TwiddleGeek

I haven’t been sleeping anywhere near enough lately. Long, cold nights combined with 5 hours sleep for nights on end are finally starting to get to me, I think. My eyes are heavy and my head hurts. I usually live on 6 hours, but anything less than that for more than a few days in a row and I’m dragging. But hey, we’ve all been there, right? The weather hasn’t helped much lately. Currently a whopping 3F outside, with a windchill of -11F. It gets all the way down to around -20F windchill on some nights, and my job puts me outside all night long.

The good news is I’m still well on my way to San Diego and hopefully out of this mess once and for all. Savings are going good, planning is going good, things are looking more or less on track and perhaps even better than expected. It’s going to take some sacrifices and compromises, but the end result is going to be well worth the efforts. The idea that this could well be the last time I’ll see below zero temperatures, or anything less than 45F, is a godsend. Throw in a far better job market, beautiful locations, tons of museums and events, and so forth and I’m thrilled. Of course, the very best part of all this will be spending time with SpaceKitty. I’m sure some of you out there know just how much it hurts to be away from those you love.

I’d also like to throw a few links out there while I’m at it tonight. As I’ve said previously, I’ve been reading the bible cover to cover. Well, doing so brings up a lot of questions for a guy like me, and GotQuestions.org has been a great deal of help in finding answers and references. Thousands of questions on very interesting topics, ranging from angels to Harry Potter to UFOs. While I certainly don’t agree with everything the site says, and nobody should ever take this at face value without consulting the scripture for yourself, it’s a very handy site for settling curiosity. With the way the pages are interlinked together, you might find yourself surfing topics for longer than you expected. I certainly have.

Another favorite resource of mine is TruthForLife.org. Here you’ll find daily podcasts M-F with bible study from Alister Begg. You’ll find him on several Christian radio stations, but there’s also a 30 day rolling archive freely available on the website. I find Begg’s study to always be fascinating, very intelligent, well thought out, challenging, and sometimes even quite funny. He’s not one of the preachers who spends the entire time insulting you for what you don’t know, but rather building upon what you do. Begg’s understanding of the scripture and how it relates together is wonderful, and Truth For Life has been a great resource in helping me to understand and get more in depth with the bible. I certainly recommend checking it out.

Along with playing games and watching movies, I simply love to read. I typically go through a fair amount of books on a large variety of topics including everything from time management to Japanese study, art to various fiction and humor. I’d say my favorite books are of the Sci-fi, fantasy, and study types. I love a good book that can make me laugh, think, or teach me something new. Of course this year I have several more that I’d like to read. I tend to enjoy long running series, last year finishing the complete Harry Potter set and this year His Dark Materials.

First and foremost, I’d like to read a new Bible I recently purchased cover to cover. SpaceKitty helped me pick out a new one over the New Years holiday and I’m quite fond of it. It’s based on the New Living Translation and although I wouldn’t use it for serious study, it makes for a nice and easy read. It neatly separates the books, further dividing them into sections with concise headings and useful information along the way. I’ve seen plans for ‘Reading the Bible in 1 year’ and a local church has plaques for reading plans… but if you do away with some of the hard to follow old English sentence structure, it’s really not that big of a task. This NLT Bible is 66 books with a total of just 759 pages. At a normal reading pace rather than a in-depth study, it shouldn’t take very long at all.

Other than that I’d like to get back into the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. I’ve read the first 5 books, and I plan on reading the entire series as soon as I can. It’s funny, and I hear it only gets better as the books go on. I’d also like to pick up some more Halo books. I’ve read the first one, The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund, and found it surprisingly good. I don’t have much desire to read the The Flood, but I want to pick up Nylund’s other two in the series, First Strike and Ghosts of Onyx. Another unlikely series is the Star Trek TNG books. I loved that series, and as much as I never thought I’d get into the fiction, they’re actually very enjoyable books. I’ve read about 13 of the 60+ official books, and I plan on reading many more. Sure, they’re the literary equivalent of junk food, but they’re entertaining if nothing else.

Other than that, I want to get back into some of my study books on Japanese and art. I’ve a lot of great Japanese study books by Taeko Kamiya and Naoko Chino published in the excellent Kodansha series, and I quite enjoy reading them. I also have art technique books ranging from more modern all the way to The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed, first published in 1917. Lots of good stuff to go through, but all of it taking a good deal of time to properly study.