e-mail back telling me that the address doesn’t exist. That was even worse than having the application fail! To send an e-mail asking for help and to get a reply saying it doesn’t exist — that’s just demoralizing.

I checked my other e-mail account and got a thank-you letter from the Brite Director of Admissions thanking me for applying. How nice. I wish I could have. When I looked at the bottom of his e-mail, there was a link for updating any information. What’s the protocol they’re using? PHP!?! It’s not a Windows-specific format. I’m still trying to figure out why it crashed on me. Until then, I’m just working on my applications for the two schools with the straight-forward process: Lexington Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago Divinity School.

I’ve been meaning to post this for the past two weeks, but then again, I was meaning to redesign my website in that time too. As you can see, it didn’t happen. I am putting in a new section styled like the entire website will look like once I get back my programming computer in December. Until then, this new one will have to do.

So some have seen it, or at least heard of it, but two weeks ago I shaved my head. I’d been thinking on it for most of the summer and after I talked to someone who lives in Florence (and she told me that it was the new style), I decided to save a lot of hassle and shave it off. I’m SO glad I did! It’s so much easier to maintain and my head stays cooler and feels lighter (could also be that the neighboring business was lacquering something in their offices these past two weeks). Here’s a picture of the new look:

I’m off to Florence (I’m in the DFW airport at the moment) and will do lots of updates from there!

I finished it. The program is SO cool. The program I’m designing for Dr. Gunn in the TCU Religion Department is now complete. Well, kind of. I’ve been having a problem getting it deployed to the server down in Ft. Worth. It works on my machine at least. Now, before I leave for Florence tomorrow morning, I’m going to work on the server again and see if I can get it. Yikes!

Since I’ve spent so much time on the project this week, I’ve neglected a bunch of the preparations for Florence. I just packed in about an hour and a half. One great thing is that the amount I can take is limited to one checked bag (44lbs) and then one carry-on and a personal item. I’ve put all of my checked stuff in my hiking backpack. It’s much easier to pack if you know you can’t take much. It was funny for me to see where I put my priorities. I have five different electronic devices; I have around 5 sets of clothes. I have a camera tripod (I know what you’re thinking — keep them in your head). There’s a lot I probably could have taken, but I’m keeping it fairly light (at least for me). I’m taking less than I took for Seattle two summers ago. I’m taking a lot less than I took for Boston last summer.

My flight leaves at 10:30 tomorrow morning and I’ll arrive in Florence 23 hours later. It’s a 4-leg journey, taking me through DFW, Frankfurt, Milan and then Florence. The DFW-Frankfurt leg will be 9.5 hours; wish me luck! I really don’t need the luck, though, since the KingQuest project is done!!!

Sometimes I hate programming. It always seems like there’s an easier way to do things. I guess life is that way as well. There’s always got to be a shortcut or an avenue to make things quicker, right?!? Today I gave in and wrote a program: a program to help me program. The newest version of KingQuest is upgrading and referencing 35 different bibliographic types instead of the 6 we had before. Also, each of the types contains an average of 30 different fields where the old ones held around 12 each. So I wrote this program that let me put in a generated text sequence and it designed my code for me which I then pasted into the constructor. It’s pretty messed up how much of the project was that type of scripting.

I’ve now completed all of the input and deleting functions for the program, but haven’t yet designed the functionality to get information out of it. Why is that all I’m seeing in life? There are so many instances I’ve seen this week with people’s reactions to stuff I talk about where I leave saying “they know the details, they just don’t get it.” When I talk about programming, I tell them what it does and how it’ll be used and they know the details but don’t get why it’s such a useful tool or why a certain feature is in there. Oh well, it’s something I can’t escape.

Worse than seeing it in others, however, is seeing it in myself. There’s so much that I “know” but just don’t “get.” I know the mechanics of photography and the mechanics of Adobe Photoshop; that doesn’t make me a great photographer or a great designer though. I can fake my way through a lot, but I still see areas where I’m stuck asking: “shouldn’t there be more to this?” Oh well, time to ignore the rest of the world and try to finish this project! (I know, I’m obsessive — but it gets things done if I only do it occasionally).

The build finally worked. My code didn’t have any syntax errors and it was starting to run. Before I was done rejoicing it finished. The data was supposed to have transferred. Did it? I went to check and sure enough it had transferred. Had it done so correctly? August 26th; good. August 26th; good. 2:41pm; good, that’s now. 2:38pm; uh-oh, how did that happen? I looked closer. The date on the data was August 26th, 2003. WHAT?!? No way! How did my program incorrectly record now as two years earlier? This is crazy!

