A short farewell

That's right, this time tomorrow I'm going to be in Destin Florida with my fellow refugees at the summer camp of 2006. All signs point to a fun fun time. That's why I'm going really, to have fun and get closer with the One who created me. Funny how those two can go in the same sentence. Not really, but that's what the world says. God = no fun. The next four days will prove that all wrong.

Dear Heavenly Father,
Please provide your supernatural protection over this trip, let everyone be safe and have a great time. Use this trip to let me focus myself on You. For in Your Word, it is said that if I seek first the kingdom of God, all other things shall be added unto me. So Lord, help me to seek you first, and have a great time with my friends all at the same time. In Jesus name I pray. Amen

-Phill

Camp!

Camp is going to be awesome!!! I can't wait! In fact, we went shopping this morning at Wal-Mart for some clothes for me. I think I ended up with over $100 of new clothing. I didn't feel bad about spending that much money, because I hardly ever buy new clothing. Usually a t-shirt here and there, but never the kind of shopping I did today... Two new pair of blue jeans, two pair of slacks, like 5 polo shirts, a new bathing suit, a pair of loafers, dress socks and some other stuff I can't remember. Most of it was for my trip to California because I need to wear "relaxed professional" in the morning for most of the days (which means no jeans and a polo shirt). I can't wait for that trip, though I'm stoked about camp too! Before I leave for California, I need to spend some time with all of my friends... because I'm going to be gone for like... a long time. 9 days, 8 nights, 2100 miles away.

I'm going to miss you guys! And if your name appears on my sidebar to the right, definetly expect for me to want to see you before I go.

Eh, I'll expound more on that after camp. I still need to get packed, and that's a little complicated because our washer machine broke yesterday... First our dishwasher breaks, then our washer machine. Well we replaced our dishwasher and we ordered the piece for our washer machine. The bad news is that it won't come in time for us to wash for camp... so we're still trying to figure that one out. Shouldn't be too bad though since I just bought a bunch of new clothes.

I was reading through my car magazine and saw that GM authorized production of the new Camaro. For those that haven't been keeping up, GM was contemplating bringing back the Camaro line of cars, but because of its previous failure they dropped it the first time. The redesigned Camaro looks sweet and is Chevy's answer to the Ford Mustang. Mustang fans (thats you Jerusha) will be pleased to know that the car mag still predicts that the Mustang will be better than the Camaro. That's assuming GM doesn't bankrupt by the time they release it on the market. In 2005, GM lost close to $11 billion (billion, not million). The stock is decreasing in value and the guy who runs GM (Rick Wagoner) is on his last chance to try to save the company. On the other spectrum, Porsche is scheduling to release 10 new models by the end of the decade. Most of them are variants of the 911 though. Acura is dropping its cheap car (the RSX) and plans to sell expensive cars (it's entry line car starts at 28,000). BMW is introducing a new line of coupes, and Ford is introducing its Mustang on steroids, the Shelby GT500.

For most of y'all, that was more car talk than you ever wanted to hear, but its interesting to me...

-Phill

Aston Martin and Women

I know I posted yesterday, but I failed to recap on what happened. Yesterday morning I woke up early and cleaned and detailed my dad's truck. After that I did my Equip homework and left in the F-150 and met my dad at my mom's office. We traded vehicles and I drove all the way to Walker (following my dad) in flipflops. Driving a stick shift with flipflops was an interesting experience, but I did it. After we dropped the truck off at the spray-in bedliner place, I drove my dad back to his work. On the way home I picked up Stephanie. When I actually got to my house, I just picked up my stuff, got my sister and went over to the Scichowski's house to pick up another two girls (Charis and Jerusha). So in my car was me, and four women (granted one was my sister). I had mixed signals as whether to feel lucky, or outnumbered (I settled on the former). So anyway we headed over to Equip and did the class there. After class, we were asked to make 450 copies of something for camp. Well, the copier at the Annex was broken, so we drove to the outreach building at the highland campus and made the copies there. After we made the copies, we drove back to the Annex and got some people to help us fold them. I drove the ladies back to the Scichowski house and we stayed there for a few minutes. I wanted to stay and watch the movie with them, but me and my sister had to leave (Stephanie stayed). Then we proceeded to watch the movie Cars and went to bed...

Today however...

