o/` Loreena McKennitt – Dantes Prayer o/`

Someone called me Hermione this weekend and I didn’t know what they were talking about. I should really read the Harry Potter books sometime.

Myk has been setting up the new webserver, R2Q5, this weekend. It’ll be running as our mailserver, webserver and IRC server eventually, which is a bit of a relief, it will reside at his workplace on a T3. Either our Comcast connection is getting worse, or the amount of traffic on our websites has increased, probably both, but Myk has had to shut off the apache server often this week so he could do some work online. That’s pretty unacceptable for pages that get so much traffic, and it makes me sad to have my pages down %(

On thursday night Myk ended up staying at work until after 2 am. Because of this, his boss told him not even to bother coming in on friday, nice. I got up around noon on friday, did the normal friday cleaning of the apartment, went back to bed around 1:30 and proceeded to sleep until after 5 pm. We decided it would be good to get up then. So we got up, realized we were hungry, and headed out to Unos. It was a nice dinner. Afterwards we went to the video rental place and picked up a couple movies I had never seen, “Young Frankenstein” and “Citizen Kane” (seriously, I had never seen either one!). Ended up watching Young Frankenstein, it was really great. I think I went to bed around 3 am.

Saturday I woke up around 7. I crawled to my computer like I always do when I wake up and chatted for a bit, until I realized I wasn’t feeling so great and I went back to bed. I got up a little after 11:30, made coffee and breakfast (pancakes!), then curled up on the couch with a book. I took some Benadryl, hoping that would help me feel better, and ended up falling asleep on the couch. I don’t know how long it was, but eventually Myk came into the livingroom, saw me sleeping on the couch and woke me up so I could sleep in the bed, so we both took a nap til around 5 pm, so much for a normal sleep schedule this weekend! When we got up I took a shower and Myk made some dinner out of leftover unos pizza and the salad I had made for him if he had needed to go into work on Friday. Around 8 we watched Citizen Kane… a great movie, I am quite amazed that I had never seen it before. Then we watched part of an audio commentary by Ebert, which pointed out some of the subtle things done in the movie for certain effects and made me all the more impressed about the movie. We drank some tea and had some oreo chocolate cake and then decided to play some Warcraft 3. By then it was about 2:30 and I decided that I should probably try and get some sleep. Watched some old cartoons on the Cartoon Network for a little while and fell asleep a little after 3.

It’s been a good weekend. Today I think I’m just going to snuggle up in a comforter and read all day.

In the few minutes I’ve had this weekend on the computer I was exploring a vunerability concerning PHP and SQL…

-mjoseph- you’re careful about SQL injection, right?
-PrincessLeia2- sql injection?
-mjoseph- uh oh

Now didn’t I feel like a dunce! Well it turns out what he was talking about was a cross-site scripting exploit which I had indeed heard about, but only recently because I read the Debian Security Announce list (something I suggest all debian users to subscribe to!), and debian released a php4 fix for it just this past week. And after looking into it a bit I found out that I really didn’t need to worry about it anyway. The problem is mostly an issue when the mysql username is passed through GET. I never use GET for anything sensitive, and even with POST I never use the username, that’s kept, with the password, in a static init file. So things are going good with the backend, hopefully I’ll have it done and working on the site by friday.

I guess I’ll go make some coffee and breakfast now *yawns and wanders off*

o/` Legend Soundtrack o/`

Xelium hit 500 users today… currently at 515. Nice.

#13thHour has been doing quite well lately too. For the longest time I’d go in there and be able to read everything from when I was gone quite easily. Now… gah the buffer sometimes barely reaches that far %) I am not sure how all the “Old #13thHouries” think of this… some of them seem to be taking it fine and talking anyway, Time doesn’t seem to mind. *Shrugs* I think it’s cool… now people don’t always have to come in, see it’s dead, and leave. We had a user count of 22 the other day… I think that’s some sort of record, old days included.

