It’s always fun when people respond to what they think you are going to say, rather than what you actually do say. These are a few of my favorites:

Round 1:
Me: Stop again soon!

Customer: No thanks, I’m fine.

Round 2:
Me: …and you’re all set.

Customer: No thank you.

Round 3:
Me: Need a bag today?

Customer: No thank you! I got an electric car! *chuckles*

Round 4:
Me: Is that all for you today?

Customer: No thanks.

Round 5:
Me: Need a bag today?

Customer: No thanks.

Me: Okay, you are all set then!

Customer: Can I get a bag?

As I was driving the other day I saw two men up on the roof of a local business. One of them had a ladder and the other had a shovel. Like you, I assumed that they were constructing an altar, where they could sacrifice goats or young maidens in order to appease the dragons. I felt sorry for all those innocent goats who were going to be slaughtered. Then again, those sacrifices will protect many good people who are willing to pay good money for good protection from a bad dragon.

ADDENDUM: I did not see any dragons today.

The verbosity, or wordage that consistently, or not, makes up that which I like to think of as ‘my mind’ may or may not be entirely coherent to either the sender or receiver of the message which is communicated, or, at very least, is attempted to be communicated, if I am allowed to use such a tense.

I do enjoy the aspect of communication, but I desire to play with words, which, much to my amusement, can completely obscure a simplistic phrase with a mask of incongruence.

For example, many of my thoughts and arguments are well thought out and organized. I don’t often say things without a purpose (unless I think that the situation calls for it.) Many times I present my statements with a subtle flourish that leaves my listener confused by my “randomness” and myself quite satisfied that I have said my peace and have easily overshot the comprehension of my audience.

Directness has it’s place. When I am giving instructions on how a task is to be done, step by step instructions are usually a necessity. Details are of utmost importance. But in “inconsequential” daily banter, the freedom of expression can be allowed the importance. My goal is not necessarily to confuse people, although I usually know what/how to say something in a manner that might.

If the common response was not the typical “Say what? — You’re really weird.” and instead was a moment of thought, connecting my statement with the flow of the conversation, perhaps a reflection or two on different allusions, there would be a chance for higher comprehension, a better understanding and maybe, just maybe, a bit of intellectual growth.

I connect everything to everything. A cliche or proverb may seem out of place, but with a small change in wording or understanding, it can make perfect sense.

In short, my thoughts make perfect sense in context, but I leave context to be filled in by the participants. (Note the conciseness that I can achieve, when desired.)

An incomplete example is stuck in my mind as I write this. I was having a conversation with someone and knowing how they would react, I was keeping my references slightly obscured, partly to make them think but mostly for my own enjoyment. We were talking about what was acceptable in a given situation. My point was that the acceptability needed to be judged externally. For example, in a professional situation an action’s acceptability would need to be judged by either a higher position (a boss or manager) or from the view of someone lesser (such as a customer or client.) An employee has to live along company guidelines. This, I felt, was too wordy, but could easily be summarized by the old adage: “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” And that is what I said.

So what is the end cause? I don’t know yet. Achieving a better understanding of ones self is usually a step forward. I would say “admitting that you have a problem is the first step towards recovery,” but I don’t see this as a problem. I am more than capable of clarity when the situation calls for it, and I certainly don’t act like this all the time.

Perhaps this might be more of a sounding call. To see if anyone else thinks along these lines. Or maybe it’s just a general interest piece meant to inspire others to open their minds to knew ideas or means of communication. It might be a call for help, not in terms of stopping, but in terms of how to improve said technique and truly master this art of subtly.

I love the Metroid Prime series, so when I came across a resin mushroom, I knew what I had to do with it.

Saturnine mushrooms are benign plants found throughout Tallon VI. They do not seem to harm anyone or anything, but they are photo luminescent. I painted the mushroom with black paint, gave it white lines and then covered the while with a glow in the dark quasar blue paint for effect.

I am not a lucid dreamer, my dreams are usually not very vivid, nor do I usually remember them. Recently, though, I had my first, at least in current memory, lucid dream.

I was on a camping trip up at Gooseberry Falls, MN. I had very little to drink throughout the day, since we had been driving and I had not brought anything along to quench my thirst. For supper I had two hot dogs and a soggy hot dog bun, along with a handful or two of trail mix and chips. As I lay in my sleeping bag, I could feel that my mouth was parched. The rain on the tent didn’t help much.

After I dosed off to sleep I found myself at the kitchen counter of my current residence. I was surprised because of how realistic it seemed at the time. I don’t know what I was doing at the counter, but after I realized where I was it occurred to me that I could get a drink of water from the faucet. As I stepped over to the cupboard to grab a glass my brain kicked in and I thought: “wait a minute, I’m not at home… I’m in a tent 300 miles away from home. I can’t really get a glass of water. This is just a dream.” This thought disappointed me, for I was thirsty, and then I was awake again.

