More planning for Haiku Day!

Entry for August 18th, 2021

Recipe Exchange

So I refined my idea for a "Recipe exchange" activity on Sudo Haiku: The details are here:

Essentially, each person would submit a recipe. At the end of the submission period, everyone would claim a different person's recipe, and then make it. The final results would be shared on Sudo Haiku with details about the process and pictures of the final result.

Twitter account

I made a Twitter account for Sudo Haiku.

Bees

There seems to be a bees nest being constructed above my door. It will need to be removed soon.

Starting planning for Haiku Day

Entry for August 17th, 2021

(This entry and the several after it have all been backdated.)

Planning

So I've been asking around a bit and trying to figure out what is going to happen on 8/19 (Haiku Day). It looks like id:boundary-line has taken up the charge and is working on setting out a schedule for the event. Looking forward to it :)

Career advice

I've been talking with a friend lately about the various ways in which they can approach their future. It's going okayish.

Played around with Minecraft for a while

Entry for August 16th, 2021

Minecraft

I've started playing around a bit with Minecraft again. It's kind of a time sink so I usually try not to play for very long.

I didn't get much else done today. Here's some things I've built in Minecraft:

Mine Ops Aquatic Center

It's a fishing farm where several people can get together and fish for food and loot.

Mine Ops

Mine Ops started because I was tired of running out of materials. It took several months to dig out this area.

Mount Oswalt

Mount Oswalt, named after one John Oswalt (a man I admire), is home to a vast jungle, a little jungle city, a giant gold farm and a place called the Repository: where there are five double chests dedicated to each and every item in the game. There are additional levels planned, and it's also home to a large automatic smelter, several farms and factories, and a transportation hub.

When something feels off: a moment of concern after the message I heard this morning

Sermon/church notes

I was planning on going to another church today but I got the time wrong and missed it, so a good friend let me listen in to her church service instead over Discord. But things were a bit strange.

Speaker: ???

Morning worship
- There is Power In the Blood
- ??? (Call kept cutting out)
- ???
- Thy Word [is a lamp unto my feet]

Personal testimony/discussion
- A lady had good news about car repairs
- Some story about catching fish

Prayer of thanks, for continued health, for help in day to day things.

Scripture reading: Colossians 1:1-29

Prayer

Message

And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel. And the hand of the LORD was on Elijah; and he girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.
1 Kings 18:45‭-‬46 KJV

(Anecdote: Speaker questioning the necessity of some modern gimmicks intended to get people to visit church -- when God's word is the thing that the people should be spiritually hungry for)

(Anecdote: The Israelites wandering in the desert with aged and worn clothing)

(Vaccination was mentioned at some point in here about being a requirement to attend churches now, but it was sorta slipped in and not connected)

(Something about becoming closer to God? It was really unclear)

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
2 Peter 2:1 KJV

(Anecdote: Spanish flu - it's mentioned but I was unclear why it was mentioned)

(Callback to Elijah running with the horses, related to our spiritual focus: No matter what happens on Earth, we should fix our spirits/spiritual focus on Christ)

I was having immense trouble connecting the different things the speaker was saying -- but I pulled out some concepts:

- Empowerment to do great things through God (this was the mention of Elijah, the verse wasn't mentioned but I was able to locate it as being from 1 Kings)
- The eventual destruction of those who preach false doctrine
- The rebuking of Satan
- Satan slowly chips away at us
- We should be "forceful" in how we reject false teachings
- Closer relationship with God

Thoughts

I felt troubled listening to this. It was a bit hard to follow along.

I felt rather uncomfortable, but not in the "right" way of discomfort when faced with my own sin or conviction. It felt like something was wrong: there were several things mentioned: quarantine and the pandemic from (1918?) with no real connection to the other concepts.

The message felt a bit more like a collage of concepts and doctrine that are implied to be related than a sermon proper. So while it wasn't explicitly stated, if we pull all those concepts together, we end up with something troubling. I can't say that the message explicitly said anything about this, but it reminds me of something else I've heard (and that I think is both disingenuous and harmful):

- That we've faced things like pandemics before and gotten out alright
- That in the Bible, there's stories about superhuman feats enabled by God, and that we should look to God as the source of our strength
- That we are being restricted from fellowship with each other unless we get vaccinated
- And the most troubling bit: that these are works of Satan to drive us apart as believers

All in all, the whole thing had a bad smell to it. It calls back to this wild idea that medicine and healthcare somehow become, at best, unnecessary in the face of God's love for us, and at worst, hindrances and dangers to us as a body of believers. Not only is it unsupported by Scripture from what I know of it, but I believe it actually flies in the face of how we are supposed to provide care for those who are sick and weary as outward expression of the love we live through Christ.