Then I looked closer. The data was created at that time: 17544 hours before and within that 10 minute span. This shows me once again how cyclical life is; it ebbs and flows throughout time with patterns and repetitions. I never examined it retrospectively but it makes sense that as school is just beginning and before the term has many requirements, I fill my time programming and working on KingQuest and other programming projects. Why is it so hard for me to take a break and not fill it with tasks?

I leave for Florence on Wednesday. I’m going through DFW to Frankfurt, Germany and then through Milan to Florence. Everyone says that I’m going to finally relax in Florence; I’ll supposedly finally take a break and enjoy the things around me. Will I? Before I leave I’m going to work hard and finish my project for Dr. Gunn. I’m also going to hopefully redesign my website so it’s easier to update and is prepared for all of my Florence updates. We’ll see how much of it happens.

And now for the latest installment of Adam’s bragging on Luke …

Let’s just say that I’m a pretty proud brother! The Des Moines Menace just won the PDL (Premier Development League) Championship! 54 teams started the season and they came out on top. Most of it is due to their great ability to work as a team, but really the hidden reason is their goalkeeper, Andy Gruenebaum.

The Menace played and won three different post-season PDL tourney games in order to get to this one, against the El Paso Patriots in El Paso. It was a very close match for the entire game. Regulation ended with a 0-0 score and both overtime periods also closed at 0-0. Luke played the entire game as the right defender (120 minutes!). At the end of the overtimes, they went to penalty kicks and at the end of 5, each team was tied 4-4. So, they went to the 6th round. Tied 5-5. So they went to the seventh round and Andy blocked their guys shot. What a position to be in. Our shot wins the game. Who steps up? Luke. He puts it in, lifts up his shirt, and points to the Drake logo.

So here are what some of the others online are saying:
“Please don’t go to PKs. I hate PKs. A coin flip would be just as valid a method of determining a winner.”See Blog entry here

“Sorry dude.”See Blog entry here

“EP…Castaneda…Gruenebaum SAVES!!!
DSM…Luke Frieberg…be a hero Luke…c’mon…GGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAA AAAAALLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!”See Blog entry here

“DSM ARE PDL CHAMPIONS 7-6 ON PK’S!!!
Frieberg shot lower right, wrong footing keeper..”See Blog entry here

“I loved Frieburg’s T-shirt after the game winner! Kind of like, “This is the next team I’m getting a crown with!” That’s right boys, bring us home a Drake NCAA title now!”See Blog entry here

OK, I’m excited for him and now I need to sleep — oh gosh!

t never ceases to amaze me how great some legends are. This spring I was captivated by a movie I watched with friends: Finding Neverland. I’d known some of the story about Peter Pan’s origin in terms of literature, but the movie was great. Part of it may have been who I was watching it with, but nevertheless, it was great. James Barrie — his work was one of genius.

Here’s what’s sad: I’ve never read it! Last summer I got the book in German because I wanted to keep up with my reading comprehension skills. That was a little ambitious and I didn’t work at it nearly enough. There’s luckily time in the future for it. It’s funny since Jason Scott, one of my religion major friends who graduated this spring and studied in Florence 2 years ago, was reading it this spring in Italian! I think I need to read the English version first.

Tonight, one of the nighttime activities for the mission trip was a viewing of Hook on one of the walls in the conference center. I forgot how great a movie that was. Robin Williams, Julia Roberts and Dustin Hoffman are classic! I think one of my fun hobbies I may do in the future is to watch at least 5 of the different versions of the story and genre and read the books and do some fun analysis. I know, analysis may take away much of the fun — then again, it can add a ton too! Now it’s time to think happy thoughts for the night.

OK, I’ll admit it. When I was in middle school, I craved Star Wars. I bought all of the books that were out at that time and read them (most of them twice). I made my own legos into characters before Lego actually came out with the Star Wars themed ones. One summer I watched the first trilogy at least once a week. I was hooked.
Now that I’ve “matured” (catch the tongue-in-cheek I’m doing), I thought that I wouldn’t be able to fall into such a deep obsession as that one. I thought I’d be able to enjoy the prequel trilogy as movies and not be obsessed with the deeper meaning some of the characters try to convey. I should have known better. With the first movie, The Phantom Menace, I was able to dismiss a bunch of it because of one character who annoyed me: Jar Jar. It was a movie I thought was more for kids than adults. The second movie gave some great insight into the roles of mentorship and had some great fight scenes, but other than that, it didn’t have a deep insight that left me saying, “yes, totally right” or “no, they missed it there.” The Attack of the Clones was a transition movie that was about filling the necessary elements of the plot.
I expected Revenge of the Sith to be exactly another version of that. It had to show the evolution of Anakin to Vader and tie up a lot of different loose-ends such as Luke and Leia (yeah, I know, it’s almost a travesty to call two of the heros in the original trilogy loose-ends). It did that and more. Wow, I’m still realing (or I guess reeling) from all of the content it got through. More than any of the other prequels, however, this movie had the richest plot. It was full of material!
So what deep meaning did you all find in it (if you’ve seen it)? Part of me loved that they showed all of the paths to the dark side. They showed why Anakin was attracted to it and why it was tempting. A couple of things bugged me about it, though. The “good” position portrayed was the light side of the force, which maintained a close-minded perspective to learning. Anakin was discouraged from learning about the dark side because it would cloud his ability to discern. This position made sense; I’m hoping that others don’t take it in respect to real-life learning. As a Religion major I’ve known several people who are convinced that learning about other religions or even other perspectives within their own religion brings as much of a danger as the movie posed with Anakin. Learning about these things and even going through the process of discerning is, for them, evil. How am I supposed to appreciate this attitude since it’s so contrary to what I think?
Even more than appreciating the Jedi’s attitude, I have to reconcile that with one of the comments they said: “Only the Sith make absolutes.” The comment struck me because their attitude seems like the one full of the most absolutes. The dark side is “bad.” Don’t venture into any of the things that lead to it. Palpatine was the relativist if anyone was. He was the one who appealed to Anakin by arguing that everyone tries to keep power once they have it, both himself and the Jedi. The thing that bothers me the most, which means George Lucas and the others have done their job well, is that I could see myself being convinced by Palpatine’s arguments. His argument was persuasive and it made sense to me why Anakin chose it. Is that the final revenge? Besides almost annihilating the Jedi is the real revenge that the Sith argument fools the senators and the audience as well?
I absolutely loved this movie. The plot development was great. The characters were great. The connections were phenomenal (when you have five other movies to link, though, it doesn’t take a miracle to link them somehow). If I would watch the entire six-part series in a weekend, this movie would be my favorite. Am I going to see it again in theaters? Probably not. I’m going to wait for it to come out on DVD. Wow … what a movie!

My hike that I did on the Appalachian Trail was difficult. None of those who went on it with me would argue that.

We ended up finishing the 41.1 miles in 72 hours. Little did we know as we were going along that the trail was expanded and relocated on one of our hardest days. Some of the moments were wonderful. The views from the tops of the mountains were great. Here’s a picture I took of the valley our campsite from the first night overlooked:

The next morning we had our quick trips up two mountains that knocked us around. The first one was a 1000 ft rise and the second one was 700 ft from that. They got up there. Let’s just say I was tired!

I titled this entry “Serenity” because of my favorite moment of the entire trip. No, it wasn’t when I got to put my pack off my back for good (although that’s a close second). After the first full day of hiking when we had the added sections, we camped beside a river. Have you ever seen the movie version of Norman Mailer’s A River Runs Through It (directed by Robert Redford I think)? In it, the closing scene is an old man fly fishing in a river with dark tints from the gorgeous sunset overhead. I had a moment where I could only say Thank You to God. I was filtering water (I ended up doing almost 8 liters at that stop) and I’d climbed over some rocks and was sitting about three feet into the river on a flat rock that was level with the water surface. It was gorgeous to just look down the river. Then something truly serene happened. I only wish I’d have had my camera with me at the moment (then again, I probably would have completely missed the point). Two Canadian geese flew overhead and landed about 50 yards upstream. They then paddled down the river until they were within 10 feet of me. They stopped and looked at me as I kept filtering the water. Not only could I not believe it, but then I couldn’t believe how long they stayed. It had to have been around 20 minutes with them that close to me. The only thing that kept going through my head was a line from the Joni Mitchell song “Both Sides Now”: I look at life from both sides now … it’s life’s illusions I recall / I really don’t know life at all. The amount of times this is true will be uncountable as I go through life. What’s clear is that this is one of them.

I made Bill promise me when he was planning this that there’d be some great views. The previous year we’d hiked to the top of one or two big mountains that didn’t have any views; they were just clumps of trees with no outlooks. This hike was hard, but the views were great. We topped mountains and could see 360 degrees around us. We went through valleys with luscious green ravines. We went by a great waterfall on the last day. The one view Bill couldn’t have planned for was two Canadian geese on a gorgeous river at sunset that made the entire trip worth it. Serenity. It’s something which we can rarely create. We passively fall into it and actively enjoy its benefits.

