curtis' blog

My birthday is coming up shortly.  In fact, there are only three days until my birthday (Oct. 3, in case the math is just too much to handle).  I just wanted to wish myself an early happy birthday.

If you feel you must give me a present, don’t hesitate!     (Don’t feel obligated, though, by any means.)  If you can’t think of a good gift, just send me money.  This money will not go to a random cause, though.  It will help me afford a trip with I Cantori (the “elite” singing group here at SAU, of which I am a part) at the end of the year.  We will be travelling to a foreign country (some of the rumors are Australia, New Zealand, and some countries in Europe) around May 11 through May 25.  The details should be revealed next week.  I would imagine the cost to be around $2000 (not such a wild guess, but not conclusive, either), and since I am in the group, it’s kinda required.  I did know that when I signed up this year.

Well, I’d like to thank me for wishing me a happy birthday.  I’m welcome.

I know it gets old.  The problem, with life and such, is that we are busy and unpredictible.  We cannot make promises about The Alistair Watkins Show or even when we’ll post clips and pix of our room.  It is quite clean from time to time, but we just can’t seem to align the stars correctly (I had only about half of the galaxy Andromeda lined up with the Milky Way).  We may have a video by the weekend.  I honestly don’t know.

I need to post some of my pictures.  I know Robby has a bunch of “wallpapes” (don’t ask me why, but the typo is on purpose), and I may do the same.  Mine will be of higher resolution, too.  I have a 1680×1050 monitor.  Yeah, it’s nice.

I may publish some of my music on here at some point.  I write and arrange music from time to time, and I like to share it, but I haven’t decided on a license yet.  I plan to have some sort of Creative Commons licensing (I hyperlinked it so you can find out more about it) and have a Paypal button so you can donate to me, a poor college student.

I just looked at the current work schedule at the EdTech lab and realized I have pretty good hours.  I get around 12-14 hours a week (depends on if I stay during lab classes) in only two days a week.  This involves extremely full Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, but Wednesdays are AWESOME!!!  I have classes from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and a free afternoon.  Now I will have time for all my lab/project classes (I consider three of my classes to be project classes).  I still have hardly any free time, but I manage somehow.

Work at the lab is fairly simple so far.  It is not a computer or technology department, so not much technical assistance is required.  Most of the assistance we provide is with Excel or PowerPoint.  The computers are all identical, making hardware replacement, software installation and imaging a breeze.

The lab was made to be almost “futuristic”.  It is filled with overkill electronics.  For instance, we have a Smart Board–a digital touchscreen whiteboard, and a touchscreen power control center (to dim lights, etc.).  This is all for the purpose of educating tomorrows teachers with the skills required in high-tech environments.  All these students are basically learning what they will use if they don’t teach elementary in the Adventist system. 

This is a great video Robby (and classmates) made for Spanish II at Sunnydale Adventist Academy.  One can easily appreciate the fine humorous quality (tee hee) of the film.  Enjoy!

I usually don’t care for John Nixon’s sermon style at the Collegedale Church. Nothing against him, it’s just my own preference. However, more recently, he has been earning more points in my own “Good Sermons” book. Last week he started a three-part series of sermons about sexual health. This is a church that seats a thousand or two people, and he’s talking about sexual health in church! Not many preachers I know could make such a topic a three-part series without tripping over words or getting uncomfortable. His honesty and straightforwardness is admirable. His message is not hidden behind anything. It’s a very important topic for this day and age. He covers it well.

Oh, and this sermon series is only in the second service. The first service gets a completely different sermon from the same man. Incredible. Two sermons in one day.

I am disappointed that that the student-led church is no more. SMC (Southern Missionary Church) was my favorite. However, they were finding it hard to have leaders and speakers. Many of the students graduated and moved on, leaving fewer people to hold the church together. So they merged with Collegdale Church’s second service, providing student-led services minus the preaching, which is done by Collegdale’s pastor Nixon. It isn’t bad, but I preferred the completely student-led worships at SMC. They had some good student preachers.

Vote, (American) people!!!  I will definitely vote.  I pay good taxes (actually, I don’t pay much because I’m a poor college student) to have rights such as voting for the country’s leaders.  And about whom you should vote for, make it someone whose views are parallel–or at least similar–to yours.  I get somewhat angry when people say, “we need a (insert ethnicity or gender) as a (insert office)” or, “I don’t want another Bush.”  It also annoys me when people say that they won’t vote because there is no good candidate.  Is there ever a truly good candidate?  Seriously?  If you are not comfortable with any candidate being a country leader, move to another country, or at least don’t be so critical of a government you didn’t care enough about to be involved in.

Anyway, that’s my rant for today, in light of the beginning of absentee ballot registration.  I may reveal my sides in issues as the weeks before election roll by.

I am no longer working at the McKee Library (yes, I used to work at the school library).  I have found a job at the psychology and education department (Summerhour Hall) EdTech computer lab.  I will be working a couple more hours, but it shouldn’t inhibit my posting at all.  The hours are slightly better and fill in empty spaces between other pieces of my schedule.  This way I still have most evenings and weekends open, but I don’t really lose free time.

I may take some pictures of the library and computer lab to share with you, and maybe even a video tour.  We will have a video tour of our dorm room very soon, possibly tomorrow.  We’ve been too busy to work on a “Watkins” episode, but we should have one by the end of the weekend.

Here is our final intro (though that may just be an oxymoron)!  It has all the music now and a little intro as to what will be happening on the site in the near future.  We’re finally getting into the groove.

The video works best in Firefox and other nice browsers… Internet Explorer doesn’t yet work in fullscreen mode I think.  I will be working on fixing that soon, but why would you use IE anyway?!

(Warning:  This video is just over 7 MB, so it may take a little bit of time to load on a slow connection, but it’s so totally worth the wait that you shouldn’t care)

I know you are going to visit this page, so I’m leaving this blog entry just for you….  Ta da!  Anyway, I hope you’re having a terrific time at Union.  Southern is great here.

If you want to leave a comment, just click on the “comment” link by this post.  Or you could even sign up for an “account” by clicking the “sign up” link at the bottom of the home page.  Then you can even add your own avatar.

You should also visit my website at openhisword.org.  It’s pretty nifty.

I’m very pleased with the new website. WordPress is great.

I will be posting videos, pictures, and my thoughts here as the weeks go by. My roommate and I will be making some great video posts especially. Watch this site (better yet, subscribe to an RSS feed) for new videos. Here is a promo: