So here I sit on the final day of classes (technically the third last day, but thursday and friday I have only classes that I've already passed). One more test to write, then I'm done. Two hours of test time. I've gotten most of the final marks for my classes back and they were relatively good. Now if I can just get a summer job I'll be set.

Philosophical thought.

Once upon a time there was a young knight named Keegan. He was one of the youngest knights to ever serve under the great King Arthur. Graced with a strong sense of nobility and honour, Keegan had also fallen in love with one of the maidens who served Guinevere. Kavistra returned his love just the same. They have been together for many years and their love flourished. Much so to the point where Keegan vowed he would meet death's cold eyes before she did.

But that was not enough as fate would have it. For there were two druidic deities, K'alkatar and R'ornidae who were watching them with interest. One thought Keegan's love had no bounds. The other challenged that thought, saying there is one thing Keegan would let Kavistra die for. Curious, the K'alkatar told R'ornidae to prove it.

So R'ornidae created a war between Camelot and one of its neighbours, forcing Keegan to go and fight at the front. This war lasted years and the two were apart for a long time. But they still communicated by letters through a messenger, professing their love for one another. Kavistra remained faithful to Keegan.
After the war ended Keegan returned to Kavistra. Then R'ornidae struck Kavistra down with a painful, but not fatal, illness. One that caused her pains throughout her body, made her delirious at times, and lessened her appetite. She began to lose weight fast and after only a few weeks she was too weak to walk, let alone move. Kaylista cried out to Keegan to end her life and her suffering. But Keegan did not. He told Kaylista that he loved her and would not leave her side. He would be there to comfort her. Upon hearing this she said she loved him to and would bear the pain so she could see him again and again. After a month, K'alkatar healed her.

Then one night, during a celebration to honour a successful conquest complete by the King and his knights, Arthur had had too much wine to drink and stumbled off to his chambers. Keegan followed him to make sure he reached them safely, staying well behind to make sure he wasn't seen. At the bottom of the steps to Arthur's chamber, Keegan turned to leave, when he thought he heard a loud painful yell from up top. Rushing up the stairs he turned the corner and stopped. At the door to his chambers, lying motionless on the floor, was the Queen's royal page. There was a wound in his chest. Kegan looked up and saw Arthur standing there, frozen in terror, holding the dagger.
Hearing the castle guards approach Keegan had to think quickly. Both he and Arthur knew that this could destroy Camelot. Keegan moved towards Arthur, took the dagger, pushed him into his chambers and closed the door. When the guards arrived, Keegan was standing over the body with the dagger in his hand. He was taken to the dungeon. The next morning, Keegan stood before the King for his crime. He confessed to the murder of the Page in front of the entire court, including Kavistra. The king did not contradict. As punishment, Keegan was stripped of his knighthood and medals of honour and ordered out of Camelot. He would never again serve as a knight under Arthur. Neither Arthur nor Keegan ever spoke a word about what really happened that night, not even to Kavistra, who was a childhood friend to the Queen's page. Still, Kavistra loved him and left the castle to be with him.
They lived in a small cabin just beyond Camelot's borders. Keegan made a living as a swords instructor in a nearby village while Kavistra worked in a small garden. As winter fell, Keegan trained Kavistra on the bow and so to hunt game and wildlife, but instructed her to only hunt in specified areas, and not in Camelot's forest.
But one day, Keegan arrived at his cabin to find Camelot's soldiers waiting outside and Kavistra in chains. The captain of the soldiers rode up to him on a horse and told him that Kavistra had killed one of the King's deer; such a crime received death. One look at her told Keegan of her guilt. Remembering his vow, he asked to take her place but was denied. Too many people had seen her shoot the deer. The captain dismounted and asked to speak with Keegan inside.
Once inside, the captain revealed himself as R'ornidae. R'ornidae told Keegan that he would make him an offer:

"I can give Kavistra her life back and more. I can make her happy for the rest of her life without any more ailnesses or pain or suffering. I can restore her back to serving under Guinevere," said R'ornidae. "If you wish."

"Yes milord. It would please me greatly if you would do that," responded the noble man, who was once a knight.

"That is not all. What are you willing to do to make her life like that?"

"Anything," was Keegan's reply. "If my life is the price then take it. If my honour, or health, or even wealth be the price then take it."

"What about Kavistra?"

Keegan was puzzled. "What? What do you mean?"

