Nikremt - cryptography at its best

Creed - by Steve Turner

2008-10-06T11:04:00.003-05:00

Here is a poem that I have heard Ravi Zacharias recite. I think it satirically depicts the state of mankind and the overall all ensemble of what humanity is basically saying. Average the contemporary philosophical ideas, the existential artistic expressions of today, and the "average Joe's take on things" and I believe the resulting expression or world view is captured by this poem.

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during, and
after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy's OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes
UFO's and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.

We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn

We believe in Masters and Johnson
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors .
And the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.

(and then he adds this post script)

If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear:

State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Youths go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.

14 lies from Joe Biden in the VP debate

2008-10-03T15:46:00.002-05:00

Here's the link: Joe Biden's lies in VP debate with Palin

And the cause is... drum roll... the SUN!

2008-09-02T15:03:00.008-05:00

According to a story just posted on DailyTech, the Sun has had no sun spots in the month of August! In fact, the scientists mention that sun spot activity has been slowing for the last several years.

This is significant because there have been scientific findings that link sun spot activity to cloud formation. The more sun spots, the less clouds.

Question: What is responsible for keeping the earth habitably cool and keeping humanity from baking to death from the sun and the earth's greenhouse effect?

Answer: Clouds (precipitation systems).

Question: What is, admittedly by scientists, the thing we know least about in terms of its negative feedback (negative feedback is a good thing: think climate stabilization when I say negative feedback) effect on the global mean climate temperature?

Answer: Clouds (precipitation systems).

Question: When did the sun spot activity start increasing relatively recently?

Answer: 1940.

Question: When do Global Warming advocates say the onslaught of the industrial revolution and human CO2 emissions started causing a rise in the Global mean temperature?

Answer: 1940.

Question: What are the two physical phenomenons that are not accounted for in the alarmist's Global Climate models (or at least, not modeled correctly because we don't scientifically know enough)?

Answer: 1) Sun Spot activity. 2) Global cloud cover and precipitation systems.

Question: Why do you place your faith in the religious global warming movement?

My speculatory answer: You think that "the scientists have formed a consensus and global warming skeptics are nut cases" to quote the mainstream media.

I suggest that people should start looking into the science themselves. We (including me) could learn a lot more about the assumptions the Global Warming advocates are not telling us through media channels. Oh, and if you have watched the Former Next President of the United State's movie, then read a book by a credible so called Global Warming skeptic to balance Al Gore's search for his calling in life.

A good book by a credible scientist to start out with: Climate Confusion.

Stupid Quotes... Unbelievable

2008-08-26T08:43:00.003-05:00

Nancy Pelosi, on Meet the Press:

I believe in Natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels... The fact is, the supply of Natural
gas is so big, and you do need a transition if your going to go from fossil fuels, as you say, you can't do it overnight,
but you must transition.

This is unbelievable!!! She doesn't think that Natural Gas is a fossil fuel?!?! This is ridiculous, I can't believe we have people this ignorant with legislative power in the United States. Where in the heck does she think Natural Gas comes from? It comes when we drill for oil!!!

Barack Obama, Rick Warren forum at Saddleridge church... The question was, "At what point does a baby get human rights in your view? -- Rick Warren":

Well, ... eh... I think that... Whether... your looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity... uh... you know is above my pay grade. The fact is that, although we have had a president who is opposed to abortion over the last eight years abortions have not gone down.

If it is above his pay grade, then he has no business supporting, voting, or authoring legislation that has anything to do with abortion. This would be an extremely irresponsible thing to do.

Cadence IC / spectre error on Solaris 10

2007-10-17T10:30:00.000-05:00

I have Solaris 10 installed on a SunBlade 150, and I also have Cadence IC 5.1.41 installed with spectre. After applying some Solaris 10 updates, I started receiving this error when attempting to start spectre:

ld.so.1: spectre: fatal: relocation error: file /usr/local/cadence/ic5141/tools.sun4v/spectre/bin/32bit/spectre: symbol __SUNW_init_wiostreams: referenced symbol not found
Killed

After some searching on the internet, I ran across a fix that worked:

# smpatch list |grep 119963
Patch: 119963-07 Obsoletes: Requires: Incompatibles: Packages: SUNWlibC
Patch: 119963-08 Obsoletes: Requires: Incompatibles: Packages: SUNWlibC

# smpatch remove -i 119963-08
remove patch 119963-08
Transition old-style patching.
Patch 119963-08 has been backed out.

I would include a reference but the place I found the fix is no longer available. Thank goodness for Google cache!

