WALL-E

I just got back from Grand Cayman it's a pretty cool place. But I figured out that whether you're in a cool place or not your experience can be completely determined by who you're with. For instance, I love scuba diving and love being in the Caribbean but since I was with the family, the social interactions were less than cheery on this trip. But, on the other hand I would normally be put off by a place by Destin because it's very touristy and people basically sit on the beach all day. But, since I go with the youth group it's one of my favorite places to be. My guess is that normally it wouldn't be my first choice of vacation destinations. I have good memories of both the place and the people I was with, so I'm more than inclined to go back. I guess the same is true if you have good experiences in a place. People are probably more apt to go back to a place that they have good memories in. So I guess who you're with makes all the difference.

flounder

so here's a video i took when we went diving in bonaire last year. This is a flounder probably one of my top 5 favorite fish just because they're so cool looking. So when you go to long john silvers and order flounder this is what you're eating. They're so cool. You can't tell in this video but their mouth is actually sideways because they rarely swim a foot above the sand

grand cayman

so this next week i'm heading to grand cayman. My family scuba dives about once a year. While the air temperature is going to be a very nice 80 degrees the water isn't gonna be nearly as nice. The water is gonna be about 74 and that's extremely cold. As a comparison killer whales and live in 55 degree water. In water every degree counts. I figured out by telling people today what the water temp was going to be was that non divers really don't get the ineffectiveness of a wet suit. Don't get me wrong wet suits make a huge difference from going in just a plain swim suit as opposed to diving in a wet suit. I guess people don't know that the water does infact get in the suit and when that 74 degree water gets inbetween you and the suit it's not fun. If you dive about twice a day for a week or so your body temperature goes down about 1/2 to 1 degree because of the water. But, I'm not complaining I love diving even if it's in cold water. Maybe I'll bring back some cool stories and pics of fish.

Einstein the bird

the four temperaments

some kids in a psychology-esque class got to take a personality test a while back. While their test was really in depth with charts so that they could figure out more specifics this is the best I could find. I'm personally a senguin phlegmatic, but dominantly phlegmatic. I don't know the specifics but people tend to lean more towards one personality but nearly everyone is a mix of two of them.
the 4 personality types:
choleric-
The Choleric is an extroverted, hot-tempered, quick thinking, active, practical, strong-willed and easily annoyed person. Cholerics are self-confident, self-sufficient and very independent minded. They are decisive and opinionated and find it easy to make decisions for themselves as well as others. Cholerics tend to leave little room for negotiating. The Choleric is a visionary and seems to never run out of ideas, plans and goals, which are usually very practical. The Choleric does not require as much sleep as the other temperaments so their activity seems endless. Their activity almost always has a purpose because they are by nature result-oriented. They usually do not give in to the pressure of what others think unless they see that they cannot get the desired results. Cholerics can be crusaders against social injustice as they love to fight for a cause. Cholerics are both direct and firm when responding to others. They are slow to build relationships because results tend to be more important than people. They do not easily empathize with the feelings of others or show compassion. Cholerics think big and seek positions of authority.
sanguine-The Sanguine is an extroverted, fun-loving, activity-prone, impulsive, entertaining, persuasive, easily amused and optimistic person. Sanguines are receptive and open to others and build relationships quickly. They are animated, excited and accepting of others. They will smile and talk easily and often. It is not unusual to feel as if you have known the Sanguine person for years after only a few minutes. Sanguines are so people-oriented that they easily forget about time and are often late arriving at their destination. Sanguines get bored easily because of their orientation to social involvement, activity and general dislike for solitude. The Sanguine never lacks for friends. Their attention span is based on whether or not they are interested in the person or event. The Sanguine can change their focus or interest in an instant. Sanguines are competitive and tend to be disorganized. Unless very disciplined, the Sanguine will have difficulty controlling their emotions. They usually like sports of any kind because of the activity and involvement with other people. Their voice will show excitement and friendliness. Sanguines usually dress according to current fashion. The Sanguine fears rejection or not making a favorable impression. They also fear others viewing them as unsuccessful. Sanguines are very effective working with people.
phlegmatic-The Phlegmatic is an introverted, calm, unemotional, easygoing, never-get-upset, person. Phlegmatics are both slow and indirect when responding to others. They are also slow to warm-up but will be accommodating in the process. Phlegmatics are by far the easiest person with which to get along. They live a quiet, routine, life, free of the normal anxieties and stresses of the other temperaments. The Phlegmatic will avoid getting too involved with people and life in general. Phlegmatics seldom exert themselves with others or push their way along in their career, they just let it happen. The Phlegmatic communicates a warm, sincere interest in others preferring to have just a few close friends. They will be very loyal to their friends and find it difficult to break long standing relationships regardless of what the other person does. The Phlegmatic tends to resist change of any kind without reason, other than they just do not want the change to occur. Phlegmatics show little emotion and are prone to be a grudge holder. Phlegmatics tend to avoid conflict and making decisions of any kind. They are practical, concrete and traditional thinkers. Their stoic expression often hides their true feelings. The Phlegmatic may be patient to the point of paralysis. Phlegmatics are persistent and consistent at whatever they undertake.
melancholy-The Melancholy is an introverted, logical, analytical, factual, private, lets-do-it-right person. Melancholies respond to others in a slow, cautious and indirect manner. Melancholies are reserved and suspicious until sure of your intentions. The Melancholy probe for the "hidden meaning" behind your words. They are timid and may appear unsure and have a serious expression. They are self-sacrificing, gifted and they tend to be a perfectionist. Melancholies are very sensitive to what others think about their work. The Melancholy is well organized; on occasion you may find a Melancholy that keeps things cluttered, however, they know what’s in the piles. The Melancholy is determined to make the right and best decision. Melancholies will ask specific questions and sometimes they will ask the same question again and again. The Melancholy needs reassurance, feedback and reasons why they should do something. They need information, time to think and a plan. The Melancholy fears taking a risk, making a wrong decision and being viewed as incompetent. Melancholies tend to have a negative attitude toward something new until they have had time to think it over. Melancholies are skeptical about most everything but they are creative and capable people. Melancholies tend to get bored with something once they get it figured out.