The following morning I recounted my dream to some of my fellow campers, a few others had water on their mind as well. It wasn’t until tonight, when I recounted my dream to another friend that it dawned on me that I had had a lucid dream.

Unlike most my other dreams this one is still vivid in my mind and for the most part recallable, even though it is now a few days old. Very interesting indeed.

For the past eleven days I have been on Choir Tour. Those following me on Twitter have been receiving updates along the trip. For the purpose of creating an archive of events, I am here posting the whole of Choir Tour (at least in my perspective) in 140 character chuncklets.

I did a bit of cleanup on sections where I made mistakes with typing on my phone. I decided not to worry about punctuation and capitalization.

Friday, May 16

Choir Tour Leaves tomorrow @ 9:00am. I’m running@ about 1/8th my current tech setup. 7:43 PM

Saturday, May 17

Killing time till Choir leaves. Listening to Jonathan Coulton. Enjoying the lack of pressing work. 7:19 AM

Busses mostly packed. Gathering for pre-trip brief. 8:50 AM

On bus waiting to leave… 9:14 AM

Leaving Bethany Lutheran College! 9:27 AM

First rest stop. Windy and dusty. Played frisbee.11:18 AM

Lunch stop in Sioux City. 1 hour break. 12:55 PM

Watching Transformers. Screens are too small and the volume too low. Still good though. 3:32 PM

At the church, concert in 1 hour. 4:01 PM

Concert is starting now. Walking to the front. 5:28 PM

Concert went well, supper was excellent, 1.5 hour drive to hotel. 07:55 PM

Hotel goofed up, lost our reservation. Guess we are looking for a new place to stay. 09:50 PM

At a new hotel. Got an internet connection set up. Wireless and insecure, but I’m just checking in on Twitter. 10:31 PM

Sunday, May 18

Up early, breakfast and on bus to first concert. 06:59 AM

setting up at church, concert in 1 hour. 07:46 AM

Another amazing meal, now it is nap time. 10:42 AM

Looking for things to do in Branson, MO on Tuesday. Have the whole day free. Any suggestions? 12:49 PM

loading bus to go to second concert of the day. 04:47 PM

Being fed again! Yummy! 05:21 PM

This church is amazing meal and great sounding sanctuary. 06:35 PM

Monday, May 19

Breakfast time. Concert at Waco NE this morning. 07:39 AM

Just walked to Starbucks for a latte. Bus leaves in 45 min. 08:11 AM

Concert went well. Rest of the day: bus ride. 10:47 AM

still on bus. stopped for lunch at noon-thirty. still have a ways to go. 03:25 PM

bus ride feels unending… Another hour or two left… Back to playing with my ds. 05:55 PM

Finally arrived at Precious Moments Hotel. Woot! Done with driving, time for Frisbee or swimming or ANYTHING besides being on a bus. 06:47 PM

Supper is almost the same as lunch: peanut butter sandwich. With the addition of Pringles and a double cheese burger. 07:36 PM

I love the smell here in Carthage. Very nature-y. 08:22 PM

Tuesday, May 20

Up, showered, headed to breakfast. Bus leaves for Branson MO around/after 8:30. Sounds like a group is headed to the beach… 07:17 AM

Driving around Branson, MO. 10:50 AM

Walking to the dam at benson 03:02 PM

Walking to the Stone Hill Winery, them to find supper. 05:49 PM

just finished the winery tour. Time to find some dinner. 07:43 PM

Chinese for supper. 08:18 PM

Wednesday, May 21

Breakfast was the best yet. Two hours till departure. 07:57 AM

Loading the bus and heading to the Titanic museum. 10:07 AM

Just made it through the Titanic museum. I died. But I helped to save many others. 11:56 AM

lunch break. Saving money… No mcflurry… Sadness! 02:01 PM

Arriving at the next church. 05:11 PM

At hotel for night. Concert went well. My throat is scratchy… must not get sick! 09:24 PM

Off to bed for the night. Load time tomorrow is 9:30 (I think…) Desperately want my throat to not be sore tomorrow. 11:20 PM

Thursday, May 22

I’m up and headed down to breakfast. Roommates still sleeping, buss leaves at 9:30? 07:46 AM

Loading bus and leaving. Next stop: St. Louis. 09:39 AM

Walmart stop for lunch and cold medicine 11:24 AM

Arrived at Missouri History Museum. 01:25 PM

done at museum. 2 hours to next stop. Time for chips and salsa. 03:04 PM

at the next church. 05:14 PM

Amazing meal. Rhubarb pie. Nuf said. 06:10 PM

stupid hotel doesnt have free internet. Stupid hilton. 10:23 PM

Frisbee on top level me parking ramp. w00t! 11:17 PM

Friday, May 23

wandering around spring field. Lincoln-y stuff. 10:12 AM

Toured some Lincoln sites. Back to hotel for lunch. Roommates are still sleeping. 11:43 AM