Call me weird, but I agreed to go shopping with my mom and Jake's mom for pots and stuff for our house. It was all worth it when I saw this awesome car in the parking lot of one of the stores. I had never seen it except for on the screen of Need for Speed and James Bond... the Aston Martin DB9. I didn't even know there was one in Louisiana, and there it was just sitting there by itself. As soon as I saw it I recognized it (my mom still doesn't get why I'm so ecstatic about it, I'm like "IT'S AN ASTON MARTIN"). I still can't believe it, but I do have the pictures to prove it. I even have a picture of me in front of the car to prove it (see picture sidebar thingy).

To see more pictures, refer to my picture sidebar.

So yeah, that was Friday and Saturday... Sunday is going to have to be really good to beat the last two days.
Good thing I agreed to go shopping today...

I had a little bit more fun on Friday though than Saturday, hah, make that a lot more fun.

-Phill

Cars

I'm not going to do a movie review, but that was an awesome movie! It was clean and funny, really funny. Throughout the whole movie there was humor, but at this one part I just busted out laughing.... (the part when the little guy does the super fast pit stop, for some reason that seemed to tickle my sense of humor). Pixar Animation studios has really outdone themselves with this movie, and if you wait till the end you'll see the other Pixar movies being spoofed :p There was humor that was obvious, some that was hidden but still recognizable by me, and some that only my parents got...

I want to go see it again... who wants to come?

-Phill

Running on E

It's not fair, it seems just like yesterday when I filled up my tank... and now its like inbetween the halfway mark and the quarter mark. Which means I'm going to have to fill up soon. And I have no money!!!!!

I think if I wash my parent's cars then they will give me gas money... guess I have some cleaning to do (not today though, I have to do a lot of running around in my car).

Maybe they'll toss me a few bucks because I mowed the grass.. hmm...

-Phill

(I know what your going to say, "Welcome to the real world" and I know it, its actually kinda fun being broke because I'm not expected to pay for anything besides gas and my debt, at least I don't have to pay for insurance)

Check it out!

Check out the nifty photo sidebar thingy I got. I think I've figured the solution to not having a centralized picture database on blogger. Those pictures were ones I just threw up there, I actually need to go through my picture database and organize it.

If you click "View Album" you can go see my captions and comment on the pictures (you need to have an account though). Kinda neat.

-Phill

MySpace?

There has been a growing dilemma in the cyberworld. That dilemma is of the growing popularity of MySpace. I will address some of the issues it raises in an unbiased examination of it.

Before we begin let me put this out there, I do have a MySpace account and no, I do not check it everyday. The last time I checked it was like... long ago. My personal preference is blogger, but the rest of the post will be a (mostly) unbiased test.

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Test 1: Safe to use (Blogger definetly wins)

Spyware and Adware has been a growing concern among people who surf the internet. It can drag your system down and potentially get personal information. The reason it is such a big concern is because it isn't illegal like viruses are. In this test I will scan my computer and remove any spyware it has, and then I will surf myspace for a while and do another scan.

Results of the first scan:



No Spyware or Adware.

Results of the second scan after about an hour of only myspace surfing:



I had to say, the results suprised me, normally on a week of regular internet browsing (no myspace) I might get like 15 tops... 23 is a record and after only an hour of myspace browsing.

Test 2: Ads (Blogger wins)

Blogger has no ads, in fact, if you do like me and host your own blog you don't even have the nav bar at the top.

I found some objectionable ads that I will not post here, one was a hooters ad, and another was a dating website where the model was wearing permiscuous clothes.

Other ads include political bashing like this one:



and others:



Test 3: Content (Neutral)

The content of the profile is up to the individual who creates it, and it can be good or really bad. While that is also true for blogger, it is more prevalent and easier to see on MySpace.

Test 4: Interactiveness (MySpace wins)

You can have a community on blogger, it just takes more work than on myspace, thats the reason so many people use it. Also, on myspace you can leave generic comments instead of leaving comments on each blog. MySpace also has a profile page where you can put stuff, unlike blogger. You can invite friends, send private messages, make bulletins, create events and other things on myspace. MySpace has definetly got blogger beat on an easy community.

Conclusion:

In the 4 tests, Blogger came ahead twice and Myspace once, with one tie. Sure, you can interact and comment, but at the expense of your computer becoming infected? You can do all that stuff in real life or on blogger, or the phone... the possibilities are endless. The ad test is the one that got me, how can I, as a male prone to lust, sit at my computer late at night and be surfing myspace and a dating ad comes up. That could spark something in me and bring me down. Even if it doesn't, I don't want to be exposed to all that. Any self-respecting male shouldn't be using myspace.