Attention Please

This semester one of my courses is the Senior Seminar in the Religion Department. I’ve never had a class that required such intense reading and discussions. This past week we read the second half of Diana Eck’s book, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras (Amazon). In her book, Eck explores how different faiths around the world perceive and imagine God. My favorite chapter from the book is “Attention to God: The Practice of Prayer and Meditation.”

After talking with several of my classmates about the chapter, we all concluded that this is the stuff that we don’t read as religion majors but should as active Christians. Eck’s writing gives us a glimpse of what many of us neglect or ignore in our spiritual lives. We ban the silence in favor of anything, just so we can have comfort. We find silent situations when we aren’t prepared and our minds construct the feeling of awkwardness. I’m convinced that college is THE most difficult place to have an attentive spiritual life.

This semester I’m also taking Buddhism with Dr. Andy Fort. Not only is it great to learn about other religions’ ideas, but for me it’s better to learn about their practices. Early in the semester we had to do a meditation project where we meditated and tried to just observe the thoughts that flew through our mind. Talk about intense! Dr. Fort uses the metaphor of a “drunken monkey,” although I now prefer “the mind is a giant pinball machine with an unlimited supply of balls.” The project was informative in many ways; probably the greatest insight I gained is how often my mind focuses on little obsessions that I have. I was lucky to do that near the beginning of the semester because it helped an even better experience.

I’ve mentioned this before in a previous post. During Spring Break this year I was lucky enough to get to do a five-day spiritual retreat. The great thing about this retreat was that it was a silent one. I met with a spiritual director, Fr. Jack Vessels, for an hour a day. That limited time, along with the masses we had, was when I talked during that week. It was magical. Going over to the retreat, I listened to my iPod and talked on the cell, trying to create a sharp juxtaposition with what I knew I was going to experience.

I’m still processing the specific internal aspects of the week (yeah, I know it’s been almost 7 weeks since I finished the retreat; I’m a busy guy though!). I journaled throughout the week and I’m in the process of transcribing them. I’m only on day 2 at the moment. More important than what happened during the week is what has happened since. Each full day I was there, I did three prayer sessions per day and went though some of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises with Jack. The environment was perfect and I felt closer to God that week than I have before in my life.

Then came the return to school. It’s unreal for me to see how much I changed while I was there. When I returned, before most people even knew that I did the retreat, they would say comments like “Adam, what’s different?” or better yet “Adam, you seem so peaceful now, was it from taking time off?” My nature when I returned was drastically different from when I left. Since then, I’ve regressed to some extent. The retreat polarized me in many ways. People say I’m more outgoing, yet I also know that I ‘bottle’ a lot more than I used to. More than these changes, I now have a void. Part of it may be what I’ve been creating in my preparation for my summer internship, but mostly it’s my longing for another experience like the one I had at Montserrat. It’s painful to be back in this situation. It’s like sitting in a hot tub and then jumping into a swimming pool. The change is intense, but afterwards neither of the experiences is as fulfilling as I remember them.

I realize that I can’t recreate or reinstantiate the memories, but I should at least get closer than I am. Why does the college atmosphere completely suck for having both contemplative moments and relationships with others? It seems most of the time you can have one or the other, but not both. Reading Eck’s chapter brought the memories flooding back from the week. What was even better was that this weekend I went back home to Iowa. I haven’t seen family since I came down to Ft. Worth in January and this trip was wonderful for not only seeing them but also watching Luke play soccer and watching the baby foals on our horse farm (there are SO many of them!). I read Eck’s chapter on the return flight to Ft. Worth. When I was finishing the chapter, I looked out my window on the plane and below me was the junction in Denton where I-35 splits into the east and west sections. I couldn’t believe it. Montserrat wasn’t only in the forefront of my memories, but also my vision! I could see Lake Dallas and the curve where I’m pretty sure Montserrat was. If we’d have taken another landing trajectory I would have probably been able to see it even better. Seeing the lake and surrounding myself with the memories gave me a short reminder of the feelings I’m yearning for. Whether or not they’ll ever come back isn’t the question. I’d love it if they do, but I’m also aware that they may never do so. Probably the best advice I have for making room for those moments came from the flight attendant on my flight back to Ft. Worth when giving us the warning on electronics: “You know, if it has an On/Off switch, you should turn it to Off!”