I did a bit of work on my website today. Rearranged some of of the sections in the main menu, added an IRC section with a link to xelium, as well as a couple places I chat in. And I finally got around to formatting that enlightenment page! Also made my “stories” about the cellphone, curtain shopping, and the squirrel that got into our apartment into webpages. So here are some links to the new sections:

Curtain Shopping

The Squirrel

Cellphone Shopping

Enlightenment How-To

Tomorrow I should definately get some work done on the backend for the web comic, since I keep putting that off to work on other things. But it really does feel good to get things acomplished again. Being stuck in a rut sucked.

*wanders off*

o/` Bjork – Pagan Poetry o/`

Yesterday I spent a good deal of the day working on the webpage for the #StarWars channel on xelium. It’s not a big channel, 6 regulars and a few people who drop by only from time to time. The owner knew nothing about making a webpage, and when he asked if I could make up something I said I could. Well it’s nothing too special, and I required him to do some work on it too, so he wrote up the little intro, the history, and his profile. I am getting infinately frustrated with people who say “hey sure, help me with a website” and then they wander off and don’t give it a second thought until I’m done. While I like working on webpages and working to make my design skills improve, I dont appreciate my work being taken for granted, I really did spend 6 hours working on something and I expect the person I’m helping out to put forth some effort as well.

#StarWars

I offered to help my friends Yeas and HeavyJay with a php administration tool for their comic website. The owner of the webserver (mjoseph, a real life friend of Myk’s and mine who decided to start chatting in #13thHour) said he was willing to give shell accounts to 3 of us so we could all have access to the webpage. The two comic creators are just going to be doing work to design and basic HTML of the site, and I’ll be putting in the proper php code. Now the two creators of the comic have both dabbled in linux before, but one of them just with gui redhat and the other with gui mandrake. Never really seeing the command line much. So a shell account is a whole new experience for them. I spent a lot of time yesterday helping them both out with some basic shell things, then got them into irssi with screen (although I think I need to clarify exactly what screen does *sigh*). Anyway, it was kinda fun teaching a few people how to use irssi, hopefully they are willing to teach the next group of people who need irssi training… it gets tedious, especially with people who have never used a command line chat client.

Myk upgraded irc.clockbot.net (part of irc.xelium.net) to Unreal beta17 last night, yay! Turns out there was a flaw in 15… so it’s good that that was resolved. The server is doing surprisingly well, just hit 470 users the other day. I guess my only problem with it right now is the other admins. The guy who made the website never updates it (specifically to add more channels to the channels list..). And two of the other admins hardly *ever* listen to me when I talk. Case in point, they noticed that most people were connecting to deep13 and started to write it off as an mIRC mistake (apparently once mIRC sucessfully connects to an IP for a server it saves the IP, so peopleconnect to irc.xelium.net, get deep13’s ip, and connect to that one EVERY time). But then I pointed out that the bot from netsplit.de also connects to deep13 more often… did they listen to me? No, instead they puttered around for 30 minutes, until one of them noticed the same thing and said almost the same thing I did. Of course as soon as HE pointed it out they started trying to figure out what was wrong… it’s like they didnt even see what I said. I won’t let it get to me, it doesnt really matter if I get along with the other admins as long as everything gets done, it just wasnt the best thing to hear on a day when I was feeling sorta down anyway.

On a lighter note:

-$friend- oh i met a fan of yourz leia
-PrincessLeia2- oh?
-$friend- yeah i said something about princessleia.com
-$friend- and they were like yeah my friend was showing that site to me it was really cool
-PrincessLeia2- hehe neat!

Cool. It always makes me feel good when random people that either me or my friends run into turn out to know about my site. I mean… I know it gets a lot of traffic, but it’s very rare that I get feedback from strangers about it. Really makes me want to add more to it. I was thinking of writing an irssi help section since even though there is an irssi documenta
tion project “in the works” I think people would really benefit from a quick help guide on some of the basics and features of irssi. I think I will also mirror the enlightenment how-to on my webpage, so I need to get around to making that “pretty” enough and organized so people can use it. I have lots of things to work on! And I really want to, so that’s good… I think that vacation to the Poconos helped getting my creativeness flowing again %)

*wanders off to get some work done*

o/` Jonn Serrie – Star Shower o/`

I was going to write something thoughtful, but I decided that I’m not really in the mood.

