Blog Take 2

Well College is done and over with. On one hand it feels like forever ago and at the same time it feels like yesterday. I'm defintely glad the academic part of college is over but I defintely miss all the social aspects of it, theres really nothing else like the college community and I will miss it. However life moves on and I defintely love where I am working and I have the world's greatest girlfriend so life is still defintely awesome :). I also haven't found a church yet. Mostly this was because I was to lazy to wake up on sunday, but yesterday I was planning on going. Then I woke up with the worst stomach ache of my life. Not really sure where Im going to end up at but theres an alliance church practically in my back yard so starting there!

Work is amazingly awesome so far. It's defintely a challenge although right now its mostly a challenge because I'm relearned skills I only used junior year and theres a learning curve assoicated with the software and processes required. That said this is good, its keeping my mind actively engaged although I find as the clock draws nearer five my mind gets completely exhausted. Normally I'd take a couple hour break before getting back into it but this isn't college anymore!The 8 hour work day is however awesome because I come home, and have free time. I have to say Penn State Behrend really, despite its flaws gives you a great education. Once you're done you feel like a 40 hour week is only part time! That said my sleep schedule is still adjusting, but I'm for the most part doing well. I now wake up between 6 and 6:30. I could get up at 7 but my body just always wakes up once then due to high school. No point in going back to sleep for 30 minutes to an hour. I usually just toss and turn anyway because I know I have to get up anyway.

I can't get to much into what I do but I'm a research engineer, and if you guessed what I do is related to comptuer engineering you might even be correct! My co-workers are awesome. I basically mostly interact with two people for the project I'm working on - My Team lead and another guy whom I shall call my tech lead. My tech lead is just a co-worker who is giving me tasks, answering my questions and getting me up to speed so I'm useful. As I suspuected out of college students are sort of useless. We've proven through the interviews we can learn things, and we have a basic handle on the concepts. Now we got to learn how to apply our small skillset as well as grow it to be useful on our team! My tech lead is awesome, and if I had to guess someone who I will probably resemble 5 years down the road. He's a real quick thinker prone to mistakes. However his attention to detail is far greater than mine, and this is a complete necesitty where I work so I'm having to learn. I made quite a bit of progreess on that today though.

I also have a cubicle mate, whom is really cool. Unfortunately we're working on different projects. The reason for this is to expose us to other projects going on. The downside is, well he can't help me nearly as much as he would otherwise be able too and vice versa. Also the company where I work gave us some rather BEASTLY computers. It's actually better than my desktop o.O. By quite a bit. And the IT department is terrific, everything is setup and just works flawlessly.

Life Changes

So I haven't really updated this blog in a while, good times. I just completely forgot about it, but its still a good way to be expressive so I should try to remember it a little more. Anyway moving on, Life is kinda neat. When things are hard, I'm much closer to God which makes life for better. Recently I've been growing closer to God again after I've been far to stagnant in my faith for far to long, and it really is improving my outlook and attitude overall. It's good to remember we should always be content in God alone, and be grateful for everything we have.

Other things in my life are changing, and other things will be hopefully changing soon, so life is exciting! It might also be on fire, I'm not really sure. This semester is going very well school wise, and Senior Design is on track altho proving to be a tremendous pain sometimes thanks to the company who provided the micro controller my team and I are using. None the less I can't complain everything's working great so far.

Life Signs and Lelouch vi Britannia

Have you ever just seen signs point to something that you know can't be true? Things that seem to be from God and yet that can't seem to be the case. So much in my life and the lives of others seems to reflect this. What happens when two people seem to get contradicting signs from God? Is one from God and the other not? Do we simply see signs for things we desperately want? What about the times its things we don't want?

Life is full of such marvelous complexity. I apologize for the deepness, I'm riding an emotional high right now due to several things. The only one I will say of is an Anime called Code Geass. It's possibly the best one I have ever seen, and its ending is second to none. Be warned tho, this Anime is painfully sad. Even if you've never watched Anime before you should watch it.

Personal Review

Every now and then its good to evaluate ones self and consider good qualities, and bad qualities. Well at least I think so, I try to do this a few times a year. The question is what are good qualities about me, and what are not so good qualities about me? Then of the not so good ones, what ones are worth working on, and what ones are best left alone until a later point in time? Basically the flaws that are worth working on are the ones that hurt other people obviously, and the ones that bother me the most. Oh and whatever convictions the holy spirit throws my way, those are important too :). I won't get into my good qualities, but some of my bad qualities are random anger bursts (these most people never see but still are not good), impatience towards certain topics/certain people, and the fact I never communicate myself clearly.

