Empty Does Not Mean Available

Last night I got home kinda late and was surprised to see a strange car in my parking space. The first thought to come to mind is "hey, some jerk parked in my space". Then the second thought seeps in, "Oh, maybe somebody is visiting one of my roommates and he said it was ok for them to park there." So I walk in and Chane is by himself. "Do you know who is in our spot?" His reply, "I have no idea whose car that is." So I revert back to my first thought again, "jerk!". So then another thought seeps in and it's like, "well, maybe it was some emergency that I would be sensitive to had I known, maybe I just caught them during that little window of time they needed to put there car somewhere". Anyways, it stinks for Harrison cuz it means he doesn't have a spot when he gets home from work. So I call him and give him the heads up. I felt it was too late to bother the manager about it so we take care of this problem ourselves. We decide we're going to box him in, heh heh. I write a firm note:

"This is not your parking spot! --#118"

Now jerk knows where to come when he wants to leave. By then Harrison got home and parked his car right in front jerk's so he can't leave. It's really not so mean of us to do that considering Harrison doesn't have a place to park now and the most convenient spot is to block this other guy. Anyways, I'm trying to rationalize the nerve of someone to just take the liberty of parking in someone's spot and not even care about the inconvenience they are causing others. Not to mention, we pay extra money for those spots. Then I was trying to imagine how this person will react when they find they are being inconvenienced by not being able to leave when they want to. Oh, the irony! Basically, I just wanted this person to never think of doing it again and it was pretty harmless to get that point across. He comes by, we let him loose, no harm, no foul. Jerk feels silly and never does it again. Anyways, it was getting pretty late and I'm starting to think that jerk isn't going to leave tonight. Either he decides he's staying the night cuz he doesn't want to bother ticked people at a late hour or he just has the audacity to take our spot for the whole night and who cares what we have to say about it. It didn't sit well with me either way. No emergency is worth that inconsideration. I think of my first thought again. Still in the back of my mind, there must be a good reason for this.

The next morning, Harrison has to leave early so he takes off so the car is no longer blocked so the guy may never have known of our little lesson. Then I go to the garage to leave for work a couple hours later and I notice the car is still there. However, now is a good time to bother the manager about it so I go find him. He and the construction guys are working on the building renovation so he's outside working on the building. The owner happens to be there too. So I tell him someone's parked in our spot. He starts asking all the construction guys and I say, "No since last night." One of the construction guys says, "You should key is car up and down really good." and the owner chimes in "Or use the tab from a beer can." Ha ha, "thanks for the tip," I said. So they go down with me to the garage and they laugh at the note I left. Maybe they laughed cuz of its simplicity or its lack of profanity. I'm not really sure. They just said, "yeah, that sums it up right there." Wow, these guys really wanted retribution for me, ha ha. I was telling them that we just boxed him in and parked anyways, but it was still annoying. Then the manager says, "Hey, I'll just move my car and box him in." Ha ha. It was so funny to see all these guys want to stick it to him.

Then the owner says, "I'm going to have these big fat stickers made up for all the tenants. You put them on the window and it takes like 2 hours of scrubbing to get it off." He seemed quite resolved to do this as if it were the last straw. Then he says, "I can't wait to stick it to the first guy that does this." Then the manager recognizes the car and remembers that this is the son of the couple that used to have this spot before we moved in and he probably didn't know. So the manager goes up to tell him to move his car. Meanwhile I'm still listening to the owner, "Ok, this one was probably a legitimate misunderstanding, but some people just do it and they don't care who they inconvenience and that's why I'm going to get those stickers made up and give them to all the tenants." I can only imagine feuds starting up at the complex over this kind of thing, ha ha. The manager comes back and it turns out it was a misunderstanding. He said he woke the kid up and he was all groggy and stuff. His parents were out of town so there was no way for him to know. So he said he'd be right down to move the car. So the manager takes off the note and hands it to me and says, "Save this for the next one." Ha ha. The funny thing was the guy never saw my note nor did he know his car was ever boxed in. He was told to move and he did it. Things probably turned out for the best. I guess I know better now than to cross the manager and owner of our building, ha ha. Those guys really like to stick it to people.

Anyways, I'm not sure if that was a blogworthy story or not. I had a few laughs this morning over it. Hope you enjoyed it.

You're Retiring When?

