Traveling East

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.

- Karen Blixen

Great line. I especially like the sea part. It made me think of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Prince Caspain sails to the edge of the earth with Lucy, Eustace, Edmund, and of course, Reepicheep. They sail east in search of Aslan's country. Along the voyage, each character is touched in ways

I don't know how to put this in words without making it a farce; I normally treat serious subjects with humor in an effor to compartmentalize them-- box them up so I can deal with them. Emotions run deep; we all have our defense mechanisms.

Part of the light of Christ given to all men, I believe, is the desire to want something more. Looking for Aslan, looking to make ourself better, looking for that eternal rock upon which our anchor can harbor our souls and make us great is what's in a sea voyage.

Bah. I have such trouble with words. Just go read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Then you'll understand.

What's the capital of North Dakota?

When I was a kid, (or more of one than I am now, depending on how you look at it), I watched this LDS commercial where two students were taking a test. One is busy at work while the other leans over to him and asks "What's the capital of North Dakota?" The other little boy seems to want to help, but knows he can't cheat. He doesn't help the kid and then there was some cheesey feel good ending and the message was sent that Mormons help your family by teaching right and wrong.

When done properly, this is very successfull.

Case in point: Me. Today I took a Concurrent Programming test. It was open book, open note, open homework, open Google, but not open neighbor. Pretty much everything was allowed as open source material. For the programming part of the exam, we were given a skeleton version of some code and asked to fill in the blanks. He provided us with the working version of the blanks filled in code so that we could check our output with the correct output.

As I was doing the program, it dawned on me... I've seen this code before. Where have I seen it before? I shrugged it off and got about 80% finished. I was hung up on one little area that was causing infinite loops and just couldn't get past it. Then it hit me where I remembered seeing this code: in a homework description he emailed us. Everything he gave us is open season, right? So I opened up the email and sure enough, there it was. The entire working version of the exam-- blanks filled in and everything. I saw my error, which was absolutely minor, and fixed it. Then I had a moral dilemma: Is this cheating? Surely he didn't mean for us to have the code when he meant we could look at anything he wanted. The battle lasted a few seconds, and then I breathed a huge sigh of frustration, and called over the Professor.

Me: Dr. Stiles?

Him: Yes?

Me: Do you realize you gave us this code and that I found it?

Him: I did?!

Me: Yep.

Him: Did it help you?

Me: Well, it got me past this one little part, but everything else was mine.

Him: Oh. Oh, well then... We'll have to give you partial credit. Don't worry, you'll still get 90% or thereabouts.

Bah! I could have had 100% credit and been able to rationalize it away. But I didn't. I knew I shouldn't because it was in violation of the principle of cheating. Humans in society today are hung up on application and not principle. If we argued, established, and promoted principles then we'd have a lot more wise people. Today I was wise. Although my test score will suffer, I maintained my integrity. The test score will have little bearing on my life. The way I acted today will have a lot.

Agency and Free Will

Something I noticed while reading this wikipedia article:

The theological doctrine of divine foreknowledge is often alleged to be in conflict with free will. After all, if God knows exactly what will happen, right down to every choice one makes, the status of choices as free is called into question.

I've wondered about that once or twice. I remember feeling very annoyed in Seminary once about this. (Mormon seminary is a daily thing when you're in high school. It's basically like Bible Study.) I kept pressing with the exact question stated above, and no answer seemed to satisfy. What doubled my displeasure was that other students echoed the Seminary teacher-- I felt certain that they had no idea what they were talking about and that I was the only one who really saw a conflict. I was arrogant.

I've come to learn that all things are before God. Is it possible that God sees time in a non-linear fashion, that He sees the changing future as we choose it? I think so.

It's hard to explain. Many have done so before me, and many will do so after me.

In the frame of milk before meat, it's easy to be consumed with discussion of such things. I suppose the bottom line is that issues like this are gristle; indigestible substitutes for meat. You either believe you have agency, or you don't. There's really no way to prove it, is there?

But there's the rub. I submit that because you cannot prove it, that is a proof that agency exists, and that it was God's idea. Imagine the fallout of being able to prove such a fundamental conundrum. How many people must change in the face of irrefutable proof that they have agency? Worse yet, what kind of fallout ensues from infallible proof that we don't have free will? I thank heaven that we can't prove it. I thank God that we must approach Him to find the truth; only then will we be unafraid to embrace it.

Dance, monkey!!!

Last night I got home from watching Peter Shaffer's flavor of Amadeus, which had enough things to blog about, and my wife had a few friends over.