R'ornidae smiled, an evil glint in his eyes. K'alkatar, invisible in the room, looked on with sad eyes. R'ornidae continued. "I will give Kavistra the life I've mentioned. She will die old and content. But she will never recognize you again, will never know you or share her heart with you. Never again will she have the memories of your life together. Never will she know how happy she was to you. And never shall you mention it for if you do her life will be forfeit."

Upon hearing this, Keegan stood from his chair. He yelled and cursed at R'ornidae. R'onidae remained standing, motionless. Then, after Keegan had yelled and curse himself hoarse and had collapsed back into the chair in tears, R'ornidae asked him. "What is your decision? Will you give Kavistra the life I mentioned"

It came in a whisper, "Yes".

"Will you forfeit all your life together up until this point?"

"Yes"

"Will you give up her recognition of you in the future, not mentioning the past ever to her?"

"Yes"

R'ornidae smiled once again. "Then it is done." Keegan closed his eyes as tears streamed from his eyes. The room was engulfed in white light and Keegan lost consciousness.

When he came to he was on the side of a road. He stood up. He remembered everything that happened up until he lost consciousness. His clothes were still the same but he did not know how he got where he was. On the road he saw a royal procession going by. As it approached Keegan fought back tears as he waited to see who was inside. The coach stopped just in front of him.

"Approach the chariot, traveler." A woman's voice said from within. As he approached, Keegan saw a face in the window. That face belonged to Kavistra. She was as beautiful as he remembered her, now adorned in a royal blue dress. Once he reached the window he knelt and bowed. "Such manners for a man of the borderlands."

"Hello milady." As Keegan's eyes moved up to meet hers he saw no recognition in her eyes.

"Tell me traveller, what is your name?"

"Keegan, milady." Keegan bowed his head again. It was all he could to hold in his tears.

"Keegan. That's a beautiful name sir. I bid you good tidings on your journey traveler" She pressed a silver coin into his hand with a smile and closed the curtains. Keegan backed away as she ordered the carriage to continue.

"Perhaps I was wrong about the bounds of his love," said R'ornidae to K'alkatar.
"Yes," was the response. "She will outlive him."
"Yes. Such a pity."

Well..with only a few more days til I finish school things are starting to wind down...final tests are being written..final projects are being handed in and it's almost over. I can hardly believe it...and what a semester. More later...

There once was a man named George Thomas who lived in a small New England town. One Easter morning, he came to church with a rusty, bend, old bird cage and set it on the pulpit. Several eye brows were raised and, as if in response, Pastor Thomas began to speak. "I was walking through town yesterday when I saw a small little boy coming toward me swinging this here bird cage. On the bottom of the cage, there were three little wild birds, shivering with cold and fright. I stopped the lad and asked: 'What you got there son?' 'Just some ol' birds' came the reply. 'What ya gonna do with 'em?' I asked 'Take 'em home and have fun with them' he answered 'I'm gonna tease them and pull out their feathers to make 'em fight. I'm gonna have a real good time!' 'But you'll get tired of 'em sooner or later. What will you do then?' 'Oh, I got some cats,' said the little boy. 'They like birds. I'll take them to 'em!' I was silent for a moment. 'How much do you want for those birds, son?' 'HUH??!! Why, you don't want them birds, mister. There just plain old field birds. They don't sing---They ain't even pretty!' 'How much?' I asked again The boy surely thought I was crazy now and finally said, '$10?' I reached in my pocket and took out a 10 dollar bill and placed it in the boys hand. In a flash, the boy was gone. In an alley way, I found a tree. I decided to free these wild animals in this tree." Well, that explained the cage on the pulpit, and then the pastor began to tell this story: "One day Satan and Jesus were having a conversation. Satan had just come out of the Garden of Eden, and he was gloating and boasting. 'Yes, sir, I just caught the world full of people down there. I set me up a trap and I used bait they couldn't possibly resist. I got 'em all!' 'What are you gonna do with 'em?' Jesus asked. 'Oh, I'm just gonna have a little fun. I'm gonna teach them to marry and divorce, how to hate each other and abuse each other, how to drink and smoke and curse. I'm even gonna teach them how to kill each other with bombs and guns and stuff.' 'And what will you do when you get done with them?" Jesus asked. 'Oh, I'll kill 'em!' Satan declared proudly. 'How much do you want for them all?' Jesus asked. 'Oh, you don't want these people, they ain't no good! Why, when you take them they will hate you! They'll spit on you, curse you, they'll even kill you! You don't want these people! 'How much??' Jesus asked again. Satan sneered and said 'All your tears and all your blood!' Jesus then said, 'DONE!' and he paid the price." The pastor picked up the cage, opened the door, and walked from the pulpit. Isn't it funny how people trash God and then wonder why the world is going to hell. Isn't it funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says? Isn't it funny how everyone wants to go to heaven provided that they don't have to believe, think, say, or do anything the Bible says? Or is it scary? Isn't it funny how someone can say "I believe in God!" but still follow Satan (who also "believes" in God) isn't it funny how you can send a thousand email jokes and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, you think twice about sharing? Isn't it funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar, and obscene pass freely through cyberspace, yet public discussion about Jesus is suppressed in the school and workplace? Isn't it funny how we can be so fired up for Jesus on Sunday, but be an invisible Christian the rest of the week? Isn't it funny how you think more about how people think of me than how God thinks of me? Who will pass this on to their friends, or who will be funny?

