Journal

Here's a fun one for you math fans out there. I found this written in one of my journals from Japan yesterday. I can't remember where I found this:

a = b
a² = a · b
a² - b² = ab - b²
(a + b)(a - b) = b(a - b)
a + b = b

All this seems reasonable, right? But what happens if you allow "a = 1" and "b = 1"? Then it looks like the end result is "1 + 1 = 1"!

So what's the deal? Well. If you look carefully, this series of transformations is not applicable for "a = 1" and "b = 1", because that would require dividing by zero. Still, things like this both excite me and worry me about math. :)

Thank you, everyone, for all the Happy Birthday wishes. Altogether, it was a pretty good birthday, and not a bad start to the big 2-7. For something special, my grandmother took me to Guymon so we could go to a movie (as Boise City no longer has an active movie theater). We went to Prince Caspian. I'm going to write up my thoughts about the movie in a later post, but the gist of it is--I recommend it!

As for totally sweet birthday presents, this was definitely the year of clothing. I got 2 nice western shirts from my parents (in addition to a new tired they bought for Butch last month--thanks Mom and Dad!), and my grandmother bought me a nice pair of work boots, which are fantastic. So now I can strut in style, working on the farm, or in town at the ho-down!

My big birthday wish this year is that I really follow God with all my heart. There's been so much uncertainty surrounding future plans and such over this past year (and that continues to be the case...and I know many of you are in the same boat), I really just want to open myself to God's guidance. I've certainly been trying to do that this past year, but I feel like it is all the more necessary in this coming year.

So, thanks again, everyone. It's great to have so many friends wishing you happy birthday. :)

XXVII
二十七
1B
11011

What a great number.
It's a perfect cube: 3³ = 27
It is the second smallest cube of a prime number.
It is one of the few self-locating strings in pi.
It is the number of books in the New Testament.
It is the year of Jesus' baptism. (Well...maybe)
It is the year Octavian became Augustus (BC)
It is the number of lines on a cubic surface.
It is a Smith number.
It is a Niven number.
It is the day of the month of my birth.
It is my current age.

So, here's to 27. May it serve me well.

Today was just a hard-working day. Sometimes days like this are nice. They let you take your mind off of all the things that are making you fret and worry. You have a task before, and you just do it. No thinking, no worrying...just doing.

Today's work was mostly filled by pulling up fence posts. We've started plowing up our field to the south of the house. During the winter we had cattle on the stubble, so we fenced it in. But, now that we're going to start plowing and planted, we had to take the fence back up. This is really tiring, tedious work that involves walking the length of the fence, pulling up the posts (which often don't want to come out of the ground), while trying to make sure the truck (driving itself, in low gear) doesn't decide to start heading off in some random direction.

But, like I said--it was good to do this kind of mindless work for the day. My mind needed to relax a bit.

Ugh. I spent all day doing website stuff.

First, I launched the website I've been building for the organization I did missions work in Japan with. That ended up taking all of the morning.

And then, since I was working on that stuff anyway, I tried to consolidate the code-base for the Felix.Ruina Daily and BDWhite sites. I'm not sure if that ended up being a good idea or not. The idea behind it was that with a single codebase, any upgrades would be much easier. But, after all the work of getting both sites up and running...well...I think it might end up being just as much work either way. And...having the two sites completely separate helped to keep things straight in my head.

So...sigh. I might be separating the two out again tomorrow.

That's what I get for being a tinkerer.

Whoo...bit of a scare today.

I was having fun this morning, enjoying my new SSH access (which Hostgator has graciously offered to everyone being hosted by them...even us peon shared hosters), when I suddenly discovered that felixruina.com was no longer mine!

If any of you happened to try to access the site, you probably were confused as to why some strange domain squatter showed up.

Well, the moral of the story is: don't forget to renew your domain registration.

Thankfully, I was able to get felixruina.com back. But, it definitely was a scare, and it really got me thinking. On the web, I am felixruina. This felt to me almost as if someone was stealing my web identity. It's funny how attached one can become to something like a web domain.

At least the story had a happy ending. And I can still be felixruina. :)

It was really windy today. In fact, it's still really windy. Luckily, I got most of the plowing done, so the fields shouldn't blow so badly.

I don't really have much more to write about than that. I guess that's what happens when you spend 2/3 of your waking time in a tractor. ;)

So, since I'm not being very clever tonight, I will leave you with a crazy Japanese game show. Sigh...one more thing I miss. ;)

As just another quick aside, I got my Dad and Mom to play a little bit of my Elixir RPG book last night. It was really helpful because it allowed me to see which parts were a bit too easy, and which parts were a bit too difficult.

My poor Dad, though. He bought a rusty broadsword at the Bazaar for a rather expensive price, and was pretty sore about it when he discovered he could get a free weapon at Rusty's Combat Training. I guess that's part of the fun...or at least the challenge. :) I was really pleased that he managed to find E.J. (one of the best weapons available to you at this point in the game). We had to quit before he explored everything the Lower Kingdom Capitol had to offer, but it was a pretty fun evening, all the same.

I'm really hoping I'll have the time and motivation to work some more on the game and get it finished off. I definitely need to get writing on Elixir again. I will finish it someday. I guess I'm just taking my time with it. :)