Jacob’s Blog

In case you want to play any guessing games:

1. It has been 8 days since I’ve done this. Over the last month or two, I average doing this about once every seven days.
2. It has been 20 days since I’ve last eaten this.
3. It has been 48 days since I’ve published this. In those days, 889 people have benefited from this.
4. It has been 58 days since I’ve experienced this, although I’m not likely to announce the details of this publicly.

Please feel free to guess what this is by leaving a comment.

Tonight I watched the 2002 film, About a Boy. One of the themes of the movie deals with the main character’s search for meaning in his life as he admits that he really does nothing in life.

The theme made me think some more about the different things that motivate us in life. In particular, the movie illustrated some of the meaning that comes through service and love to others and family.

Sometimes I’m not sure how much of that meaning I am currently finding. Sometimes its hard being single when you see all your friends going off and getting married. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I even convince myself to have little crushes, because, as I think I’m figuring out, it gives me a little bit of hope of things that may come. To find the meaning and to find the hope, I think these things would help me cope.

Happy May thirteenth. I hope today means something in your life.

I’ve been playing around just a little bit with Jaiku. Its a microblog, or a presence indicator, or an online status syndicator, or something like that. My Jaiku is at http://jwb.jaiku.com. I’ve found that they have strangely appropriate icons to use, and that jaiku isn’t always the easiest thing to type.

If any of my dedicated readers or friends want an invite, let me know. You’ll have to personally know me or have left a comment or something, and I’d be happy to help a friend out. If you are just stopping by hoping I’m giving out free invites, you should look somewhere else. (Hint: try Google searching “jaiku invites”)

At my place of work I now have two 24-inch monitors side by side connected to my Xeon workstation. I have Windows running on one screen, and Kubuntu running in a VM on the other screen.

At times, I’m a little overwhelmed about what to do with all that screen space. I leave my laptop closed so I don’t blow my mind.

One thing I like about the weather in Fort Collins is that the actual current temperatures can actually be higher than the high for the day. Right now, for example, it is 55 degrees, even though Google only said the high was going to be 42.

Tomorrows predicted high is higher than todays predicted high, I wonder if that means that tomorrow will be warmer than it was today, which would be nice because I want to go hiking tomorrow.

Last week I was interviewing with Hewlett Packard in Fort Collins, Colorado. They were interviewing me for a software developer position to do programming for embedded Linux systems. The trip was incredibly fun, and the interview went well too. The day after I got home, I received a phone call from HP and they extended the job offer to me.

I’ve accepted the offer, which means in January I’ll be moving to Fort Collins, Colorado. I’m very excited about this time of my life and I’m looking forward to all the new adventures which await me.

I got a friend request on Facebook today from someone I haven’t really talked to since the 4th grade. All I could say is “Woah.” I guess it just surprised me that someone remembered after all those years.

Hiking the Y isn’t that great of a hike, but for some reason I hike it a lot. Twice in the last week. I hiked it on Friday at about 8am. It took me 28 minutes, which was less than the 30 minute goal I set for myself. I hiked it again today, reaching the Y at 3:25 am; hiking it at a more casual pace of 30 minutes. Hiking the Y in the middle of the night without a moon and without a flashlight can be kind of spooky, but I was surprised how lit up things were from the city lights from Provo down below.
Continue reading Stuff that happens at 4am…

On the Fourth of July, I intended to wake up early, but I didn’t set an alarm. How fortunate then, that I had another type of alarm, something unusual, and perhaps even something magical.

In my sleep, I heard noises, but I didn’t readily recognize them–they weren’t a lawn mower or a garbage truck. Then, as I was waking, I realized that they were from the burner of a hot air balloon. I jumped out of bed, only to see my apartment building being buzzed by a such a balloon, and the sky all around me being filled with various hot air balloons, flying as part of Provo’s freedom festival.

Tonight I thought I had lost something very important to me. I prayed to Heavenly Father that I might be able to get it back. I thought that maybe I had treated it too casually, and carelessly left it around–while distracted talking to a friend. Looking for it, I had memories of it being with me, but yet it wasn’t there. I walked down the block thinking what I could do to get it back. I used my flashlight to check the shadows where I might have left it. I even broke into one of my neighbors apartments to see if I had left it there, but it was missing (and I didn’t wake my neighbors up). Eventually though, when it seemed that there was no where else to look, I found it.

All at once all the stress and emotions of the thought of having lost it where flipped, and I almost cried. Immediately, I thanked my Heavenly Father for helping me find it. Then I thought that I should write about my little story by sitting on the yellow picnic table in the middle of the night.

Any guesses as to what I might have lost?

I feel like I can breathe again. And breathing means blogging. It has been a busy semester, and I’ve had to cut back on a lot of things in my life. I’ve lost a few friends, a few ounces of sanity, and I haven’t been able to blog quite like I used to. In fact, I blogged more in each of the first four months of 2006 separately than I have in all of 2007 so far.

Hopefully with the semester finishing up, I’ll be able to breathe. I hope I can be more social, make some friends, and blog. Next week is the first week of the rest of my life. World, get ready, because I’m back.

Someone told me that I have girly handwriting. Is that a good or bad thing?

The last couple of weeks have been hard. Stressful. I look forward to Monday, which is the start of the rest of my semester.

I am like a zener diode.

I am starting to get tired of the cold. I dream of the days where it isn’t below freezing.

I ate four peanut butter and honey sandwiches today.

BYU basketball plays in The Pit Wednesday night and I hope they win.

I like sleep. I like getting a lot of it.

Happy birthday Heather!

I’m sitting in class right now and I swear that I can smell blueberry pancakes.  I want some right now!

I am so glad that it is Friday, I definitely need to get to the weekend.

Today was a day off of classes at BYU.  I did a lot of little things to celebrate.  I had a group meeting for my senior project team.  I cleaned up my room a bit.  I went to work and got the spring research submission page online.  I ate pretzels.  I wrote in a few of my blogs.  I finally put in a stupid patch to get LDSsearch.com working on Sunday’s without me having to intervene.  I fixed up my blogs so that they are once again showing the correct header.  I dropped a tape recorder by a friends house show she can take audio notes in class instead of trying to write with her injured arm.  I did some work on the ward calendar as part of my new calling as ward publicity specialist. I pondered a few things.  Soon I’ll go to FHE.  Hopefully I can also do a few more things by the end of the day.

First of all, I just want to say that it is not fun to try and use one of the computer touch pad thingies to control a mouse when you have bandaids on your finger tips.

I cut two of my most favorite fingers today picking up a board at Home Depot which will become part of my new kitchen shelves.

Sometimes I really question my own maturity. Maybe I don’t even know what maturity means. I think part of it is having enough live experience to be in control of your own responses to situations instead of completely reacting with emotion or with ignorance.
Triangular chocolate is one of my favorite friends.

One of the things that I’ve been thinking about is belonging. What does it mean to belong, and why do we seek it?