more fun with charts

this is for anybody who knows the song bohemian rhapsody

amazing dominos

time to talk about something else

I felt the need to announce my opinion on how the media is treating the bad economy. It's as simple as this: we all know it's really bad, talking and complaining about it isn't gonna make it any better. Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm tired of turning on the news channel and hearing some annalist arguing about how to fix everything. Talking about how bad wall street did that day isn't making it any better. Just thought I'd put that out there.

Over the past year or so I've been paying attention to the way that different people deal with potentially impacting information. I basically mean stuff all the way from the death of somebody close to betrayal to dealing with their own personal issues. I've seen everybody from the ones who 'wear their hearts on their sleeves' for lack of a better term, to the ones who completely put a wall up and seem impervious to the whole situation. I guess it all stems to what their past situations have been with hardship and their particular personality. I'm not a psychologist so I won't try and analyze every personality type. But, it's interesting to be in a group of 30 people who hear the same information and they all deal with it in a different way. Some get mad, some are ready to forgive, some get sad, some are confused, and still others couldn't care less.

the science teacher that should be a religion teacher

The past week or so in my earth science class we've been talking about the age of the earth,fossils, carbon dating and other things of that nature. The teacher is a really religious guy and so we were talking about genesis 1 and the days of creation. He was talking about the views held by different christians. Some believe they were a literal seven days, others believe they were a thousand or so years and others believe other really strange things. Personally I've never really liked the fact that there's some questions that the Bible doesn't answer ie. the age of the earth and how long the 7 days really were. And I'm sure that I can't be the only one that gets frustrated by not understanding everything. But he said something along the lines of "I really hope we don't understand everything in the Bible because it was inspired by God and we don't want a God that can fit inside our tiny minds." That statement made me think that now it makes sense why I don't understand every little analogy and detail in the Bible. He also pointed out that knowing things like the age of the earth don't really matter in the scheme of the religion. So I thought that was cool cause he's really good a making connections between religion and science.
He also made another observation about the days of creation.
Day 1: light and darkness
Day 2: sea and sky
Day 3: land and vegetation
Day 4: sun, moon, stars
Day 5: sea animals and flying creatures
Day 6: land animals and people
here's the observation. He made light and dark on day 1 so that the sun, moon, and stars could be seen on day 4. He made the sea and sky on day 2 for the sea and flying animals on day 5. And He made the land and vegetation on day 3 for the land animals and people on day 6. I didn't really word that as elequently as my teacher did but that's the gist of it.

whose line

high frequency ring tone

see if you can here this I'm not exactly sure what the frequency is but only young people can hear it. I'd suggest you turn the volume up on your computer. It's actually a really obnoxious noise

destin

I stole this from Bills facebook page b/c it's an awesome pic of the beach right outside the hotel we stay at in destin. I can't wait cause it's the best week of the year. There's something really cool about waking up and walking outside to see an ocean right in front of you, all while hanging out with friends. Aside from hanging out with my favorite people in the world the ocean itself offers endless hours of entertainment. Mainly because shark sightings aren't exactly rare so it's fun to dive under the water and pretend that you're a shark and grab people's ankles. Plus it's florida and florida is amazing.

spring is hopefully here for good

The amazing 80 degree day today let me know that spring is going to be here some time soon. Given that I live in stl it's probably going to be 30 again by sunday. But it was nice to have a warm day after a really long cold winter. I now started piling sports equipment in the trunk of my car for future use. If the weather stays good, I like to throw the frisbee around with some friends during lunch. But I've also got a few baseball gloves, a baseball, lacrosse stick, and I'm looking to get a soccer ball. So even though I know there is most likely to be more cold days coming it's nice to know that winter is on its' way out.