Hope this helps anybody in the future who runs into the same problem. I just hope that Google will index my blog for you!

Fitting post for Father's Day

2007-06-18T08:28:00.001-05:00

I thought that since it is so near Father's day, that I would post on this. I posted a video on this before. Just watch the video.

Family Camp 2007 Theme Song

2007-06-18T08:15:00.001-05:00

The talent show also featured a theme song!

The Price of Sin video

2007-06-18T08:05:00.001-05:00

Well, my family had a camp/re-union. We called it family camp. At the camp we had several "Team Challenge" events where our families would compete against each other. The last day we had a talent show. This video displays our parent's talents! It's hilarious.

Fishing Trip from a while ago

2007-05-26T13:39:00.000-05:00

Seth Finally listened to me!

Mathematica and numlock

2006-11-21T10:37:00.000-06:00

For some reason, I have been digging around forever trying to figure out why the backspace key didn't work in Mathematica when I would remotely log on to it. Finally I found out that it doesn't work when you start the Xserver with the numlock key enabled and does work when you start the server with it disabled! That is crazy. If anybody reads this, hopefully this will solve your problem with the backspace key not working. I am using cygwin and ssh to connect to a linux server running mathematica 5.2.

Amazing Father and Son Love

2006-10-01T20:00:00.000-05:00

This is truly amazing. For context of the video, here is an excerpt from a Sports Illustrated article in the June 2005 issue page 88 written by Rick Reilly:

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I'm lousy.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars -- all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much -- except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution."

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain."

"Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!" And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that."

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks."

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

"No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?"

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 -- only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

"No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century."

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago."

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."

You can find more information about this at the Team Hoyt website.

Its hot... We're all gonna die!!!

2006-09-04T11:13:00.000-05:00

Believe it or not, some people wanted me to write a post again.

This whole issue of global warming has really been frustrating me a lot lately. Mostly because I don't really know anything about atmospheric science and the claims by some that human-caused CO2 emmissions will eventually destroy life as we know it today just seem to be far fetched to me.

Anyways, since I have been researching it lately, the biggest confusion and disagreements in the scientific community seem to be on the effects and outcomes of the modest warming observed and not on the warming itself. This may be surprising, because I think that most people, as I once did, think that the debate is over wether or not earth is experiencing observed warming. This is not the case. I had a professor who made a statement in a graduate electrical engineering course that earth's polar ice caps are melting, and yet some people in politics (his tone was jocular) think that global warming is not happening. As far as I am concearned, he displayed his ignorance of the subject, because that's not the issue.

The global mean temperature has increased by One degree Farenheight over the last century, which, this change is comparable to the interannual variability in global mean temperature (so says Richard S. Lindzen from MIT). There is certainly some debate over the cause of the global mean warming, but most scientists seem to agree that increasing CO2 levels as observed over the last century would amount to some of the warming observed, not necessarily all. There are even some scientists that suggest that the warming we currently observe has mostly to do with heightened sun activity. The heightened sun activity explanation also helps explain, in my opinion, why Mars is also experiencing and apperent "global warming" along with planet earth. I haven't heard anybody else say this theory or reject it, but it seems logical to me, since both mars' and earth's atmospheres are under the influence of the sun.

It is very difficult for any lay person to form an educated opinion on the effects of Global warming without lauching years of investigation. So we are pretty much left to honest summaries given by the professionals in the field. A very good summary and professional opinion on the current state of the scientific data (as of May 2001) was given by an MIT professor, Richard S. Lindzen, in his testimony before the US Senate on Global Warming. If you want an interesting and informative read, I would read the testimony I just linked to, but I will just quickly summarize the most interesting points to me.