Off to library and them capital. 12:32 PM

Off to cold stone for had cream. 06:38 PM

Going to see Prince Caspian. 06:56 PM

Saturday, May 24

load and leave at 7 am this morning. 06:46 AM

Stop at McDonalds I guess this is breakfast. 09:08 AM

stopping for lunch in madison wi. 11:58 AM

In West Salem for 4 o’clock concert. Supper to follow. 02:58 PM

concert done, food time. (i like singing before eating as opposed to singing after eating.) 05:36 PM

frisbee! 06:20 PM

back on bus. headed to hotel. 06:24 PM

Finally! A Hotel with good Internet! 07:15 PM

@boblmartens Okay, your right… it is kinda slow, but at least it doesn’t cost $10 a night! 07:55 PM

Just got done playing an hour of ultimate frisbee. SO excited! 10:11 PM

Sunday, May 25

Far too early to be up… Bus leaves at 6:45 06:30 AM

first service done, i need a nap before round 2 09:27 AM

second concert done. dead tired. food time. Legs cant support self. 11:58 AM

Loading bus and off to next stop: 12:49 PM

arriving in wisconsin dells 02:24 PM

No internet at this hotel. so, not only am i starving, but i cant use google maps to find food. 07:28 PM

Monday, May 26

beautiful morning today. great time to explore while choir mates sleep. 07:39 AM

at tanger outlet mall looking around, killing time. should really find some cheese curds. 10:33 AM

Got cheese curds. eating cheese curds. 11:06 AM

Heading to madison for a 4 o’clock concert. 01:26 PM

setting up at grace lutheran for the concert. 02:53 PM

fruit buffet for pre concert snack. Watermellon, grapes, cherries, oranges, apple slices. (My headache has slightly subsided). 03:31 PM

hottest concert yet, it was hot in there. 05:09 PM

done swimming for the night. Pool is closed. 09:01 PM

Tuesday, May 27

Lunch break. headed to dennys. 11:57 AM

Stopping to ride the ducks. 01:02 PM

finished the duck tour, headed to our final stop of the tour! 02:20 PM

Arriving in eau claire. Last stop before home. 04:39 PM

Brats for supper. Concert at 7. 05:32 PM

One more concert to go, home concert tomorrow at 7:00pm 08:23 PM

On the road back to mankato, mn 09:18 PM

Arriving in mankato. soon to unload busses and go to bed. 11:49 PM

Wednesday, May 28

Home Concert is at 7:00, choir meets to setup, warm-up and robe-up at 5:30. 05:07 PMConcert over. Packing up, heading home. Choir tour is done.

It occurred to me the other day that the entire saga of the musical chess set was not documented on Apathetic Thursday. The only story I could find was within the comments on the flickr photos. So I think it is time to remedy this problem.

How it All Started

My friend Jonas and I simultaneously reached a point in our lives where we came to a sudden and shocking realization. We had a friend, named Bob, who was about to get married. We were both really happy for Bob, but this whole wedding thing involved a lot of planning and thinking and somehow, a $10 t-shirt from Target which read “Game Over” just wasn’t going to cut it for a wedding gift.

We were in a bind, it was still August and the wedding was in December, but we needed to come up with something fast. I was going to school in Minnesota and Jonas was going to school in Wisconsin so work time would be limited to the last few weeks of summer break, Thanksgiving break, and maybe a day or two before the wedding.

We finally settled on building something, and quickly developed the concept of a musical chess set. Bob and his bride (Laura) are both into music and we figured this would be pretty close to perfect for them. Now all we had to do was build it.

We started off with some Google searches for notes and staffs, finding some we liked, we modified them to the correct size and printed them off for templates.

The wood we had to use was a bunch of butternut that my dad and I had cut down and planned into boards a few years back. We carefully traced out the initial pieces on our boards, which were about a quarter inch thick and began to cut.

Crafting the Pieces

We were cutting the pieces using my dad’s scroll saw. Sadly, the scroll saw was on it’s last legs and required a bit of encouragement to keep it running. Very shortly it reached a point where it wasn’t going to cut at all unless we attached a hand crank to the motor and moved it up and down on our own.

This was a slight setback, because we had only cut a few pieces and this was not something we could do by hand. Fortunately, my dad was ready to buy a new scroll saw and a day or so later we had a new one at our disposal. We quickly started up our cutting work only to cut a few pieces and discover that this saw was also broken.

So far the project wasn’t looking so great. We had been through 2 saws and we had hardly started.

A day or two later we had another new saw at our command and this one was not going to break on us. With it we were able to cut out the rest of our pieces.