Should you use myspace? That's a personal question you need to answer yourself and ask God about. When in doubt, pray. I won't say you need to or need to not, but the facts are there, myspace loads your computer with spyware. I made a choice not to use myspace, who cares to join me?

-Phill

The Long Day

Yeah... I woke up at 2:30 a.m. and its 9:30 p.m. right now... and I have to get up at 6:00 a.m. to go to a bible study at 7 a.m. and then I have to go work tech at HPC for all three services...

I think I'm going to buy an energy drink to keep me away during that and hopefully the rest of the day... and then I'm crashing for at least 12 hours. Maybe more.

I don't feel tired now (I did earlier, but I caught my second wind) but I probably will want to kill my alarm clock in the morning... oh well.. not my problem if I'm not fully there at the bible study tomorrow. Oh, and don't expect me to be up anytime before 10 a.m. Monday... at the earliest.

-Phill


ZZZZzzzzzz

Need For Speed Most Wanted

It's a fun game.

For The Moments I Feel Faint

Today was probably more action that I usually get to do in a month. I woke up at around 7 and rolled out of my house to get to the annex for 9. The video shoot that was cancelled was scheduled for today. It was fun, the video shoot was actually filmed as like a high school "party" scene. They gave us root beer bottles and told us to act stoned like you were at a party. Well I don't know about some of those kids, but I've never been to a party like that before, so I was clueless. So I just resolved to hit people with a dart gun (sorry Charis!). I don't know what the video was for, but I just hope the video comes out alright :p Then after that I took Charis home and went over to Jason's house to film another movie. We finished the filming and got most of the editing done in the time before I had to leave at 3:30. Then me and my sister went over to clean the office and left there at around 5:20. We went to the outreach at the Urban's house and went to a couple of people's houses and gave away cookies. End result, a very busy day.

Now I get to look forward to cleaning house and washing car tomorrow :p And then on Saturday, Kevin Lalonde and his wife Jerri Lalonde along with Shawn Rougon and his wife Theresa will be coming over for early morning prayer... and when I say early morning prayer I mean 3 a.m. early. The Bible calls it the fourth watch. Then I will go with Mr. Eddie and Mr. Shawn to go move some stuff between warehouses.

I love my life.

-Phill

Post Schfifty Five

*cough* yeah just ignore the title.
(However this is my 55th post)

Why is it the things that seem easy are actually the hardest ones to accomplish? You don't think anything of picking up a phone and calling your friends to ask what's up. Then why do I have that problem? Some people I'm ok with calling because I call them fairly frequently (ok... only 1). I think its the phone taboo. When you call you don't know if they will be available to talk or if its a bad time or whatever. One thing I try to do is have my phone on 24/7. If a friend calls, I try to always answer the phone, and if I can't I always call back at the earliest I can (usually right after it stops ringing :/). We are scared to call because that means you have to initiate and keep up a conversation. For some people that's hard to do, especially over the phone. Even when I need to make information calls I have to write down what I need to ask so I don't forget when talking to them. As you can probably tell by now, I'm having trouble picking up the phone to call somebody...

I went to the men's bible study today and it was cool. The only part about it was that I woke up at 4:45 a.m. That's really early for me, but I managed. Now I can't get my contacts in (if I don't put them in when I wake up, they refuse to go in later on).

Thursday I should be going over to Jason's to film a movie project we've been planning (for a day). It should be funny, even if some of the humor isn't easily recognizable.

I was reading over the NYLF/Tech seminars that they are having and there are some cool ones, like there is one on video editing and video blogging, one on video game designing and even one on how the video card works with the processor to produce graphics (it will be taught by someone from AMD)(can you tell I like video?). I will be able to choose one site exploration and I get to choose between Intel, IBM, NVidia, Google, Yahoo, Symantec, PayPal, or TiVo. I will actually get to visit the headquarters to one of those places! I can't decide which one though, I was thinking either Intel or NVidia. I'm going to be leaving for this trip on July 9th and not coming back until the17th.

I'm just a friend calling a friend right? Why is that so hard...