Lindzen says that what scientists agree upon, in summary, is:
1) that global mean temperature has probably increased over the past century
2) that C02 in the atmosphere has increased over the same period
3) that the added C02 is more likely to cause global mean temperature to increase rather than decrease
4) that man, like the butterfly, has some impact on climate.

At this point, if you are still interested, you should probably read the aforementioned testimony and stop reading me. However, just to make my summary a little more complete, I'll include some particularly strong and interesting points from his testimony.

As for my summary, I think Lindzen basically is saying that...
1) The earth has warmed One degree Farenheight over the last 100 years and most scientists do not despute this.
2) CO2 levels have increased over the same time interval (280ppm to 360ppm).
3) Doubling CO2 in the earth's atmosphere would, by straight forward calculations, account for about a Two degree farenheight change in Global mean temperature, and that any heigher estimates are due to positive feedback effects in the atmosphere. The positive feedback effects are not at all verified, and in fact, a lot of research suggests a very strong negative feedback effect which would cancel out much of the warming.
4) The Kyoto Protocol wouldn't do anything which would be noticeable.
5) Computer models that predict weather catastrophies from the exaggerated rise in global mean temperature (exagerated from the strong positive feedback assumptions) pretty much suck, because they couldn't even predict what we know has already happened in retrospect (El nino as one example).
6) The observed changes in temperature are within the known natural variability of global mean temperature, and therefore it is very hard to link the variability that we are currently observing ( 1F over last 100 years), to human activity. In order to do so, you have to claim to know exactly why the temperature naturally varies apart from human activity, otherwise you cannot pin the observed change on industrial CO2 emmissions. (I would like to know exactly what the natural variability has been over the last 100 years, and how we know that. Lindzen doesn't say in this testimony.)

I found Lindzen's testimony very insightful, and he certainly has the credentials to make his opinions serious.

Be safe - Move to Iraq

2006-06-09T10:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, this post will be terse and to the point. Why would somebody move to Iraq to be safe? There is a War going on there! All I ever hear about Iraq is that the country falling apart. People are getting blown up by IEDs everywhere they turn. The country is in Chaos! I get the feeling that an innocent family can hardly walk to the grocery store without risking their lives of being blown up by a car bomb.

If that is your feeling too, then you better stop listening to the mainstream press. I got this figure directly from here - Rush Limbaugh. But I wanted to repost it here in case the link became invalid soon. I don't know where Rush got the graphic itself, but the statistics are publicly available. Just a note, the statistics are based on a time period completely coinciding with the war in Iraq. Also, its based on an entire year (2004 - 2005), so don't just think that they picked the best possible month for their sample data.This is what I mean, and everybody else means, when they say that the mainstream media is so out of touch with reality and they don't present you with a honest, objective, picture of reality like they claim. Nobody is free from biasness and nobody can be perfectly objective. The mainstream press attempts to give you an unbiased, perfectly objective news story. In doing so, they have implicitly assume that they have the ability to offer perfectly objective analysis of current events or else they are intentionally distorting the Truth, calling it the Truth, to persuade millions of people that they think are stupid (you and me) of their own personal worldview. As for me, I refuse to listen to them. I prefer to listen to people who are not afraid to tell me who they are and what they believe

Cadence / Spectre Bug

2006-05-26T12:13:00.000-05:00

I just had to post this because it took me two days to realize this problem. I'll post just in case somebody will run across it that it may spare them the same trouble that I went through. Anyways, I was running s-parameter simulations using Cadence spectre and the analogLib. I was getting frustrated with spectre because I wouldn't change any circuit values but the simulation results were drastically different!!! This make no sense! Well, I finally figured out that in the s-parameter simulation form it makes a big difference with the ORDER you type the port values in the form. Looking at the image... You have to type the input port first (in my case /PORT0) and then the output port (/PORT1 in my case). The noise analysis section specifies the input port and the output port, but no indication is given that the order matters in the s-parameter analysis section, BUT IT DOES!!! Again, specify the name of your input port first. Don't make my mistake.