One of the friends is a family friend, the Kermit lady who blogs somewhere else. Whenever Mrs. Sixline and I spend time with the Muppets I take to entertaining the group with doing voices, foreign accents, and impressions. I've gotten quite effective at making my wife and Kermit laugh with a Tim Gunn impression. (Tim Gunn is a co-host of the show 'Project Runway,' a fashion show my wife and her friend are pretty big fans of.) It's a habitual thing, I just like to make people laugh. It gets me attention while letting others feel good too. Pretty good trade off, I'd say.

So I get home, and Kermit has brought along a friend of hers. During their evening together, I guess Kermit and Mrs. Sixline (more Kermit than shy Mrs. Sixline, I believe) said that Mr. Sixline does great impressions, and funny voices, and he's really goofy, and you'll just have to meet him. The crew stayed up and waited for me to get home so I could do the impressions. It's a different thing when you do it on call, and for people you've never met. I was instructed that I needed to do it so everyone could see how funny I was. I don't mind that, it's always good to feel like you're a funny guy. I was minorly annoyed (really, REALLY minorly annoyed... I think it had more to do with the fact that I was tired and wanted to see the results of the NLCS Cards/Mets game) but I did it, and sure enough, it cracked everyone up.

But it got me thinking. Holy cats, this is what I'm known for. For being a goofy guy. Not 'Here comes Mr. Sixline. I want you to meet him because he's brilliant, wonderful, spiritual, humble man. Meeting him is like meeting the Prophet!' (Tongue in cheek.)

I need to grow up.

Deepavali

Happy Deepavali. Although it's not supposed to be celebrated for a few more days, the Indian Student Association here on campus decided to throw the celebration this past weekend. It was my understanding that since it's a rather religious holiday, it's difficult to openly share it. So they opted instead to have a song and dance night where traditional culture and folklore from India was shared. It was pretty cool. I had some friends who danced in various performances. I enjoyed it.

The food, although prepared à la Américaine, was tasty. Perhaps this was a good thing, as Indian food can be rather spicy. You know what they say: spicy on the way in, spicy on the way out. At least I'm that way. I can barely handle Mexican food, let alone Oriental hotstuff. That'd probably send me to the hospital.

Understanding of a people's religion, as Deepavali is a religious celebration, really gives insight to the way a society functions. It's the sacred ground in their heart. I felt priveleged to be a part of it.

The Mozart Effect

Man this is good music. I've heard many times over that the Baroque period of music (Handel, Bach, Mozart) is quite peppered with variations and counterpoint. This stimulates our brains into forming organizational skills and basically formatting your entire mind. Evidently we remember EVERYTHING we see, hear, learn or otherwise take in, but getting it back out is a problem. Listening to this kind of music helps your brain organize itself, thus aiding in retrieving information that you've previously stored. Participating in this music stimulates even further. I guess I'm such a diddly dang genius because of all the Mozart I sang in the choir in high school. I mean, all the nerdy kids in school were either already adept at math and science, or did some sort of extra curricular music endeavour.

I think I want to make sure my kids, among other things, pick up some sort of music talent. I don't expect them to make Broadway, and it definitely won't be forced. But I hope I can encourage and steer them into singing, violin, guitar, or heck... even playing the spoons. I enjoyed singing up through my junior year of high school, and I wonder if that's helped me get the grades I get.

On a related note, Freemasonry teaches that the highest and holiest science is music. Above all else, God can communicate divine feelings and inspiration through music's channel. Neat, eh?

October

I love October. October colors are indescribably beautiful. (That photo is from a local canyon, by the way) October baseball -- need I say more? Perhaps the most endearing quality of this time of year is the anticpation of the coming holiday season. I know it gets commercialized, and for many that cheapens the celebration of the Saviour, but I love listening to Christmas music in malls, spending time with my wife shopping, getting excited about gift giving, and all the other joy that comes from Christmas. The only thing better than all that is the feeling that it's right around the corner. October is when it starts to get cold, it starts to snow in the tops of the mountains, when the wind snaps at you at night time, when you start having fires in the fireplace, when it's cold enough to cuddle on the couch during a Saturday night movie, when it's... when it's great.

I love October.

theme song

If ever a theme song existed for me, I suppose this it... By the way, that's Donny Osmond dancing in the background with the EM equation.

blog blurbs

I'll probably be seriously busy this week, so I doubt I'll post much. But I'm here.

it must needs be that i teach you

From Jacob's mouth:

48 Behold, if ye were holy I would speak unto you of holiness; but as ye are not holy, and ye look upon me as a teacher, it must needs be expedient that I teach you the consequences of sin.

I went to the Priesthood session of General Conference (for you non-LDS dudes and gals, twice a year all the Church leaders gather together in a HUGE hall in Salt Lake and speak to all Mormons (via satellite if you're not immediately there) about various issues and things. It's a time for us to hear the prophet speak. Very nice.) where they talked to us men.

As usual, we were chided (rightfully so) about duty. We all need to get more done, and not slack off... So that was ok.