-Phill

(yeah this whole blog was me procrastinating calling)

2006 Icelandic Blue Chevrolet Aveo w/ 5-speed manual transmission

The only reason I was able to afford the new car was because of an awesome deal I got combined with a lot of rebate money on a GM card. In fact, its the only reason I got a chevy. I received the car on June 9. I wasn't allowed to drive it off the lot (because I've had limited experience with a stick shift) and we drove it to Olive Garden. My dad let me drive after we ate... and I stalled going in reverse (don't ask me how). I tried to practice in the parking lot, but I really could not drive it. So my mom took over and drove it home. That night my mom took me in her office parking lot where it was completely empty and I practiced for about 30-45 mins of stopping and going. I eventually got it and drove home. The next day I drove it around my neighborhood for like 2 hours. I was determined to get the stopping and going down. Eventually I did and became very proficient at not stalling, smoothness however was the next issue. I'm doing a lot better now and can actually drive my car *yay*. It's all God though, because I thought I would never get it down, but one day later I did. I would post pictures, but I can't find my camera's card reader atm.

Heres the link to see the little video I put together of my car. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcKF2A4pS6o

I lika my new car!

-Phill

Lost Thought

I was playing a song from Sonicflood, and let the computer play all the songs from the album I have, and Superchick came on next. I was a huge fan of the album when it came out, like... I listened to it all the time. In fact, I listened to it so much that I grew tired of the songs. When I got all my other rocks songs (Anberlin 4tw!) I put Superchick on the backburner and I haven't listened to them in ages. For me, if I haven't listened to a song in a while, its like I never heard it (or something close to it). What it does is bring back emotions and feelings from when I did listen to it... Back when marching band was fun, back to the sleepovers at Jason's, back to Acquire the Fire where I met an astounding girl. As I look back, I realize how much I've actually grown and matured. Back then I was just a DrPepper drinking, AO addict who listened to World Wide Message Tribe and attempted to do stuff in Photoshop. Back then I used Livejournal instead of blogger (Jason dragged me to LJ, and I dragged him to blogger :p). I had to grow up fast and accept more responsibility, and to be honest, it was confusing at times. I let emotions and how I wanted people to respond to me control my actions. I still struggle with some of that, but for the most part I have dealt with it. Gah, I need to stop reminiscing* and go clean my kitchen.

-Phill

*-I can't speel


EDIT: GAHH!!! and back to when things were simpler online.... myspace complicated things, if everyone would just get a blog then things would work out so much better. I guess people are so lazy that they feel a blog is too much work.... well... that's the world for ya.

I Can Only Imagine

I Can Only Imagine, in sign language... by the Mexico Team

Halo 2 Refuge Tournament Ad

Check out this vid Jason made for the tournament!

Summer is officially upon us (and I have a drivers license!)

With the onslaught of summer, a lot of good things are going to happen, and already have happened, and a lot of bad things might happen, again with some bad stuff already. First off, our dishwasher broke and for about a week now me and my sister have been trading off cleaning the kitchen by hand... ugh. The good news is that we got the new one in today and have it installed and working! I now have a deeper appreciation for dishwashers... thank you Mr. Dishwasher Inventor.

Also, something that I consider to be both good and bad, I had to format my harddrive, as you have read in my previous post. The good news is that it runs much better now, the bad news is that I have to reinstall my programs... and i can't necessarily find them all (like my video editing software, which I really need and I can't find it). I backed up all my files onto my external, so I guess its not as bad as it could be. I'm up and running, and very reluctant to install software I download from the internet, unless I absolutely trust it.

Something that is really good is that I will be getting a car soon, the good thing that already happened is that I received my driver's license!!!!! That means I can drive by myself!!! Soon I won't have to rely on people for rides, and I will generally be more available to go do stuff.

Today I exercised my newfound driving freedom in bringing my sister to a mexico meeting today. If it weren't for Brance and Mr. Dan O. I would have probably been very bored. As it was, it was rather interesting, and I do have some neat footage of them performing I Can Only Imagine in sign language. As soon as I get around to it, I'll uplink it. Well I think thats all I have to share at the moment.

Oh and I started to play WoW, I can't believe why I spent all those years (ok... one year) not liking it. I guess I just thought that no game could compare to AO. The thing is, no game can compare to AO, not even WoW. The thing is, WoW is differnent from AO. It's more storylined based and it makes you feel like its a singleplayer MMORPG, except you just happen to have other people along for the ride. Its the complex and dynamic gameplay that I enjoyed with AO, without it being a timesink. You can log on and jump right in to what you want to do, soloing isn't hard (with mobs your level), gameplay is pretty balanced between the classes and one thing I like that WoW has over AO is professions. With AO, if you wanted to do some crafty stuff, you had to roll a support character. In WoW, no matter what you are, you can be any profession and be just as good as anyone else doing that. I also like how the skills system is balanced.

Ok I need to get to bed now :p

-Phill

Happy Birthday Stephanie!