Fishing/Canoe trip

2006-03-31T08:21:00.000-06:00

Over spring break, my brother, brother-in-law, and I went on a canoe trip. My brother-in-law (Todd) took his solo ride-on-top Cobra fishing kayak, and Seth and I rode in a 16' Old Town Canoe that we borrowed from someone.

We launched into the San Marcos River at Palmetto State park. We launched on a thursday morning and we paddled/fished/camped until sunday afternoon. We traveled 25 miles (river mileage) to Independence Park in Gonzales, TX. A word for the wise: If you are going on a canoe trip in the future, make sure that you don't plan your mileage as the crow flies. Apparently, the mileage stated on the Texas Park's and Wildlife website is NOT river mileage, but a strait line shot. We only made it about 1/3 of the planned distance.

All in all it was fun. Seth got sun burned on the leg pretty bad.
Snakes were climbing trees. And we caught alot of small fish.Another thing, when fishing in rivers, fish just above or below the rapids. Apparently, when the bass are feeding thats where they go. It took us until the last day to figure it out. Also, fish by the moon. The excellent times are when the moon is directly up, and 12hours from directly up. We found this to be true. All the fish that we caught were on little rooster tail like spinners, except for Todd.Todd was using a fake looking minnow with a spinner on the front.

Website Design and Dance hall

2006-03-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

Well, its been a long time since my last post. I hope the faithful readers will remain strong and keep reading even though I don't post often. Anyways, I designed a webpage for a family friend: Kendalia Halle. Check it out and let me know what you think. I welcome any comments from anybody about anything. I'll even except criticism. I am not good at web design, so any comments will be helpful to me. Well, here is the link again: Texas Dance Hall.

Kendalia Halle is actually a really really nice place. If ya'll are ever in the mood for good live bands and dancing, then you really should check it out. Also, my Dad usually is the bartender, and my family goes quite often to dance. If you want to go, and you know my family, call us and we'll go with you.

A Very Handy Tool

2006-02-05T10:04:00.000-06:00

Don't you wish that you could create *.pdf documents from within any program for FREE? Well, you can. PDFCreator is awesome. It works just like a printer. If you can print from the program, then you can turn that print into a *.pdf file. It's great.

To download it, follow the links and make sure you download the latest version. And if you don't know what Ghostscript is, then you will need to download a version of PDFCreator that includes either GPL Ghostscript or AFPL Ghostscript. You can tell from the filename which version it includes. I don't know that it matters, but I have had good luck with the AFPL version. Yes the software is free, but if you use it a whole bunch and love it, or if your company with several employees use it, you should really consider donating to the project. The software is "Free" as defined in the General Public License (GPL).

Difficult Reading

2006-01-12T23:13:00.000-06:00

I am not the best reader in the world, and I read very slowly. Since I read so slowly, I don't like reading fiction because it would take up so much of my time, I would have not enjoyed it. So I like reading books that have a chance at giving me some knowledge in a subject area that is meaningful to me. Unfortuntely, these books end up being really difficult to read, which makes me go even slower. Anyways, I still like them.

For example, Stacy gave me "Freedom of the Will" by Jonathan Edwards. I love the book, it is just difficult. Tell me what you think: concerning the definition of necessary, Edwards writes, "Things are said to be what must be, or necessarily are, as to us, when they are, or will be, though we desire or endeavour the contrary, or try to prevent or remove their existence; but such opposition of our always either consists in, or implies, opposition of our wills." I can tell you, at least for me, the context doesn't help that much either!

Are all religions basically the same?

2005-12-10T13:58:00.000-06:00

Being an engineering major in graduate school, I am constantly surrounded with people from other countries and other religions. And frequently because of such diversity, a discussion will arise about different religions. Sometime a while back, religion became the topic of conversation during one of my electrical engineering classes. We started talking about it because one of the students, a Muslim from Pakistan, paid a tribute to Allah after one of his presentations by including a slide with words of adoration at the end of the presentation.

The Muslim student seemed to have mixed emotions between embarrassment and pride. On the one hand, he was proud to boldly proclaim his faith and recognize his god in front of the class, but on the other hand he was unsure of himself enough which made him quickly close the slide so that only a minimal amount of people would notice what it had said. Well, several people noticed, including the professor.

