Allegiances on LOST

One of the few shows I watch on television is Lost. I made this diagram to help me sort through what group was against what group in what year. There are potential spoilers if you are not caught up on the current season. Let me know if there is anyone I need to add.

Answer to PB Contest

Not that I expected anyone to get my obscure Calvin and Hobbes reference but y'all could have at least come up with some creative answers. Dad wins with his jar on the dash board theory (which was conveyed to me on the phone). His prize: a jar of peanut butter that is not half eaten or melted.

Peanut Butter Contest

Happy Birthday Mom!

Onto the contest: Whoever can guess what I am referencing with the picture below gets a prize. (Unfortunately Laura is exempt from this contest, meaning she should not answer or give anybody the answer)

Fables Family Tree

Just needed a spot to upload a picture.

A New Calendar

I blame my continual decent into the mindset of an architect for this post (I never used to scrutinize a misalignment of an expansion joint and a window mullion). On this New Years day I was reflecting on our placement of the “new year” mark and was finding it to be disturbingly arbitrary. It didn’t make any sense outside of our traditional calendar saying this night is the new year. It is just close enough to the winter solstice to set off my architectural flags. This in turn set off a chain of thoughts cumulating in a complete redesign of the calendar. So here it is:

A couple of notes:

+Instead of random holidays that are not properly spaced there are four week long holidays. They roughly correspond to the major Jewish holidays and all end at an equinox or solstice (which provides a good measure of non arbitrariness). Christianity could then use them as celebration points throughout the year.

Spring Holiday= Celebration Holiday
Celebration of the Resurrection
(Passover/Easter)

Summer Holiday= Petition Holiday
Celebration of Grace
Jewish Shavot (Feasts of Weeks)

Fall Holiday= Gratitude Holiday
Celebration of Provision
Jewish Sukkot (Feast of Booths)

Winter Holiday= Repentance Holiday
Celebration of Justice
Jewish Yom Kippur

+With this calendar I am proposing a six day work week with shorter work hours on each of the days. (or you can just not have the week long holidays and make every 3rd month have an extra week)

7 hrs a day @ 6 days a week @ 48 weeks a year = 2016 work hours
compared with
8 hrs a day @ 5 days a week @ 52 weeks a year = 2080 work hours

+Each month has the same number of days, being 28. This means that every individual day of the month is always a certain day (ex: every 5th of every month is a Thursday). It also makes each month more in line with the lunar phases.

+Due to dividing the year into equal weeks, there is one day left to account for. I would put it right at the end of Spring holiday and call it something cool (celebration day will have to do for the moment). It would not be a day of the week. And to come full circle, it would be the start of the new year. The resurrection of Christ being the resurrection of the year.

+Just so you know I know: I don’t ever think a new calendar system will be implemented. This was just an exercise in the ideal. And think of all the people who have birthdays on days 29 to 31 who would be offended.

Viewing My Life Through a Camera on the Top of a Car

So in Google’s new ploy in which to take over the world, it has developed the “street view” feature on its mapping application. The Basic idea is a fleet of cars with cameras mounted on them takes pictures as they travel, which are then converted into panoramic scenes. It is really a very ambitious undertaking considering the vast amount of land coverage with every few feet containing a whole lot of information.

Google has understandably run into privacy issues from a whole host of people and organizations and even entire towns. The most interesting of these are from people doing things they didn’t want to be seen doing (people entering and exiting adult bookstores, theft attempts, etc.). On the other hand it can be really useful when trying to find directions somewhere and when you can zoom around the streets of Rome, is undeniably cool.


So I went and found all the place I remember living in my life and, with the help of a screen capture program, I reproduce them here (I was very surprised to have found out that Google actually drove through Comstock):


Our first house in Comstock was a trailer that has long since been moved away but there is still the great mulberry tree in the yard where we had an awesome treehouse and the round concrete planter that we used as a sandbox.



This is our second house in Comstock. On a side note: it is weird that the one day they decide to drive through this small west Texas town it was overcast.

Our house outside of Odessa.

My dorm my first year of college.

My first apartment. Good times battling the Mormons with my atheist roomates.

The sad little rent house Roger and I moved into after the apartment.

The apartment complex I moved into with Nathan. Brian spent the night here one night that the airconditioner broke and it was in the upper 90s inside the bedroom.

The apartments Nathan and I moved into with Adam.

My current apartments in which my wife and I have made our first home.

TMNT

As I mentioned in my Halloween post, one of the reasons I enjoy the holiday is that we don’t get off work for it. Meaning that work that day is very relaxed, everyone is in a lighter mood, and I get to work with the ninja turtles. I snapped this picture from my desk last Friday:

Here is a better picture of them:

Holiday Card Contest Update

It looks like I am having a good week. Today I found out that I won the holiday card contest for my firm. (It was the snowflake design, sorry mom.) Hopefully I get a free airline ticket out of it but in the meantime I was presented with a goblet’o M&Ms:

Tagged

Anything to waste time at work.

4 jobs I have had:
-Gas Meter Mechanic (grunt work for my Grandpa and Dad)
-Landscape Caretaker (mowed the lawn for a rich lady in Odessa)
-Lifeguard (saving 3 out of 4 drowning kids ain't that bad)
-Construction Worker at a Girl Scout Camp

4 films I could watch over and over:
-O Brother Where Art Thou
-Braveheart
-Pi
-My Neighbor Totoro

4 Places I have lived:
-Comstock, TX
-Odessa, TX
-Arlington, TX
-Irving, TX

4 Favorite TV shows:
-Samurai Jack
-Futurerama
-Cowboy Bebop
-LOST

4 Places I would love to be:
-with Laura
-a very high place (top of a tree, cliff, building, airplane...)
-backpacking through Europe with close friends
-the Kimbell

4 of my heroes:
-Bill Waterson
-C.S. Lewis
-Daniel
-My Parents

4 Favorite Carlos Scarpa Buildings
-Castelvecchio
-Brion Cemetery
-A church in Switzerland that I can never remember the name of
-Olivetti Showroom

4 Favorite Natural Places Where I have been:
-Big Bend (west Texas)
-Redwoods (northern California)
-Tivoli (central Italy)
-Cozumel (Yucatan peninsula)

4 Best Bookstores:
-Stout Architectural Books, San Francisco
-Recycled Books, Denton
-Green Apple Books, San Francisco
-Half Price, Various locations in Texas

4 Favorite All Time Comic Books:
-Fables
-Earth X
-Ultimate Spider-man
-Ultimates


4 Favorite Mollusks:
-Giant Squid
-Octopus
-Cuttlefish
-Nautilus

4 Favorite Dinosaurs:
-Diplodocus
-Deinonychus
-Brachiosaurus
-Styracosaurus

4 Favorite Theological Discussion Topics
-Effects of the Fall
-Determinism
-Design (Intelligent or otherwise) and Aesthetics
-Role of the Church

I'll post something soon, I promise.