Yesterday was decent. Finished Return Of The King for the nth time. I have been rereading the books preparing for the movie at the end of the year that I’m really looking forward to. I think it’ll be the only movie I actually go to the theaters and see this year. I hate being continually disappointed by movies that use bad special effects. The Lord of the Rings movies have been consistantly breathtaking, I’m really pleased. I’m so tired of big movies coming out that have special effects that are so cheesey that the distract me from paying attention to the plot of the movie. But I guess for many of these hollywood blockbuster factories “Quality” isn’t too important to them.

A couple friends of mine are putting together a new webcomic. It’s a cool idea, and the first one is really amusing, I am looking forward to more. Another friend offered to host it for them, and I’ll be helping with the php backend, woo! It should be pretty cool, the artist of the comic is currently working on the webpage layout, which promises to be quite nice.

I took the time to write up some “adventures” that Myk and I have had in the past year and a half yesterday afternoon. Wrote about when the squirrel got into the apartment, wrote about our curtain shopping adventure, and edited the cellphone shopping experience that I posted in this journal recently. I think I will put them all into an “Adventures” part of my website. I need to find some pictures that would be appropriate for each story and stuff… hopefully I’ll get them up by this evening.

My allergies are driving me nuts today. It’s a nice day out so I decided to turn off the AC and open some windows (ok ok, the nearly $200 electric bill I got in the mail today DID have some influence on turning off the AC). As soon as I opened the windows I had trouble breathing, ugh, stupid allergies! Turns out that the allergy alert for grass today is “High” and I’m particularly allergic to grass. Maybe I should just close the windows… I wish I had been smart and picked up some allergy medicine when Myk suggested it at the store on Sunday, but I really wasnt having trouble til today, ugh.

Oh well, I’m going to go get some things done *wanders off*

o/` Enigma – Principles Of Lust o/`

I recently got into a conversation with a friend of mine concerning his girlfriend who is in a wheelchair. He told me that another friend of his had known her online, known about her and was actually emotionally attracted to her, until he found out she was in a wheelchair. My friend was disgusted with this additude, but I tend to disagree. I think it takes an especially compassionate person to fall in love with and seriously have a relationship with someone who has a disability like being in a wheelchair. It’s a great responsibility, and I believe some people just realize that they could not deal with such a thing from the start. Sure, if at some point in your life together your wife/husband gets into an accident and they must be in a wheelchair then you are responsible for loving and caring for them, but I can understand many people not wanting to start out with that premise. It’s sad, and unfair, but I guess it’s just the way life is, and I think it’s good for people to be honest with themselves about what they can physically and emotionally handle in a significant other.

Yesterday I wasn’t doing much, I wasn’t feeling so great, probably because of allergies and it put me in a lousy mood. Spent a bunch of time reading, did some knitting. We eventually went grocery shopping because I was hungry and we had hardly any food in the house. I took the grocery opportunity to buy some chocolate and chips because I was in a crappy mood, and of course when I’m in a crappy mood I eat to comfort myself %) For dinner we had Boca Burgers and some french fries.. the french fries were another “mood buy” we had never bought french fries the whole time living together. I love food.

While Myk did some work on his computer I used his laptop (IBM Thinkpad) to ssh into r2d2 and work on a history of the world timeline. I got through the whole timeline in the “World History for Dummies” book, and now I’m looking through a few more history books I have to suppliment it. It was kinda amusing actually looking through the for Dummies book, it had a lot of mistakes! In one part it claimed something was “3,300 years old” when in other places it said it was actually 5,300, in another part it used “principal” where “principle” clearly should have been, and in some of the timeline stuff the BC dates were out of order… I guess they weren’t kidding when they called it “for Dummies.” Maybe I’ll work on that more this afternoon.