The professor, whom I shall leave unnamed, was very intrigued. He made the embarrassed student go back to the slide and show what it said again to the class. This prompted a few comments from the professor about his personal world view and some of his ideas on religions.

I was very shocked to hear the professor assert, that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all worship the same god. I couldn't believe I heard that from the professors mouth! I could tell from reading the facial expressions and the body language of the Muslim, that he was just as bewildered as I was. Now of course, this isn't the first time I have heard this statement. And I shouldn't be surprised, because it seems to be a growing popular belief in America today. But the reason I was surprised, was because I knew the professor claimed to be a Christian! I can understand somebody without much knowledge of any of the three religions, in fact almost NO knowledge of the three to make such a claim. But a Christian? Somebody who has claimed to be a Christian?

I'll give just three Bible versus that I found (and remembered) in about 5 minutes that completely debunk the notion that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God. Jesus states, as documented in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me." Also, Acts 4:12 states, "And there is Salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." In these versus, the exclusivity of the Christian claim that salvation only comes through Jesus Christ is established. Muslims and Jews do not believe that Salvation comes through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. They don't believe he was the Son of God! If this isn't enough, in an even more convincing verse, John 8:19, Jesus states to the Pharisees (who were astute Jewish religious teachers at the time), "You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father." Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, the Jewish scholars, that they know neither Him nor His Father. Christians follow Christ and His Father; the Jews do not. In effect Jesus said, that if you don't follow me, you don't follow my Father (God). Therefore, Jesus Himself, as documented in the Bible, states that Christians and Jews do not worship the same God! Muslims don't claim that Jesus is the Son of God either, so the situation is the same with them, and for that matter, any other religion. Kinda off of the topic, but I find it odd that Muslims assert that Christ is not the Son of God, but the Koran states that He (Jesus) raised people from the dead. That is a mighty powerful miracle for just a mere person. I think people should listen to what Jesus said.

So back to the story, I asked myself, "How can this be?" But then, with a little bit more thought, I realized that the trend in academics is moving toward embracing relativism. I think it must be in some desperate attempt to establish world peace or something. Anyways, one of my favorite poems that I have ever heard is on this subject. I was first made aware of it from listening to sermons by Ravi Zacharias. Really, the poem embodies what I think is the reason for this type of illogical thinking much more eloquently then I could ever put it. I really believe the author, Steven Turner, was right on the money, and pinned exactly what seems to be emerging as the core beliefs of humans today. Especially in America.

"Creed" by Steven Turner:

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during, and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy is OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything is getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in
horoscopes, UFO's and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man
just like Buddha, Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher
although we think His good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same--
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.

We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it's compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,
and the flowering of individual thought.

"Chance" a post-script

If chance be the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky,
and when you hear

State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!

It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

I especially like the post-script called, "Chance". God gives us our moral law, without Him we are lost!

Final is over!

2005-12-06T19:15:00.000-06:00

Thats right, final! I only had one. It is nice being me. No stress during finals week. It makes me glad that I am not this person, this person, or this person.

Anyways, my Advanced Electronics final was the only thing standing in my way from graduating, so I am glad to officially be finished with my masters degree. I didn't take much of a break, however, because about 10 minutes after my final, I went straight to the lab and started working on my PhD.

Masters Thesis Defense ( Check )

2005-11-05T22:01:00.000-06:00

Well, on November 4th, I defended my masters thesis successfully! I can now check that off of my list of obsticles. As mentioned on a previous post, I designed an Ultra-Wideband Low noise amplifier with a differential architecture and with active input and output impedance matching. My presentation lasted over 1 hour and 10 minutes!!! I can't believe I stood up there and talked that long. It started out pretty bad. The first two slides I was very nervous and I was stuttering badly, but the next thing I remember, I was about half way through, and I was nailing it. One of the professors on the panel kept asking me questions throughout the presentation and for the most part, I was answering with very good answers. There were a few questions that I either didn't know the answer to, or didn't give him a very satisfying answer. But buying large, I did really good, if I do say so myself.