Then they addressed the young men. You guessed it -- missions. That was cool. We need good missionaries out there, and we need young men willing to work. I had a wham-dinger of a time in France and would wholly recommend it to the next chap.

Then they got onto pornography and the proper way to treat your wife. Pornography is an evil sin and we can't be warned enough, but I couldn't help but think of that scripture I quoted up there. It made me wonder what kinds of things we would be able to learn about, what kinds of things the Lord would see fit to reveal if we didn't need to be warned and reminded of what sin is.

I suppose I'll just be patient.

I guess I've been tagged.

What do you like most about where you live?
It's the first place that's felt like home since I moved from Texas to Utah 8 years ago.

Is there anything strange about where you live?
Just me.

What's one of your all time favorite music albums and why?
I don't really have a favorite Album, but I suppose Weird Al's 'Bad Hair Day' would qualify. When I was in Texas, I had a pretty easy teenage timeperiod. Church was good, friends were good, and I felt like I was a mack daddy among the ladies at Church dances. This album was one that everyone listened to and sung along to at pool parties, on the way to and from Church dances, and in general what made us laugh.

Did you have a passion for something as a kid that you still have now?
Baseball.

I had a heavy rubber baseball that I'd throw against the small brick fireplace and then field the ball as a grounder as it bounced back. I did this while watching many-a World Series from the age of about 11 on up. 'Course, the strike really made me lose my lunch over everything. I'll have to blog about that later, but I was 13 or so when the strike hit in '94 and it never occurred to me that anyone could play baseball for any other reason than loving the game. Anyway, after my mission I watched the Angels-Giants World Series and got back into it.

I love baseball. :)

What do you like most about having a blog?
I feel like people are paying attention to me.

Who am I tagging?
Bryan, Emilie, Chance, Peter, and Eeyore.

almost joined peta

This past weekend, Bryan and Emilie decided that they wanted a cat on Saturday. So off they whisk myself and my better half to the humane society in Salt Lake City.

Man... I felt awful there. It was really depressing to see all the animals caged up like that. The worst was the section that housed the dogs. They had a little bulletin on each cage explaining about the dog. Breed, age, sex, what commands it knew, what animals/people it was good with, as well as the last one... why it was dropped off at the shelter.

Man it was horrible to read some of those. "Don't have enough time for him." "Misbehaves too much." "Gets into garbage too much." "Too much energy."

I felt like I wanted to join PETA and just volunteer all my time to finding homes and good people to take the animals. I left feeling really bad.

I hope I never visit an orphange. I'd probably just break down and cry.

kill bill

I watched Kill Bill (on TNT, of course) over the course of this week. I watched both volumes, so that I could make sure I got the full range of Killiness Billiness.

Sorry, Quentin, I thought it was kinda dumb. It was shaping up to be really good in the first 20 minutes of the first movie. I thought the different cinematography would go over well-- it's refreshing to see things different. I didn't even mind the out of order sequence of 'chapters.' (I guess other Quentin Tarantino movies have this same kind of weird sequence. Meh.) However much it was building to be a decent movie, I had radically changed my mind by the end.

Three things kill a movie for me:

• Cheesy dialogue
  
• Cheesy acting
  
• Diversions from the established reality
  

Kill Bill basically had all three. Cheesy dialogue and acting require little explanation, although our individual tastes probably range significantly. However, the reality point needs a bit more elaboration. Since TNT filtered out the swearing, violence, and sex, there's very little to rant/report on there.

Movie reality is established by the element of the story. Obviously we can't have space travel à la Star Trek, but inside the Trek world we've created these established facts. I wouldn't expect people to sword fight on the warp nacelle going through a wormhole during a Star Trek episode. It's just not believable. With Kill Bill, there were a few instances where there was some pretty cool swordfighting shaping up, only to have superhero comic book type moves employed. This wouldn't have been bad, except I got the impression that this was a realistic story. When superhero leaps and jumps came into play, it just didn't mesh. It wasn't believable.

Again, sorry Quentin, and others who enjoyed the film, I didn't like it. But who cares.

Night Falls on Narnia

I finished the Chronicles of Narnia this morning. I would have had it done sooner, but as I TA this lab, these kids need my help every two seconds! Sheesh! What was that about reading while on the job? Nevermind.

I really enjoyed the books. I don't really want to offer any commentary at this point; I'm not really anyone who's particularly bright with literature, so I doubt my feedback is worth the bandwidth this blog takes up. I did enjoy it. Just wanted to say I had finished it.

A short note about reading, though... People just don't do it anymore. At least we don't read anything of note. At least I don't think so. So after I read the next book on the list, Mere Christianity, I want to go and get one Penguin Classic at a time, and read it. You know, good books. Things we ought to all have read. Little Women, the Grapes of Wrath, and other books that I'm not familiar with because I don't read. I've even got a Koran I'm gonna read.