Rest of the day

I spent most of the rest of the day kinda sitting around, and decided to open Minecraft for the first time in a long while. I hit zombie pigmen and loaded swords into the smelter for a while.

A beautiful, musical day on the MSU campus

Entry for August 14th, 2021

Enjoying the day

I felt a strong pull to worship and sing today. I went and walked around Michigan State's campus and practiced both whistling and singing. I wasn't trying to do it where there were a lot of people, but I was still out and about.

Beautiful view of the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden

I walked by the Red Cedar River which was very high.

In the left of this image we can see someone kayaking (I think?) against the rapids generated by the much higher than normal water flow from the recent storms.

Here's a picture from one of the ponds in the garden

I stepped inside the music building

I wanted to see the new wing, and also ended up here in the courtyard. I could hear someone practicing music on a glockenspiel or something -- it sounded very intense.

Front entrance

A song I found that I was practicing. It made me feel better since I've been lonely.

I also met someone called Emma who was sitting by the river. We talked for a bit. She's studying genetics. I asked her about the Long-Term Evolution Experiment which I've found particularly interesting; we also talked about some cool local places and local history (my contribution was some info about Eaton Rapids.) It was really fun!

At home

I've been struggling a little bit with cleaning things up, and I need to take the ladder down from the attic so that I can close the trapdoor up. Not 100% sure how I'll do it since I used the ladder to push the door out of the way in the first place...

I spent some time talking with various friends and catching up with an old one. It was nice!

Friday the 13th: no chainsaw or freaky murders, luckily

Entry for Friday, August 13th, 2021

Music-making

I was exploring a program called LMMS while trying to help a friend with some of their music-making efforts. I made some decent progress learning about how MIDIs work and soundfonts, though there were some technical issues. I can't seem to find a decent soundfont editor that works on my OS -- most want the JACK audio server/daemon thing and that just doesn't seem to be happening for me on Arch, at least not at the present.

Not much got done today

I can't really say a lot got done today. I wish I could, but...well, it seemed like most of my friends were inaccessible and I was feeling kinda down, so that's that.

A barbecue, water cleanup, and explorations of the mind

Barbecue

This afternoon I went to the park to see my coworkers for the first time in a very long time in person. The event was noted as BYOB so I brought some Mike's pineapple lemonade. I did feel a little like I had a hard time engaging in conversation -- looks like I still have a lot of work to do on my social skills.

But it was nice.

Attic and rain

With some difficulty I was able to get my ladder up into the attic area, and also swept the insulation off of the long section of walkable boards so that I could make sure it actually was walkable.

I was able to find two wet spots, and the source for one. Now that I have the ladder there, I might just wait for it to rain hard again and climb up there. But if it's a while before it rains again, I'll take the ladder down, stick it in my basement, and put it back up when it starts raining.

I've been trying to dry out my basement, which had a bunch of water in it (as usual.) Luckily I am on the top of a hill so there wasn't much standing water outside.

Explorations of the mind

I came across some articles about memory recall and the process of memory errors. I read through it a bunch and decided I'd finally start listening to

I'm only partway through (about an hour in), but I don't know if I'll finish it. It sort of feels like if I listen all the way through I might somehow make myself more susceptible to it, but I can't see any particular way for that to be true, so I'll keep giving it a listen until I get uncomfortable.

I did read some interesting things about how environment, emotions, gender, and so on affected the process of memory recording and recall, as well as the things that can disrupt the recall of information from the short-term memory. Drug use can severely impair the functioning of long-term memory storage and retrieval; use of cannabis will impair it significantly during the duration of usage (and possibly over time with frequent usage? I didn't look into that as much -- I don't use any kind of illegal or recreational drugs nor have I ever, and I don't want to.)

For a person who feels like, even at 25, they're fighting a battle against time, it's a bit unsettling but I feel like if I sharpen my mental acuity through research and study that I may have a better fighting chance at keeping my edge as I grow older.

NIghttime photos

I took these photos in the inky black of night. Somehow, my phone was able to discover the colors and details through long exposure. It's a little strange to see how the lights interplay with the long exposure -- see the light cast on the garage on the left, and my neighbor's light in their window across the fenceline.

Motivation

I'm glad that I got a blog entry done today. Today felt a little bit like a waste and writing a decent-length blog entry has helped me feel like I've redeemed the day. I'm really thankful for the friend who's been helping me with motivation and other things over the past few weeks. <3