As you can see from the pictures, Stacy (my biggest fan) made the awesomest white chocolate and macadamian nut cookies, and set out a really nice refreshments table for all of the guests. There were only about 10 students and 3 professors who attended. So most of the left over krispy kreme donughts, Stacy and I are still enjoying!

Also, from the pictures, you'll notice that I am very dressed up. Yes, those are the nicest clothes I own. Because of that, Stacy and I decided to take advantage of the moment, and Varun took a very good picture of the both of us. Isn't Stacy pretty?

As for now, I will continue to work toward getting my PhD. But in the meanwhile, you can simply refer to me as, "Master Tim".

The Most Brilliant Military Strategy Ever

2005-10-26T10:53:00.000-05:00

I ran across the most brilliant military strategy ever. To understand the new strategy, first take a look at soon to be archaic militaristic strategies that countries are ashamedly still using today. Consider a war fought between party A and party B, where A is making very good progress and accomplishing their goals as party B is making desperation attacks because they are losing. Traditional military philosophy would be for A to push harder and continue to strengthen party C who is now an ally with party A, but who before had supported party B. Because when party C is self-supporting and can defend themselves from party B, then the war ends. Party A is victorious along with party C.

The brilliant militaristic strategy goes like this. Consider the same example war as discussed above. Instead of continuing to strengthen party C, and pushing harder to defeat party B while they have them on their heels, party A should start to withdraw from the war and start decreasing troop levels dramatically until in a short while, all of party A's troops will have been withdrawn from the battle zones. Yes, this seems so stupid at first, but it is really brilliant, I promise. By doing this, party B begins to think that they must be winning because party A is retreating. So party B continues to do what they have been doing until party A is completely gone. Meanwhile, since party C was still too weak to defend themselves when party A left the scene, they will have to surrender to party B. Then, after party B is in control, they think that they completely won. But party A knows that they didn't win and that party B just thinks they did. When party B finally figures out that they actually didn't win, party A was just tricking them psychologically and playing with their emotions, they will be so devastated that they will surely just forfeit. I told you, absolutely brilliant isn't it?

This strategy is so brilliant I am sure you won't be surprised to find out who engendered it. John F. Kerry said (as reported here),

It will be hard for this administration, but it is essential to acknowledge that the insurgency will not be defeated unless our troop levels are drawn down...

Kerry has brilliantly decided that we should start with 20,000. I don't know how he came up with that number of troops, but I am sure it comes from the same place as his genius intellect. We should just trust him.

See, it is the newest and greatest militaristic strategy ever, and such a new concept to actually bring troop levels down in the most critical stages of the war. For tens of thousands of years humans have not been able to come up with this. I sure am glad I am living in this day and age, when the human mind and human thinking has evolved into unfathomable brilliancy. This strategy will surely play psychological mind games with the opponent. And because of this, surely, emotionally and physically, the enemy must implode.

Dilemma

2005-10-23T09:58:00.000-05:00

The Astros are in the World Series and I have to write my thesis. It is a terrible thing. I don't think that will stop me from watching the world Series though. How can I miss watching when my favorite player, Craig Biggio, has finally made it to the World Series after 18 years! Also, this is the first trip the Astros have ever made in franchise history.

The Astros have been my favorite team ever since I watched one of the most versatile and classic baseball players play... Biggio. Biggio: No steriods, no bad attitude, no stuck-up pride, just Baseball. Biggio made his major leaque debut in 1987 and since then has played Catcher, 2nd Base, and outfield, but spending the majority of his time at 2nd. Another interesting fact: Biggio has been beaned more times in the major leagues than any other player ever.

Everybody Believes In Free Will

2005-10-12T08:06:00.000-05:00

After reading this blog post today on the Catholic's view of Pre-destination, I was struck by a very subtle comment made therein...

Catholic theology teaches that not only are the elect predestined to heaven, but also that mankind has a freedom of the will–a striking difference with Calvinism.