a year later

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my hip dislocation. Though technically saturday was because it happened on March 1st which was a saturday. For anybody who doesn't know what happened here's the story. A horse was being stupid for a little kid so I decided to hop on him and make him behave better. What length your stirrups are basically determines your balance, too long you can't reach them, too short and you pop right out of the saddle. Well I was going to lengthen the stirrups but the horse was being too stupid and the instructer wanted me to work with him quickly. I got about 3/4 of the way around the ring when the horse dropped his head, and since my stirrups were too short I couldn't get any grip or balance and came off. The weird part of it is that the fall wasn't hard at all I didn't go flying off, it was a normal coming off the side kind of a fall. I'm extremely grateful that for some reason I didn't feel the bone come out of it's socket. So I figured something was wrong when I couldn't get up. Eventually I was able to kinda lean in a blanket as they called the ambulance. The worst part of the day was when the instructor asked what my mom's number was so she could call her, I've never felt so horrible about giving out her cell phone number. So eventually the ambulance comes. I'll be the first to tell you that dislocating a bone is the most pain you will ever feel. As a side note the ambulance people were pretty professional except when the dude asked me "on a scale of 1 to 10 how much would you say it hurts" I said a 9 and I've got a really high pain tolerance so that basically means that it hurt really bad. The thing that annoyed me was that when I said that the guy said something along the lines of "if it was a 9 you would be crying". That pissed me off because for those of you that know me know that I'm not exactly the crying type. So extraordinarily painfully we got into the ambulence and went to Mo Bap. Apparently morphine is a very strong painkiller but it did pretty much nothing to dull the pain.
I'll never think of x-ray rooms the same way again. So obviously they had to take x-rays but the problem lied in the fact that taking them involved moving me from the bed to the machine. Two thing happened in that room 1) I've experienced the most pain I've ever felt by them moving me several times and 2) Yelled the loudest I've ever yelled (I believe there were also a few choice words interspersed). My mom was sitting in the next hall and said she could hear me through the thick x-ray room walls and doors. So after about 3 hours after the whole ordeal started the doctor finally came. After the 'surgery' I guess they have to technically call it that, I asked how long it took. Apparently it only took about 30 seconds to actually get it in place again. A lot of people ask me "did they put you to sleep" and I just say "I made sure they did". I won't even go into details about the next 3 months after that, they were filled with a lot of physical therapy and sitting on the sidlines watching other people ride their horses.
If I ever get the chance to scan the x-ray I'll post it cause it's a cool pic. Half of the people that see it think it's awesome the other half think it's disgusting. Pretty much every physical therapist and trama doctor I've talked to since then has said that for one thing they literally never see kids dislocate hips and if they do it's because of some huge car accident where the car has been totaled and flipped several times. So it's kinda weird to think that a simple matter of landing wrong from 5 feet can create that kind of a result. Hope you enjoyed a small sliver of my year in 2008

I'm in a 3D design class this semester and fourth quarter we're doing sculpture. I really love maori necklaces the one above is a fish hook. I've written about them before so I'm not gonna go into detail about the meanings of them. For the longest time I looked around the internet for a necklace. There's plenty of them but I really didn't feel like paying $20 + for a little 3 inch thing. One of the sculpture choices is carving something out of soap stone. It's some random greenish stone. Most maori necklaces are usually cow bone with a few jade ones (like the one above). So instead of spending the money I think I'm gonna try and carve a fish hook in the pattern of the one above. It'll take a lot of time but I'll the satasfaction of making it myself and I'll still have $20 in my pocket. Who knows if it's actually gonna work, but it's worth a shot

PBR

I went to the PBR last night and it was awesome. here's the website in case you wanna know more about it. But the basic gist is that the PBR stands for professional bull riding and a bunch of cowboys ride really big bulls. I've been a fan of the PBR for a while now and it was cool to see it in person. You don't get the full spectrum of it on tv, it's almost kinda boring, but when you're sitting there it's much more interesting. They've got this guy who's basically the entertainer during the commercials and down time between rides. He's insnely athletic, he jumps all over stuff and danced to everything from elvis' 'hound dog' to Beyonce's 'single ladies' and he was good at it too. The atmosphere is part of the fun, everybody is really nice and genuinely wants to be there to have a good time. But it's kinda funny because the riders themselves are like gods to this tour. Enterprise is the overarching sponser of the PBR so everything has the enterprise logo. First off the non enterprise sponsored cowboys walked through a ring of fire. Than the demi-god enterprise riders. Than the most recent 3 world champs were standing on platforms with fire coming up from the side of them. It was kinda funny how much they were celebrated. The other funny part was that the second the good riders came out of the chutes on their bull you saw hundreds of flashes from cameras exactly like when a good hitter in baseball comes to the plate. So that was my night last night.