*wanders off*

o/` Peter Gabriel – The Feeling Begins o/`

I learned more about GPG today. Enough so I felt comfortable generating my own key (Public Key). My friends madragoran and mjoseph helped me out summore. I was able to send a signed and encrypted email to mjoseph and madragoran sent me one that I was able to decrypt. Yay! I guess my problem was really understanding how everything worked, I am so paranoid about using commands that I dont understand, especially for something like encryption. I think I will take some notes and make them public about things I’m learning about pgp.

The weather today has been odd… over 80, then a quick downpour, back up to the 80s… ah the summertime. I wanted to go swimming but I have no idea if it’s going to rain again, bleh.

I’m tired. I had a sinus headache this morning while I was doing the weekly cleaning of the apartment. It went away but certainly wasn’t a nice way to start off a day. I’m so glad it’s friday… this week has felt so long.

This weekend, hmmm… Myk has to go in to work for a bit tomorrow to work on some things with the network that he cant do while people are working… so we havent really planned anything. I think we are just going to spend the rest of the weekend hanging out at home, maybe rent a movie or something.

Wow, what a lousy entry… *wanders off*

I had a gpg key last year. Myk made it for me and said “here is a gpg key” … at the time (Aprilish 2002) I was so preoccupied with other things that I just put it into the “I’ll learn it later” pile. Of course that’s obviously a bad idea. In that time we moved our mailservers and guess where my private key was? Yes indeed, it’s gone now, and it’s been signed by a number of people in PLUG. Luckily it expired. From what I’ve been told that means I don’t need to worry about it anymore, good. So now I decided I will get back to learning about GPG.

I basically knew nothing about it. When Myk helped me out last year with GPG commands I retained nothing, and I was uing pine (i use mutt now, and gpg stuff in there is different). So I headed over to gnupg.org waded through the how-to’s … and then when I thought I had a basic grasp on some of it, I wandered into #13thHour to pick the brains of my friends. This is the log I would break it down and chop it up to get only the relavent statements, but 1. I don’t have the time today 2. I don’t think enough people reading would be interested enough if i did for it to be worth it. Maybe I’ll add a section to my website sometime about exactly how to do gpg stuff. Anyway, it was a very informative afternoon. From what I learned from reading the gpg site, and from questions I asked in IRC I have a much clearer picture of what I’m doing. I might even be brave enough to create a key tomorrow, hehe.

What prompted this renewed interest in GPG was the suggestion of one of the Philly Chix of having a keysigning at last night’s meeting. It’s a good idea, and as one of the organizers I think it would be important for me to participate. Besides, I had interest in it anyway, this just gave me the push I needed %)

(from left) Kristin, Lyz, Samantha

It was a nice meeting, we had 3 people instead of 2, yay! Another woman who keeps saying she’ll come wasn’t able to make it because she had just returned from vacation. So I’m hopeful our next meeting will have more. We just need one more active member to be concidered a real users group by O’Reilly (http://ug.oreilly.com/), so hopefully we can gain a recruit from somewhere.. maybe my friend Nita can be convinced to actually join the group… The laptop in that picture is merely a prop %) Myk was using it while we were having the meeting, and just gave it to me when he took the picture, hehe. It was nice getting to talk for a while, I already knew kristin, so it was a pretty friendly meeting.

We got to the meeting on the train, just because we werent in the mood to fight traffic. Of course I am horrible about trains, I don’t understand them at all %) It really is confusing, online the schedules say one thing, and in reality they do different things and the lines confuse me and I always ask “this one is going to _____ right? The train guys are really nice and always helpful. I would have gone alone, but I was very scared about going into center city on a train alone. Myk said he’d come with me each time if I want him too, I guess it wasn’t *too* bad, so I might be brave enough to go alone next time ;) The ride in wasnt bad, we took the 7 pm train out of Glenside, got into the city around 7:40, and the walk to the store was about 15 minutes, so I got there just before 8, yay! Unfortunately the trip back wasnt as simple and well planned. We thought we’d have to take the R1, but really to go back to Glenside that late from that station we had to take the R2, which got there soon after we did, and we didnt take it. Ended up taking another train to the next station to catch the R5 so that we wouldnt have to wait another 30 minutes for the next R2 *arg* We got back to Glenside a little after 11:30, so we got home
around midnight. It was a long night, especially since the meeting actually ended at 9 pm, and I was exhausted.