Are you laughing?

There are just nine more days left of school and counting. This week I only have one test, which means next week i have 2 on monday, one on tuesday and none after that. I'll be finished all the tests. Just need to finish up the labs. :)

I've updated my website (It's been quite a while.) and put in a photography section you can access here. I've also added a powerpoint section, where I just made a presentation involving the song by Lee Ann Womack featuring the Sons of the Desert. Some of the pictures in the presentation are mine and some are not. I just liked how they went with the music.

Well...I've finally finished one of my courses for the semester in first year yay! The teacher was really nice the entire year; we got to discuss what would be on the final evaluation. As for the rest of the courses I should be fine with most of them as long as I just keep on mowing through them and working at 'em. Still pining for that summer job. And starting to spend more time on the piano and less time on the computer. Got some great songs to learn and also keeping track of hockey while the playoffs are still there.

Took a sort of personality test today...guess what I learned? I learned that I was what I thought I was all along though the process was pretty interesting. Anyways..it's late and I'm tired. Good night.

TOTB: If you're not doing what you think you're supposed to be doing, can you still expect to end up where you think you should too?

Well...I feel kinda sheepish...or did a while ago...when i fixed the problem with my sound card. Oddly enough this happened when I had given up and decided to try and install a new PCI sound card that i could plug into one of the PCI slots on the motherboard itself. Figuring it to be as simple as plugging it in and installing the driver I soon encoutered problems with that. Then I remember reading somewhere that I had to uninstall all the previous drivers before installing new ones. Thinking about this I thought to myself that I probably didn't do that. Sure enough I had installed the right driver over the wrong one (onboard driver). So I uninstalled everything and reinstalled the right one. Eureka. My speakers came to life.

The other issue I was a little peeved about was the processor speed. It wasn't really what it said on the tin but after talking to the provider I bought it from all I had to do was change a jumper switch on the motherboard itself and verify the BIOS settings. Now everything seems peachy for now. All the essential parts are there. Any other changes are just for convenience or increased quality but I'm happy for now.

Another note. On Saturday I decided to make the trip down to Kingston Computer Planet to see if i could pick up a generic sound card to bypass what i thought to be the problem. After telling one of the employees my problem, he said he didn't want to sell me a card because he didn't think it would solve the problem. This was because the motherboard had an extremely low percentage (<0.1%) of motherboards that had that problem; the problem, he said, was with the processes of the motherboard, maybe a BIOS setting.
This I found interesting. I don't remember any other time where I have gone in ready to buy something and an employee cared more about solving a problem than making a sale. Kudos to KCP.

Well...the good news is that I got my new cpu chip working and the motherboard up and running without any major problems. Now my computer is significantly faster and I've been able to measure the speed. I thought most of my day would be spent assembling it, since I didn't know how to do it. Here are some problems I've encountered:

1.) First problem arouse when I was trying to remove the older motherboard (Intel with p3-600 chip in it). I was able to get 5 of the six screws out, but the 6th screw was in a very small place that was hard to get to with a screwdriver. Eventually I got it out...just took a bit of patience.

2.) While installing the new motherboard I had to put it in and position it so that it fits right into the "mask" that it came with so it could fit nicely hanging out the back of my computer. The frustrating part was that the length of the mask was about 1mm or 2mm to big for the back so i had to use pliers to pinch the edges to make them thinner. More patience used. All the while trying to be careful not to mess the motherboard up by touching the bottom and severely damaging it and praying that I hadn't done so already.

3.) Pin settings. Pin settings. Pin settings. The inter-motherboard (mobo for short) pin settings were already preset. But connecting to the rest of the computer was a mix between frustrating, easy, and RTFM types (F is for furiken, not the other one.) I figured out this was a problem when the computer itself wasn't turning on. I checked and verified many times that the motherboard was connected to the power supply and the power supply active. What I later found out to be the problem was on the other end of the motherboard, with the pin settings having to do with the switch. There was power...just no switch to turn it on.