I got this call today at work from Smith & Barney. They wanted to help me with my retirement and asked when I was planning on retiring. I said, "Um, like, 40 years?". I get somewhat of a chuckled response. "Ok, sorry to bother you," he says. Ha ha. This is not the only time this has happened to me. I can only assume this is from some time in my past when I had to fill out some survey to download software or something and thought it would be really fun if I checked the age 65+ box. When the guy was trying to hang up, I should have said, "Oh don't hang up, I DO need help! I only have 40 years left. I'm so glad you called and just in time too!" Yeah, it wasn't his fault, so I didn't give him a hard time.

Star Wars DVD

How can I be an engineer and not talk about Star Wars this week? Anyways, I bought the DVD box set yesterday and watched a little of it. When I first got a DVD player, the very first DVD I wanted was Star Wars thinking that would be a timeless piece of my collection that would never get old. Didn't exist yet, so I bought Zorro instead, ha ha. Anyways, I think the documentaries are the most fascinating cuz that's where you hear the cool stories and learn how they did things. You also can watch the old TV spots and trailers which are way cheesy. The best TV spot is called "Forbidden Love" and it says something like "a boy and a girl in love in a romantic love story that reaches the stars" or something really weird like that, but it's showing Luke and Leia. So I guess Lucas didn't really come up with the brother/sister plot until later. I thought it was funny in retrospect they called the TV Spot "Forbidden Love" on the DVD. Forbidden love indeed. Well, Lucas made changes for his special edition and he made even more changes for the DVD release to make the movies more in line with the new movies. I watched Empire Strikes Back yesterday and some of the major changes I noticed were:

- Teramura Morrison (who played Jango Fett) is now the voice of Boba Fett. That makes sense since Boba is a clone of Jango.
- The scene where Darth Vader talks to the hologram of the Emperor has been changed. Ian McDiarmid, who plays Palpatine/Darth Sidious/Emperor, has replaced whoever they used for that scene. There is also extra dialogue about the son of Anakin Skywalker being the one responsible for destroying the Death Star which is a really weird conversation since they both know who Anakin Skywalker is and one of them just happens to be that person and they are talking about him in the 3rd person to preserve the shocking reveal to Luke later on I suppose. I can understand changing the hologram image to be more consistent, but I think the extra dialogue just insults my intelligence.

They touched up the visual effects too. No complaints there. Anyways, I'm not one of those hardcore fanboys that is so upset over the changes. I really don't care. Lucas makes the movie the way he wants. It's his story and his money and he can do whatever he wants with it. There are probably more changes, but I hadn't seen the movie in a long time so I couldn't really tell. I'm sure you can find out on the internet somewhere. I'm sure someone has listed every tiny detail on how the glory of Star Wars has been defiled by the changes, ha ha.

Star Wars Stories

Since I'm on the subject, I might as well reminisce a little bit. I've actually seen all the original Star Wars movies in the theater although the first one I saw as a re-release in the early 80's. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mom, but this is how I remember these Star Wars events in my life:

The year is 1980. I'm 5 years old. My mom tells me we're going to see Empire Strikes Back tonight which I'm totally excited about. Then while I'm watching TV, I fall asleep. I wake up later. It's dark. I run downstairs and the babysitter is there. NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! So my parents went and saw the movie without me. I couldn't believe it! So then my mom tells me she'll take me to see it another time. That "another time" was like two or three months later. There were only like 5 people in the theater. No doubt my mom didn't want to deal with the crowds again. Who can blame her for that? Well, except me, I guess, ha ha. Anyways, my mom let me sit near the front and she didn't want to sit there so she sat near the back. So when Luke got his hand cut off, I ran back there so fast, ha ha. That was so scary and I watch it now and it looks so cheesy, ha ha!

I remember at that age going to the movies alot with my parents. And there were always these huge crowds and I thought it was just normal to wait a long time before going into a movie. And then inside, I could never see anything cuz people's heads were in the way. I remember that was so frustrating. But who's laughing now, shorties??? Ha ha, j/k.

In the United States, someone blogs every 3 seconds...this is one of them.

Ha ha, ok that's not a real fact, but I just wanted to pay homage to Strong Bad.

Retreat Stuff

I suppose I've waited long enough to write about this. So I won't talk about everything that was talked about at the retreat, but mainly just the stuff that stuck with me. There was this great message on forgiveness. The text was Luke 17:1-10. Upon first reading this passage, it doesn't seem like all of it is talking about the same thing, but let's look closer.