By the title of this post, I don't mean to suggest literally that actually "everbody" in existence believes in Free Will (whatever that means), because I am sure that I could soon find somebody who is completely fatalistic in their thinking. However, I am simply speaking about the on-going, common and sometimes controversial debate between Arminism and Calvinism (accepting the recent titles given to two different schools of thought) and that both sides on the issue believe in Free Will. Actually, the lines between Arminists (a.k.a. Pelagians) and Calvinists are not clearly defined at all, but even the categories that fall within the two extremes profess to believe in Free Will. I have never ran into anybody within this debate that said they don't believe in Free Will. So why do pelagian-leaning schools of thought always say that Calvinists do not believe in Free Will? I don't think the answer is as simple as saying that the logical fallacy of equivocation has been committed.

Calvinists believe that it is BECAUSE of our free will that we (humans) are bound in our present state of falleness (sin) without any hope of salavation apart from the saving, gracious act of regeneration by God through the Holy Spirit. That's right, I said "BECAUSE of our free will". I think primarily there are two issues that come into play here: Free Will and the Doctrine of Original Sin. And it is our understanding of these two issues that form the dividing lines between the pelagians, semi-pelagians, and the calvinists.

I believe that since we have a "Free Will", we have the ability to do whatever we as humans want. Well, at least within reason, I can't bench press 800 lbs., but I sure would like to! That is to say, our actions are not limited in any sense by a restriction in our own freedom of choosing, but it may be physically limited or limited by outside force or coercion. Taking it a step further, I think the essence of "Free Will" is that we MUST do whatever we want. That is, because we are free and have a free will, we absolutely and positively have to do what we want (doesn't sound very "free" to me). We cannot not do what we do not want to, we have to do it BECAUSE we want to and we have a free will. I don't believe there was ever a time when you did something that you did not want to do. I am writing this blog because I want to. You are reading this blog because you want to. If you think you are just reading this blog just to be nice to a friend but you really don't want to because it is boring and written poorly. Then I would say to you, at the outset of reading this blog, that you made a conscious decision to read for my sake and be nice to me. Puting it another way, you read because you WANTED to please me, or because you WANTED to read further because of the interesting title, or etc... But the bottom line is, you proceeded because you WANTED to and because you have a Free Will. The more you fight against this concept of Free Will, the more it will fight against you.

Combined with the Doctrine of Original Sin that states that man in his sinfulness is dead in sin, we are bound by our desires which are desperately wicked and want to sin. We as fallen human beings are a slave to sin. And therefore now it means, to be human is to sin. Mankind still has his free will that he had before the fall, but now it is a fallen free will in the sense that it is bound by a different set of desires than before the fall. Without the regenerating work of God to awaken us and make us alive, we remain dead and all of our actions, desires, and thoughts remain bound by our fallen sinfulness (Ephesians 2:1-9). God wakes us up and gives us the ability and desire to choose good things, and we place our faith in Christ for our salvation. For the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

Therefore, after all, both the Pelagians and Calvinists and anywhere in between all claim to believe in Free will (to my knowledge anyways). But the Calvinists don't believe that our free will gives us the ability to choose righteousness in our fallen state. That would be analogous to me having the ability to bench press 800 lbs. I think maybe somewhere or sometime ago Calvinists conceded to not believing humans have Free Will because of the concept of Free Will that their opponent possessed. So maybe sometimes Calvinists these days do say humans don't have Free Will, but I would argue that they only do so because of the majority of evangelical Christians today have a semi-pelagian concept of Free Will. And so they are trying to debate with definitions of the terms of their opponent to establish a level playing field, and to avoid the fallacy of equivocation. I guess by the opposeing concept of Free Will (opposeing the Calvinists), I mean any view that does not only admit we still have Free Will in the current state of sinfulness, but that are Free Will is completely bound by our sinful desires. And by completely, I mean utterley, absolutely, can't fight against it, complete.

To avoid the contention that almost always comes up with this topic, I would like to say that I welcome anybody's critiquing on my thoughts. As a side note, I really don't know when I am supposed to capitalize "Free Will" And when i Am not, or weTher it is supposed to be consistently capItalized or NoN-capitalized. You have proBably noticed that I Actually don't know anything about the ruLes OF capitalization. But please don't let that steal any credibility from me :)

Bull Riding Photos

2005-09-29T23:32:00.000-05:00

I figured I would post a few of my bull riding pictures. Being at graduate school in a large metropolitan city, I sometimes daydream of the good'ole days when I had a rodeo to go to every weekend. I haven't gotten on any bulls since a PRCA rodeo that I went to in October of 2003. Right now, I am pretty out of shape and things might not go that well if I were to get on today. However, sometime in the future I plan on getting in shape and getting on again. But for now, a post on a blog will have to do.