Well I have about an hour before I need to make dinner. I’m probably going to go dig around some more gpg stuff and get some notes together so I have a quick reference to how to do everything. *wanders off*

o/` Tears For Fears – Break It Down Again o/`

Spoiled American Brats. Maybe they just get on my nerves more than they used to, or maybe I really have been running into more of them. Just this morning this one kid in IRC started complaining and saying he hated his parents because they wouldn’t co-sign his college loans. When I asked him why he felt that was his parents responsibility he went on about how they made so much money and they could sign for just a small loan, finally he got really defensive and called me an idiot. Geez, touchy. Maybe I’ve just been lucky in the chat rooms I’m in, most people I know don’t take such discussion so personally. I’m so tired of kids thinking they are somehow “entitled” to these things. It’s not the end of the world if you have to go to a community college for a few years! I’m sure his parents were aware of this and just wanted him to appreciate everything he has for once. I’ve seen far too many kids not appreciate what their parents did to get them into college, and a number of whom just fail or get bored with it, and don’t realize what they are throwing away. I guess appreciation for everything you have is something people have to learn on their own.

/end rant

In happy news, Myk brought home one of those Herman Miller Aeron chairs.

Never heard of them? Look strange to you? Well… let me tell you, these chairs are amazing. Normally, even sitting in my normal comfy computer chair, I can tell I’ve been sitting in a chair all day when I get up. This chair is so different. It’s made of this “pellicle mesh” so when you sit down it contours to your body, but still gives you support. After a whole day of sitting in it you still feel good. It really makes all other chairs I’ve tried seem bad %) Myk is borrowing this one from work because they have extras. Why don’t we just buy a couple? The cheapest we’ve found them online is about $600 each *cringe* … they are nice chairs, with a nice 12 year warrenty, but I am sure spending that much on one chair has turned many people away from them. But I love this chair!

Yesterday I almost finished catching up on emails I’ve been putting off for weeks and months. There are a few people I only contact through email, so it is nice to respond in a timely manner, but I write such long emails most of the time to these people, so finding time to do it (sometimes I put aside a couple hours to write an email) is often difficult…

Tonight we have the second Philly Chix meeting. The list has been pretty quiet all month, so I am kinda worried that people aren’t as excited about it as I am. Still, I am hopeful that we will get more women coming to this meeting than the last (where we only had two).

*wanders off*

o/` Matchbox 20 – Last Beautiful Girl o/`

Well I’m back from vacation. We got back yesterday afternoon, but I said I was still on computer vacation so all I did was check my email and hop onto IRC and tell people I wasnt eaten by deer while in the Poconos.

On thursday we packed up our stuff and headed out around 8:30, so we got to the house up there owned by Myk’s mother’s boyfriend. Since we were the last ones there we ended up getting the bedroom with the twin beds, haha! Next time we’ll know to get up there sooner %) We spent the evening just talking with Myk’s mom, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s sister and her fiance (who were also staying up there for the weekend).