The lineup for the pieces was as such:

Pawn: Eight Note, Rook : Sharp, Knight: Quarter Rest, Bishop: Half Note, Queen: Treble Cleft, King: Bass Cleft

At this point we had all the pieces cut out so they all created nice 3D block style musical notation. The only thing left was to cut the bases, which was done on a drill press in half inch butternut wood.

Each piece got stained appropriately and the pieces were fastened to the base via a dowel in the middle. Not every piece ended up with the exact same tilt, but overall it was pretty close. Besides, it was a homemade gift and there’s never going to be anything like it again. (Well… maybe…)

Jonas and I were pretty good a being paranoid so throughout the piece building phase we had every single scenario worked out for our chess set. We were prepared to find Bob selling this on ebay a few days later, we were prepared to hear that Laura had horrific childhood memories involving chess, we were even prepared for other wedding guests to give him the same thing. Although none of these events actually occurred, and all were extremely unlikely, it sure helped to pass the time while we worked.

The Board

The Board was tough, because our planner is only 13 inches, we had to do the board in two sections. This worked pretty well and we simply glued the two half together carefully and we were good to go.

To separate the squares on the board it was decided that we would router a small trough between them. With the help of my dad, who is much more knowledgeable in this area, we were able to achieve this relatively easily. The big thing my dad did to help us was just get it started. Both Jonas and I were deathly afraid of ruining this amazing thing we were trying to create and the big push we needed was to just start working.

Final Stages

Once we had everything made we could stain it. The butternut was nice and light so we chose a nice dark stain and made half the pieces and half the board quite a bit darker.

By now we are talking Thanksgiving break time. I had managed to get home a few weekends to work here and there, but come Thanksgiving we had the majority of the work done, unfortunately we didn’t have a box yet.

My father, aware of our deadline began crafting a box for us out of some black cherry we had recently acquired. Thanks to his help a few days before the wedding everything was done.

The final few touches included lining the inside of the box with felt to keep the pieces snug inside and also felting the bottom of all the pieces themselves. We had some double-backed adhesive which we attached to the felt and die-cut out circles which could then be stuck nicely to the bottom of each piece.

The only thing left after this was a small set of instructions which were written up and printed off. We then soaked the paper in coffee for a set amount of time to age it and burned off the edges for an authentic look and feel.

I believe this was actually the day of the wedding. In fact, when I stopped at a gas station to pick up a lighter to burn the page edges I ran into Bob there who was, I guess, getting gas.

Finally though, we had finished.

Overall the project was tons of fun. I hold this chess set as one of the coolest things I have ever built.

Yes. Your girlfriend’s laptop only has 256MB of RAM. Yes. More RAM would make it faster. No. RAM is not an acceptable valentines gift.

I am an information parasite. I thrive on information. I sit and absorb as much info as my curious little ears can take in. It’s not all relevant. It’s not all useful. This doesn’t matter though, it’s information and thats what I need.  I don’t always even remember the info I take in, but the important part was that for an instant, if only an instant, I had that knowledge.

I came to this conclusion today while walking back to my dorm room. Last semester I finished up my math minor, but I had not taken Linear Algebra yet. If I took Linear Algebra this semester I would have to pay extra because I would be in “credit overload” with 20 or 21 credits. It would also give me a lot of homework to work on. Going into this semester I saw that I was going to have a bit more free time on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and have already told myself I want to use this time to improve my photography, writing skills, website design and other projects I wanted to get done.

So I decided to audit the class. So basically I’m taking Linear Algebra without paying for the credits, doing any homework or taking any tests/quizzes. (Although I do foresee myself participating in this class since it’s a small class of eight people and the information is interesting.)

The big thing that struck me though, is my motivation for taking this class is almost purely curiosity. I’m not getting any credits for it and I can’t get credits for it if I would change my mind. I’m not entirely sure if I know what this means, if it means anything at all, or if this is worth thinking over in more depth.

I’m thinking that it comes down to a love of learning. I love to learn new things, I like hearing about new technologies, I find it interesting to look into things I know nothing about. The downfall to this is that I find myself knowing a very little about a very lot of stuff, which then becomes muddled in my mind and I end up knowing nothing about a lot, but I do remember that I knew something at one time.

This may require some rethinking.

Today is the day I have to head back to school for another semester. There really isn’t much point in going to early, although part of me would just like to leave right after lunch. But I don’t have to be back until 8:00 at night. So if I give myself an hour or two to unpack I should really try to leave around 5:00 or 5:30. Maybe I’ll leave around 4:00 or so.

It is really hard for me to get anything done when I know I have to leave later. I don’t want to pack up my stuff to early or else I might need it before I leave. I also don’t want to start any big projects that I don’t think I can finish. In the end, I waste more time loafing about waiting and I feel like I’ve wasted a bunch of time.

As of right now I am mostly packed and ready to go, but I won’t be leaving for several hours. I guess the only thing left to do is play some Nintendo and maybe do some reading.