4.) After getting it to turn on (where I discovered, to my relief, that the motherboard was still intact) I noticed right away that the computer did not see the cd rom discs. This problem wasn't hard as i'd seen it before and was quickly fixed (cable connection missing).

5.) Drivers....This was a minor problem with the exception of the sound card (see #6 for details). I just had to either find drivers on the cd, or use the setup utility, rebooting intermittently. Time consuming but fairly elementary...considering.

6.) Sound Card.

a - After spending a considerable time installing the driver off the cd I discovered that the cd was trying to install the wrong driver (after installation the device manager reported a conflict). After autodetection of the device, I was able to point the cd to the right driver and the device manager was able to say the device was working properly. As well all the audio devices were able to play the media and show that they were able to play it.

b - Despite being able to show they were playing the media when i plugged the speakers in I got no sound. So I tried a number of things to try and rectify the problem:

-reboot, multiple times
-see if there was a modifiable setting in the BIOS (about 3 times)
-checked the connections (multiple times)
-tested the speakers, on independent audio device (successfully so the problem wasn't with the external hardware)
-perused over many internet articles, posts, and support websites.
-RTM'd.....many times
-turned up the volume (on the speakers and volume control as well as media player)
-verified jumper settings of sound port (it's an onboard realtek ac'97)
-cursed the computer, begged it to work..left the room in frustration (this was not productive but it was more of a preventative measure to prevent me from pitching it out the window [and i'm on the second story])
-emailed tech support for motherboard manufacturer.

The list probably goes on, but suffices to say I've exhausted a bunch of methods and have not gotten much progress, just what was mentioned in (b) and at this point I still don't have any sound and have succombed to listening to the radio for now.

There are a couple of other issues that require contact with the distributor, but those can be cleared up soon. As for the here and now i'm done with trying to trouble shoot if for now....5 hours should be enough time to work on it in one day.

This is a rather long post about my computer..i just had a bunch of stuff to get off of my shoulder.

here's the philosophical thought:

If you change the motherboard of a computer is it still the same computer? How about the hard drive? Or the power supply/case?

Happy Living and have a good easter.

Well..after not posting for a while (I would've posted earlier but I didn't really have much to post, and as you know when I do post I just ramble on about stuff that might not seem important to anyone else but me) I decided there was probably enough now to make a post.

After hearing a particularily good song played on the piano (though the performance wasn't perfect the player made an excellent try and finished), I was inspired to take up playing the piano again. I can't play as well as I have before but I can still play well and have an appreciation for the music and it's melody. Who knows..I might even start practicing more difficult pieces until I can play the better.

Today started off relatively well. I had an amazing night's sleep (which I only seem to get once a week; on saturdays) so i decided to get started on changing the water in fish tank as I had promised to do many days ago. After I had changed all the water in the fish tank I couldn't get the filter working. Since that filter not only cleans the air but also reoxygenates the water I figured I should get the tank working soon or the fish would suffocate. Needless to say, I never got the filter working again; I think it was because there was water in the motor and the motor finally stopped working. So I had to run to Walmart to buy a new one and, forgetting the exact width (we still had filters that could fit the old one), called home to ask what the exact width was. But once the new filter was bought ($40 later) everything else went like a snap and I was able to finish inside 5 minutes. These fish just won't die...

Tonight I got into a mega-philosophical discussion. This was not over one topic, not even two, but three topics that were intertwined.
Capital Punishment
The first was whether or not capital punishment was justified (not as revenge, but as punishment, which led to the second arguement). This section of the discussion ended with everyone agreeing that it all came down to personal opinion (which I found to be sort of irrelevant in the context of God's Law, which is objective, but in the context of our own opinion it would be the deciding factor as there was strong evidence in both matters.
Authority on it
The second arguement was on whether the authorities had the right to do that (using biblical context to support that authority is appointed and bears a sword for a reason).
Predestiny vs Free Will
The third arguement concerned the convicted criminal on death row and the fact that he could become a christian and make his life right with God after he receives a life sentence whereas he may not have the same opportunity if he's executed. The discussions involved included the fact that he made the choice beforehand (when committing the crime) to turn his back on God's values. This discussion brought about the question about whether or not the person had free will or whether he was predestined. The predestiny and free will discussion is a favourite among my friends; good to argue with them about it but we can never come up with a good solid conclusion.
There was a lot to think about.