Photograph by Gary Fleeger, Pa Geological Society

On friday we decided to head over to Hickory Run State Park to check out some trails. I wanted to see the Boulder Field (pictured above). So we decided to take the Boulder Field Trail, which is 3.5 miles long and difficulty “difficult” (on a scale of easy-moderate-difficult). So we look at the map tacked to the board at the part of the park we stopped at. It seemed simple enough… of course I didn’t take into concideration that the trail was 3.5 miles ONE WAY… so we’d have to walk it back. Well, while we were walking on the Boulder Field Trail things were great, it was hot out, but not so bad in the shade of the trees. We left around noon and finally got to the end of the trail to the boulder field around 1:30. Crossed the boulder field, that took about 25 minutes… it’s a HUGE field, and carefully walking on boulders is not easy. So we get to the other side and want to look at a map to see where to go next… the map has been taken down (no doubt by some other wonderful tourist). Ugh! So we figure “hey maybe we can follow the road and get back to the car” … we followed the road about a half mile, but after the 10th car passed and kicked dust from the road in our faces we decided to turn around and try another trail. We ended up on Stone Trail. Stone Trail came to a dead end after 1.5 miles. Doh. We turned around and by this time our water was gone and we were quite tired. But what could we do? We decided to cross the boulder field again and go back down boulder field trail. Oy, it was tiring and we were both a bit dehydrated when we finished. Looking back we walked at 10 miles just on trails, plus what we walked on the road, and over the rocks… wow. I had never walked so much in one day before. Poor Myk had blisters, and my legs were absolutely *killing* me. It was after 5 by the time we got back to the car. We had suntan lotion and bugspray on, as well as dirt kicked up from the walk, we were so dirty! Hehe. We stopped at a gas station after leaving the park and picked up a gatorade and water, which were finished in just a couple minutes. Then drove back to the house, took showers, and had a nice BBQ dinner with everyone staying there, and a couple of neighbors. It was really nice, I ate a lot… and for dessert was this amazing cheesecake topped with blueberries and strawberries, wow! I really enjoyed that, it was an amazing end to the 4th of July. We didn’t see fireworks or anything because we were pretty much too exhausted to move %) We went to bed around 11 and slept soundly ;)

Saturday we woke up in some awful pain, haha! We decided not to do anymore hiking for the weekend, and ended up taking a drive up the see the Delaware Water Gap. It was nice up there, hot though… and route 80 near Jersey was so insanely packed with traffic that we ended up not staying long. I can say I’ve been there though %) We got to drive through Portland, PA… which was a cute little town, the main part of the town was about a block long, hehe, a few cute little stores. After some frustration with traffic we e
nded up driving back around 2. Decided to head up to Penn’s Peak Restaurant. It’s a restaurant on a peak (surprised?), and the view is something like 50 miles on a clear day! It was a little hazy out, but the view was still amazing. We had a nice dinner of buffalo chicken sandwiches, and I had some amazing carrot cake. It was reasonably priced too, which was great %) After eating we drove back to the house, took some pictures of the deer that were eating the corn we put out for them, and headed over to Myk’s father’s house.

We spent a couple hours hanging out with Myk’s father, it was nice seeing him again, he seems to be doing good. He asked if we wanted to go see the fireworks but we werent too interested since the bugs were coming out and neither of us were in the mood to soak in bugspray again. Instead we decided to just take a drive. Drove through downtown Jim Thorpe (it’s a town) and then just kept driving… ended up in Hazelton, a town on a road that wasnt even on our map (too far west). When it started getting dark and there was no sign of a road we recongnised we decided to just turn around and go back. It was a nice drive though, we got to see a lot of “small town pocono” %)

Sunday morning we got up and decided to leave a little before noon so we’d *try* to miss most of the traffic back into the city. It was Myk’s birthday on sunday, so his mother gave us a cake to take home (ugh!). The drive home was nice, and we didn’t get lost once! Hehe. Yesterday afternoon we pretty much just hung around here… got some laundry done, emptied suitcases, checked email. Then went out to get a pizza and a movie.

The movie we rented was The Pianist. I heard a lot of good things about it, and it was nominated for some awards, won a few. Unfortunately it turned out to be just another Holocaust movie. There was really nothing special or memorable about the film. Schindler’s List shocked and horrified us, Life Is Beautiful made us cry, what does the pianist have? It’s just another in this sick genre, I don’t know why it was nominated for anything. It had nothing original. It’s like people just give awards to holocaust movies because the WW2 holocaust was so horrible, not because the movies are groundbreaking in any way. I know that it was a bad time in our history that deserves attention, but I’m just so sick of it, I have become desensitized to even the most senseless murders in movies. So no, I didn’t like The Pianist.