Yeah, we should read more.

personality tests

You Are Gonzo the Great

"Is something burning in here? Oh, it's just me." You're a total nutball who will do anything for attention. The first to take a dare, you'll pull almost any stunt. You're one weird looking creature, but your chickens don't mind!

The Muppet Personality Test

And also...

You Are Batman

Billionaire playboy by day. Saving the world by night. And you're not even a true superhero. Just someone with a lot of expensive toys!

What Superhero Are You?

Batman rocks.

St. John's Espiscopal Church

I attended Episcopal services for the first time on Sunday Morning. It was very different. I was a bit shocked at the level of freedom in theology they allow you to have and remain a member of the parish/diocese/Church. I realize the desire to not control thought, but if there's no harmony in doctrine, I personally have a hard time testing it to see if it's truth. One lady, giving a talk/discourse during the service, actually left a disclaimer open to the effect that the Bible is either a set of good rules or the word of God. I was really surprised at that.

But that doesn't matter. I didn't go to try to prove points of doctrine, and I didn't even get into any discussions. I'm sure they knew I was Mormon, but I didn't go there to evangelize. I really, honest to goodness, wanted to see other people worship. Seeing other people worship, especially when you don't hold to the tenets of their faith, is a very emotional experience. They trust me not to mock (which I hope I didn't sound mocking in the preceeding paragraph) and they trust me to respect their feelings. It was very touching to see heads bowed in prayer, and to see people kneeling and crossing themselves. Just because they don't believe the same way I do, or have the entire revealed word of God, this does not mean they love God any less than I do. We truly are all children of our Heavenly Father, and He loves us regardless of the way we worship Him. I appreciated the service very much.

St. Murphy

Today I taught for the first time. I had a real nice set of slides all prepared. I had a pretty good lesson plan. I had a very well planned idea of how I was going to teach and approximately how much time it would take. So what happened?

I lost my jumpdrive that had my lecture saved to it. Murphy's law...

I always lose jumpdrives. I've lost this one 10 or so times over, only to find it in some remote region of the closet after it fell out of a pocket. I think this particular one has also been through the washer at least once. They're sturdy little things, but dang... I really could have used it today. So instead I shot from the hip, opened the book, and filled in as much as I could remember. Ugh. I felt like it was awful, but the students didn't seem to mind...

bloggers block yet again

I don't know why I feel so busy. I really shouldn't be. I'm taking fewer classes, but it still seems like I just have so much to do.

So, yeah. I don't feel a big post coming on right now. I'm a bit anxious, I get to teach for an absent professor twice this upcoming week and following week, and I don't really want to. It's a digital design course, something I haven't taken for a good 2 years. Eeyore is getting an MRI. My wife is going for a job today at 4:30. I also have to prepare for labs I TA in addition to teaching the class.

My feelings are best summed up between a conversation between myself and a good friend of mine.

Me: Man this bites. I don't want to be here.
Friend: Where would you rather be?
Me: On a yacht halfway between Tahiti and Hawaii.
Friend: Wouldn't we all...

news tidbits

Back from Yellowstone. That was awesome. The cabin bed mattresses were HORRIBLE. Poor Gonzo had some difficulty sleeping. That was about the only real trouble those children gave us. They were excellent to have along. As I've said so often before, I wish I had better command of language. What I say just isn't justice to what Yellowstone offers. I only wish I could have stayed there longer. Lousy classes...

In the meantime, life is going pretty well. That's a big statement from a guy like me. Lots of stuff is coming up that I'm pretty excited about. Mrs. Sixline and I are exploring investment opportunities, hoping to keep financial goals alive. People today just don't worry about stuff like that, although we should. I also found out that some really good friends of mine were hurt pretty bad when I didn't invite them to my wedding. It was totally inconsiderate on my part, and I admitted to them that I was wrong and apologized profusely.

Good friends are rare. Really, with the twists and turns of life it's hard to keep in contact. It's hard to find people you can really trust with your children, with your past, and with all your weaknesses. It's really a bad thing if a good friendship ends because of selfishness. I'll explain why I didn't invite them later, but that really doesn't help. ~sighs~ Mistakes aren't any fun. Not for the guy making them, and definitely not for the guy who has them happen to him.

Under that light, it's a bit ironic that I've been feeling good the past few weeks. It's always hard for me to feel good; my shortcomings are always in focus and I'm the kind of guy who doesn't like to relax until the work is done. There's always work to be done, though, and there's nothing wrong with feeling like you're moving along the way you like.

Here's to progress.

Off to yellowstone...

Leaving this afternoon with the Muppets. I'm pretty excited.

By the way, my discrete math professor is a hoot. I think he missed his true calling in life, either court jester or stand up comic. I like that class quite a bit so far.