So often people think I'm trying to argue with them when I'm simply trying to understand. It happens often enough that people think I like to argue, when the reality is whenever I have an actual argument I spend a couple of days kinda despairing over it. Honestly most of the time, if I'm wrong I just like to know why and people never seem to understand that about me. This comes from the fact I communicate and think differently than most people or so I think anyway.

Comments?

Logical Fallacies

So, I'm a computer engineer and therefore logic is pretty much the backbone of my career path. I'm fascinated by all sorts of logic puzzles, and the nature of logic in general. Logical Fallacies are also of interest. Wikipedia defines Fallacies as: "A fallacy is a component of an argument which, being demonstrably flawed in its logic or form, renders the argument invalid in whole. " There are many kinds of logical fallacies. For instance because someone is true for one element in a set, does not imply it is true for everything in a set. There are many such fallacies, many of which appear in arguments so subtly we never see them. Below is one of many math proofs which proves 2 = 1. Obviously this is not true, so where does the proof go wrong?

Assume a = b and neither a nor b are zero.

1. ab = ab Therefore
2. a^2 = ab Subtract b^2 from both side
3. a^2 - b^2 = ab - b^2 Factor out both sides
4. (a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b) Now divide (a-b) out of both sides
   
5. a+b = b Since a = b
   
6. b+b = b
   
7. 2b = b
8. 2 = 1

Can see you where the proof went wrong?

Also, I'm still looking for a job! o.O

Life is discouraging

Well, I had a rather terrible day on Thursday. I did not get the job I was hoping for, I had a horrible homework assignment, lost five hours of work on senior design on top of numerous other smaller but very irritating situations and a couple other bigger issues. However I spent the evening with friends, first at my Senior Design partner Jake's apartment, then at my own and Nicky came by to cheer me up. While it seems like I do not have that many true friends I have a few close real friends. My dad also gave me a nice pep talk cause my dad is awesome. It's good to remember you have people who love you after epically bad days.

Still life has been very discouraging to me lately, while there is some good I just seem to see so much bad. So many things I want, some selfish some not and yet I never seem to get anything I really want. It's been years since I ever had anything significantly good that I wanted come to me now. Don't get me wrong there have been plenty of small blessings scattered throughout that time but those big things we want and pursue that make life worth living, I never seem to get them. For instance this job I wanted, the fact I didn't get it seems to imply I can't get any job at all in my field. Also many friends and family of mine are not saved and it really makes me sad. I still seem to lack that whole evangelism talent as well so I'm not actually helping that cause much if at all, I'm probably hurting it.

Naturally life has periods of down time like this, but God lifts all his children up and one day I will be lifted up. Until then just gotta have faith, none the less it's good to vent a little.

Index = 0

This blog is basically an experiment. This might end up being something special that I enjoy, invest a lot of time in and watch something unique grow. It might never be updated again and thus a complete waste of time.

I started this blog because I read a very convicting blog entry of my friend Molly's, whose blog I had basically only glanced at before. I'll leave out the specifics, but we're always sinning and I've been sinning in many ways for a long time that should change. I'm not acting the way I should be, not thinking the way I should be and not praying the way I should be. That should change and by writing my thoughts out I hope to organize them better. I hope to discuss a wide variety of issues, some personal, some spiritual some related to very awesome bits of technology.

I chose the name Exclusive Or for two reasons. It's a basic building block of digital circuits as well as a fundamental logic expression in many areas that involve logical thinking such as math. Do you know the old joke, where if someone asks you are you a girl or a boy and you reply yes. This makes sense because you are either a girl or you are a boy. Exclusive or of this situation would mean, are you a boy and not a girl, or a girl and not a boy? Essentially it means mutually exclusive. This brings me to the second reason for this blog, which is that often things are or appear to be mutually exclusive in life.

After all to follow God I must not be of this world, yet how do I separate myself from it? I'm stuck here physically until either Jesus returns or I die. It seems I inevitably fall into worldly ways. My life seems to be full of these things. Thus it seems like an appropriate name for a blog.