So verses 1-4 are basically saying, people are going to do rotten things to you and you must forgive them. Many times we have struggles in our lives where a person will offend us so many times where we're just like, "that's it, no more!" and we feel a sort of bitterness towards that person from then on. It's easy to justify it in our minds, but the Bible says forgive them anyway. Even if they sin against us 7 times in a day, we are to forgive them. So when the disciples hear this, obviously they struggle with the concept and they say, oh this is so hard, this is beyond my capability, "increase our faith." Sometimes I've asked God for this where there is just a trial too difficult that I say, "I'm not ready to deal with this in the way You want me to, increase my faith, so I can obey You!"

Then Jesus responds to the apostles in verse 6. He basically says if you had the teeny tiniest bit of faith, you would have the power to rip this huge tree out of the ground and have it planted in the sea just by saying so. That tree would obey you. So the disciples are probably wincing when they hear that because Jesus is saying, you already have all the faith you need to accomplish what I have asked you to do. So that's one punch, now here comes the uppercut in verses 7-10. So imagine you're a servant and you've been working all day out in the field for your master. It's hot, you're all dirty, and you're really tired, and above all, you're hungry, and when you've finished working outside, the master asks you to cook his meal and after you have finished with that, then you can cook your own. And you do that because you're a servant. Your master isn't going to respond too kindly if you say, "but I've been doing all this work and I'm tired and hungry too. I need what is due to me." What good are you as a servant if you're not going to do what's expected of you?

Likewise, we are servants of God and must do what He asks. Sometimes it is hard or inconvenient for us, but His expectation of us is to obey regardless and so we must forgive others out of obedience. If that's not enough for you, just think how many times you have asked God to forgive you for the same thing and yet He always does. He is willing to forgive you as soon as you ask. Can you imagine what it would be like if God said, "I'm sick of you constantly apologizing for the same thing over and over. Haven't you learned by now? Perhaps my salvation should go to someone more deserving than you." Aren't you glad our God is so gracious and patient that He can forgive all of our sin? We should extend that same grace and patience to others if we are to be His people. Check out this parable.

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Another thing that stuck with me at the retreat was just a small simple yet very visual and convicting analogy. We are to guard our hearts like it contains a valuable treasure. The Bible often refers to the heart yet it's not talking about that beating muscle in your body. The heart is everything that is you that isn't physical. By nature our heart is wicked and wants to serve the self so how do we keep our desires pure? The heart can only be influenced by what you put into it. And the only way to get input is through the 5 senses. Think of your heart as a city and there are 5 gates into this city. It is useless to protect 2 or 3 gates and forget the rest because enemies will get inside. Clearly some gates are more crucial than others. You're probably wondering, how does my sense of smell cause me to sin? Yet if the power of smell didn't influence us, then why is there such a huge market for perfumes and cologne? As Christians we often look at things and characterize them as being not that bad and so we let our guard down. But Jack Hughes (the speaker) made the best analogy and said, "Would you drink from a 5 gallon bucket of the purest water if someone had put a teaspoon of manure in it?" Of course you wouldn't. That's gross! Yet how often do we do that?

Look at Prov. 4:23. What does that mean? It means guard your heart because everything that comes from your heart will influence your life and project that life to others. If you fill your mind with garbage, you will only have garbage to offer to others. Don't you know, Christian, that what you speak of shows what's in your heart? "From the heart, so the mouth speaks."

There is this cool book written by John Bunyan called The Holy War. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list. John Bunyan is probably best known for his book, Pilgrim's Progress. His writing style is pretty straight forward. You don't have to read too deeply into his symbolism to see what he's saying. If there is a character who represents cowardly people, he just names him Coward and stuff like that. Anyways, The Holy War is about a town called Mansoul and how there were five impenetrable gates that protected it: Ear-gate, Eye-gate, Mouth-gate, Nose-gate, and Feel-gate. Sound familiar? Anyways, there was an enemy and his name was Diabolus and he wanted to take the town for himself and dwell there. Well, his plan wasn't to destroy the gates because that would be too hard, but if he could convince the people inside to open them, then he could take the town. Well, his plan succeeds and the rest of the book is about getting him and his riff-raff out of the town. Sounds like a cool story to me.

Guard your hearts! See you next time.