This is a bull that I rode in the long round of the Sam Houston State University college rodeo in Hunstville, TX (February 2003). I scored 78 points and won third place for the go-round.

The next evening, I was very happy to have drawn this bull because I had been told how good he was. This bull I rode in the short round of the same rodeo in Huntsville. I scored 83 points and won the short round, which also gave me 1st place for the average.

Here is just one of my favorite pictures from a long time ago. I was riding at the Watermelon Jubilee in Stockdale, TX 1999. I scored 78 points and placed 2nd. The name of the bull was "Crazy Train" from Bad Company.

Reseach results and graduation

2005-09-29T09:27:00.000-05:00

Well, the Prof said yesterday that I had done enough for my graduation this december! So I guess it is official, this december I should graduate with my Masters degree. But I am not done with school yet, since I promised my professor I would stay to get my Phd underneath him, I still have several more years to go. But the good news is, ya'll can call me "Master Tim" after December.

For my thesis, I designed an Ultra-wideband (UWB) CMOS Differential Low-Noise amplifier. UWB refers to the fact that my circuit will operate over a very large bandwidth (several Gigahertz). CMOS equals cheap for companies to build. The differential architecture should aid in removing common-mode noise (which is very very bad). And we want the amp to be low-noise (i.e. it doesn't contribute much noise to the signal) so that prospectus wireless receivers can be as sensitive as possible.

Here are some of my simulation results. I stare at these all day and wish they would get better. The first is my amplifier's gain versus frequency expressed in decibels. And the second is the noise figure versus frequency (lower is better).

The Music Tag Game

2005-09-28T21:35:00.000-05:00

I've been tagged.

THE RULES: List five songs that you are currently loving. It doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artists, and the songs in your blog, then "tag" five other bloggers/friends to see what they're listening to.

1. Let Me Go -- 3 Doors Down
2. When I'm Gone -- 3 Doors Down
3. My Happy Ending -- Avril Lavigne
4. Somewhere in Between -- Lifehouse
5. I'd Do Anything -- Simple Plan

I tag:
1. Varun
2. Catherine
* Two will have to do. The other people I know with blogs have already been tagged.

It is really hard for me to say that I am really enjoying these songs "right now". I do not listen to the radio very much. When Stacy and I do turn on the car stereo, I am usually listening to Rush Limbaugh or mp3's of Chris Ledoux. However, the five songs above represent contemporary music that I would like to hear when I turn on the radio. I also like Creed, but Chris Ledoux is what I listen to about 90% of my music listening time. (I know, completely different genre).

By the way, I was tagged by Stephen.

Nevermind... Walking is Dangerous!

2005-09-24T11:39:00.000-05:00

I left the lab the other day like normal. As I was running down the stairs (because walking takes too much time) to meet Stacy, my ankle rolled over at one of the top few stairs. Since my backpack was full of books and my hands were too, I was not able to effectively catch myself. I then proceeded to roll down the stairs with books flying everywhere. Fortunately, it was about 8:00pm and nobody saw me. No injuries, just a sprained ankle. Funny though, huh?

Flossing is Dangerous

2005-09-21T20:47:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning as usual. While I was flossing my teeth, a projectile went flying through the air from my mouth and hit the mirror. No, it wasn't rotten food from the day before. Apparently, the floss snagged on the edge of one of my fillings located in between two molars, and ripped it out.

So I guess I'll go and get it replaced. Don't worry, I won't let them use an amalgam!

Frustration!

2005-09-19T00:31:00.000-05:00

I just typed up a long post, and then accidentilly erased it!!! It was good too. Oh well. Next time I will copy and paste the text of the post so that when the blogger.com server times out, I won't have lost everything.

First Post

2005-09-17T15:25:00.000-05:00

Just testing my first post.