Wow… while writing this I was chatting with my friend daiopowen. And I found out that he knew my cousin Audrey! He didn’t realize that my last name was Krumbach until this afternoon and he asked if I was related to her, crazy!

I think I am going to attempt to install debian on my laptop sometime this week. Since debian does not come with drivers for my pcmcia NIC I need to, um, preload modules during the install so it can properly do a net install… ugh, I’m so scared %) Myk said he’d give me a hand with it luckily, if I am in the mood I’ll document the steps I am taking to do it. Unfortuantely I don’t think I’ll have it ready for the philly chix meeting on wednesday, oh well…

Now I am going to go find something to do. I do feel a bit refreshed from that vacation, not really glad to be back ;) but I do have some things I want to work on. *wanders off*

o/` Better Than Ezra – Extra Ordinary o/`

We’re leaving this evening for the Poconos. Hopefully the irc server will be up and ready to go by this evening… deep13.xelium.net will be up and working properly even if clockbot’s upgrade doesnt go smooth enough, so just connect there if you have problems with the first instructions on: http://www.princessleia.com/13thHour.html

On to more serious things… I’m considering giving Christianity another chance. I have been horribly lost spiritually my whole life, and although I have explored many other religions I find I’ve come full circle and still am unsure as to what I want and need in my life. I’m sure I need something, I do feel some sort of emptiness. The biggest problem I have with christianity (aside from most of the followers…) is that even when I gave it a chance last time, I felt like I was lying to myself. As a historian I cant separate christianity from any other religions ever practiced. As a scientist I cant actually believe the creation story (unless it’s a metaphor?). And I find it difficult to rationalize believing in this despite many of the arguments Christians give me. I don’t want to push the chrisitan religion into a box to fit my needs (like so many people do), because that would defeat the purpose of believing in it. I stumple with dogma that confuses me, and the number contradictions that the bible seems to hold (which, no doubt, is why there are so many sects). This being said, I realize there are many intelligent people who believe in it. What do they realize that I don’t? Maybe they don’t take spirituality as serious as I do? Maybe they too lie to themselves and try not to examine it to closely? Maybe it’s just “what you are supposed to do” so they are active in the church? I’d appreciate feedback on this %)

My problem with my last venture into Christianity was that I was part of a Baptist church, dragged there by my mother. The church seemed to focus on the pathetic, unhappy, stupid, lost souls who had nothing else to lose. In this environment I was unable to ask the questions that I needed to ask and get a valuble response. “How do I know this is true?” I’d ask “because in the bible…” they’d answer. Well how about if I come to them with the pretense that I don’t believe the bible? They would stumple on questions and give me all these lines about faith, about how what I believe scientifically and historically is wrong and bias by unbelievers. I just got so tired of them deflecting my questions in such a way!

Luckily this time the guide we have to meet with us and answer our questions is an intelligent person, and I’m very curious as to his answers to my questions and inhibitions. I plan on going into this completely open minded. I am willing to put enormous effort into this because I honestly do want to find something that works for me. At the same time I must push myself to take it seriously and not get caught up in some sort of “religious fervor” that will make me lose my intellectual side, and ultimately cause me to fail in this.

Ok, enough seriousness… I found this amusing line in an irc channel I chat in (it was submitted to bash.org):

-Mot- Though i’m not gay, I’d rather be a flaming homo then a grammatically indept idiot like yourself.
-Azi- than
-Azi- inept

Now I know I don’t have perfect grammar all the time either, but at least I don’t make grammatical mistakes while telling someone I don’t! *chuckles* And normally I’d change names to protect the innocent, but there is no innocent here… Mot is an asshole, and soon after this he was banned from the channel %)

We bought bugspray last night. Ultrathon made by 3M… after a bit of research online we discovered that it’s probably the most suited to our needs %) I hate bugs! And the weather has been so perfect for breeding them, tons of them everywhere, I don’t think I would have enjoyed a hike in the woods much
if I was covered with mosquitos.

I’m going to go around and figure out what else I need to this trip this weekend. I’ll see everyone when I get back on sunday! *wanders off*