Reflections on North Dakota

This is my first week in North Dakota for work. Actually, this is my first time in North Dakota ever. After getting off the second plane to get here, I started on my 100 mile drive to the city where my hotel is which brings me to the suckiest part of this trip. The speed limit is 70 on the dark highway with not much in between, well not much except for the short strip of 45 mph speed limit with the cop that hangs out waiting for people like me that don't know the road. Yeah, I got nailed. Getting a speeding ticket going 62 in a 45 zone is not good. Especially when it says on the back of the ticket that it earns me 3 points on my driving record. I've had no points on my record for my entire driving career and now I have 3. I wonder what that's going to do to my insurance. At least the fine was only $19. $19!!! Can you believe it? And I got three points! I'm trying not to think about it. Who knows, maybe North Dakota is so backwards that California will never find out. I doubt it.

Alright, so North Dakota hasn't been too kind so far, but at least the weather has been good. I know that won't last so I'm thankful for that. North Dakota reminds me alot of Smallville except I have yet to see a girl as pretty as Lana. The city of Minot is all about farming. If the Air Force base wasn't here, there wouldn't be a town here. Here are some strange things I've noticed around North Dakota:

- Ozzy Osbourne's song "Ironman" was playing in the Applebee's restaurant.
- People have the name of the dealership their car was bought at stenciled right on the paint of the car. Why do they do that? And why don't people take it off when they buy it?
- For a place so remote and hick, it is suprising at first to pick up radio stations in French, then I remember that I'm spitting distance from Canada.
- Nobody but white people everywhere you look (except on the base).
- My speeding ticket was only $19!

I still plan on talking about the retreat, but probably when I get home.

I'm in L.A. this week (at least so far) which means I don't have any work to do so I'm kinda bored. I had a pretty awesome weekend. I went to the Foundry retreat with Grace Community Church. It was my last hurrah with them. At first, I wasn't sure if I really wanted to go or not. I felt pretty good about going to the new church and I felt like doing something with the old church would just keep me in church limbo or something. Anyways, there was no backing out since I signed up for the "drama" competition. I'll talk some more about the retreat later, but now I just want to talk about skits...

Why not talk about skits. That's the name on this site of course. I don't know if I've ever posted about the name, Skitguru, but if I have it was long enough for me to forget, so you probably did too. Skitguru is somewhat of a name and somewhat of a title. It's a really cool name because it doesn't really sound like some other nickname for one. The other reason is I didn't come up with it myself, but it was given to me by my skit team at UCLA. No fancy ceremony or anything like that, just one day they started calling me Skitguru and it stuck. Skit team was one of the greatest things I ever had the honor of being a part of. I never laughed so hard in my life and so I will carry it with me in some form or another. Currently, it will reside here and on my IM and on the Yahoo account I never use except for photos, ha ha.

Anyways, this retreat was the 4th Foundry retreat. The last three retreats had prop skit competitions where it would be 4 teams vs. the champions, who were me and my roommate, Chris. This time, Chris was in Guatemala for a missions trip so I had to replace him. Luckily, Russ had joined the Foundry so my protege from UCLA skit team will be my partner to battle the contenders in the "drama" competition. So I put drama in quotes because it seems the three teams had a different interpretation of what that meant and so as a result you got three very different performances. The first was more of a Stomp style performance where three angst driven guys drummed on ironing boards. It was pretty cool. The second was a very serious drama and pretty much was a small Bible study lesson in skit form. The third was us. Now when I see the word "drama", I just think skit, so I did what I know and that's comedy. So our skit actually had two parts, a prologue and then the story. The prologue was me and a video of Chris in Guatemala. I was talking to him "via satellite". It didn't work out so then Russ comes on stage to bail me out. That ends the prologue and then we do an entirely different skit which was called "Time Travel Through Foundry History...And Beyond!". First we traveled to the ever popular 70s and then we wound it too far back and ended up in a time before creation and just floated in the void for a bit. Then we went back to the present where I took a rest cuz I swallowed too much void and Russ proceded onward into the future and talked to the old version of myself. It was a fun skit. It was kind of a rewrite of a skit we did at UCLA. Neither of us really had time to come up with a decent idea, but that one did get the laughs, and we won that round.

The finals were a props skit against our pastor, Kurt, and daytime Emmy award winner, Chad Brannon. It was actually pretty intimidating. Kurt is a really funny guy and Chad's got the star power. So I'm against pastor power and star power for a props skit. Here was the list of props:

2 little plungers
4 long foam cylinders
2 visors
2 thingies you put on the handles of tricycles that kind of look like pom poms
1 Monster Disc, kinda like a huge frisbee but it's basically cloth covering a ring
2 Nerf looking bombs
1 deflated handball that looked like a baseball

So how do you make a funny skit out of that stuff? It's not easy. Especially since many of the items were in the 3 previous props skits I've done. I have to top myself and win which is the dilemma of every retreat it seems. At first we were going to do a James Bond type skit, but then Russ had the golden idea of the Olympics. So each of us played off being an announcer and displaying the events. Because it seems like so many silly events get added to the Olympics as time goes on, our Olympics took place in the year 2050, and we showed coverage of 9 events starting at somewhat silly to completely ridiculous. Here are the events:

1. Weightlifting
2. Human Rowing
3. Walrus Wrestling
4. 400m Plutonium Relay
5. Men's Pom Pom
6. Helicopter Hurdles
7. Blind Pole Vault Relay
8. Javelin Fencing
9. Over Age 80 Men's Marathon

It was quite a silly skit and proved to be much better than the other skit we did the day before. In fact, it was probably one of the best skits I've ever done. There were tears in the audience. It was a great abs workout for some. Ha ha! I love skits. It was recorded, so I hopefully will be able to get it and put it on the Skit DVD (coming soon). We won by the way.

Funny thing about skits is I love them and I hate them. I always get major nerves right before I have to go in front of all those people. Then once it's started I feel alot better. I'm not really nervous about whether people will like it or not or whether I will be funny. I'm more worried that I will forget a line or totally freeze up there. The first skit I had alot more nerves than the second skit. Maybe cuz I was already used to it by that time or maybe cuz I just thought the second one was so funny. I never really think about how I'm doing this silly men's pom pom routine in front of 180 people. I just think that this is the part I'm playing at this part in the skit. Kinda weird, I can't explain it. Such is the mystery of Skitguru.

The pics are up! Check them out here.

The Adventures in Utah Series Continues...

So when I got my rental car, I forget all the Utah radio stations that I programmed the last time I was here so I just go through and select a bunch. What's weird is two stations are repeated which I just don't understand. As far as I know, everyone has access to the same frequencies I do. Why does a radio station broadcast on two frequencies??? Anyways, cuz I'm zipping through trying to add them to the presets, sometimes I add the same station on two presets. Anyways, I couldn't find a station quickly enough so I just picked one at random that was clear before I parked the car. When we went to eat, one of the ladies I work with was in my car and she says, "I see you picked one of the only good radio stations that we have." I thought, hmm, thanks. Later on when I was driving alone, I cranked it up and it was a total hip hop/R&B station. Ha ha. Not that I don't like that music or anything, but I just don't think people see me as being a fan of that type of music. Can you just imagine me cruising and listening to Beyonce? Ha ha! Well, someone does now, ha ha.

Today after work, I went to Antelope Island again. This time I had my digital camera and a little more time so me and my coworker planned on climbing the tallest peak of Antelope Island. It didn't look that hard. I was so wrong! It didn't look big because Antelope Island is huge and it just didn't look big from that far away. It's kind of like when you're in Vegas and you see the Stratosphere, and you think you can just walk there really quickly even though you're a mile away, but it's soooo big that it looks close even though it's far. That is how I describe Frary Peak of Antelope Island. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Anyways, the rules of the island say that trails close after 8pm. If you're on the trail still after 8, you can get cited. So we got there at 5pm. I thought we could just run up there quick and take some cool photos and then come back in plenty of time. Well, after walking for about 45 minutes, the peak was still the same size. After an hour and a half, it was still pretty much the same size. Anyways, we almost made it to the top, but it got pretty rocky and precarious which was also something we didn't expect. I got some awesome photos though. Then while we were very extremely near and close to the top, I notice the sun is about to go down and we have about 30 minutes to get back. So it took me like two and a half hours to get up the hill and I plan to get back in 30 minutes? Yes. So I just bolt down the mountain. Sometimes I'm in control and other times just flailing completely out of control. All the while, I'm concerned that I haven't actually ran a long distance in quite a long time AND I'm wearing Vans so I feel like the bottom of my feet are being constantly banged by hammers. Anyways, we got back in 50 minutes and no ticket, woohoo! The pictures will be online in a few days. Anyways, I'm way sore now. I can only move my feet in one direction. Like I can press down on a pedal, but I have to lift my leg to get it off the pedal, ha ha.