Schedule

My schedule is all out of whack…or maybe a better way of saying it is that I don’t have a schedule. There is no structure to my week, and there is a major advantage to working late a night (no one else is awake so I can be tasks to do stupid side jobs). As a result I usually start off getting up around 8:30am on Monday (I have class at 9:30am), then each day I’ll work later and later. Two nights ago I worked till 4am, last night I worked till 5:30am, and tonight I might even hit 6am. The only real problem with this is that I have class at 9:30am on Friday. So each week by the time Friday hits I’m completely exhausted, which is a real problem when like last week I had a midterm exam.

As a result I’ve been contemplating developing a new “schedule.” The idea would be to change from a 24 hour day to a 25 hour and 40 minute day. That way every two weeks I would start over on my schedule, and the real plus is that I would pick up a day of work every two weeks. I really think this would be easy able to implement because in a two week period I have less than 10 hours of scheduled appointments (class and meetings).

Evolutionary Timeline

Previously I wrote an entry on the evolution debate in which I simply purposed that we leave the evolution topic alone with school kids. I also said that I won’t criticize evolutionary theory directly because there wasn't anyone to argue their side…well I guess I’m going to make a criticism now. However this will only be a response to an article written by the California Academy of Sciences so they initiated it. I picked this article because it has been brought to my attention a few times this week. After my buddy Tommie sent it to me I had two separate conversations with Sherry about it and I heard Bob Dutko discuss it on his talk show. For those interested click here to read the article...it's pretty short.

In the article they discuss the discovery of a T-rex thigh bone in Montana. The bone was so large that they had to break it in half to transport. When they broke it open they found soft tissue that included blood vessels, bone cells, and possibly blood cells. They than claim that this tissue is 70 million years old…alright with such a claim they must have some plausible explanation of how soft tissue could have lasted so long without either fossilizing or decaying. Well it basically avoids this point completely until at the very end of the article when it asks the question, will we be able to clone a T-rex? Their response… “Probably not – most scientists believe that DNA cannot survive for 70 million years. Then again, before this discovery, most scientists believed that soft tissue could not survive for 70 million years either.”

Evolutionist claim that it is the Christian’s that lack objectivity because of their beliefs, but they make this discover and never even consider the possibility that dinosaurs didn’t live 70 million years ago. The problem is that if an evolutionist considers this possibility than then it doesn’t allow enough time for evolution to “get lucky” and produce complexity. I could certainly go off on how mind blowing it is to believe that a theory that requires order to be produce from disorder (contrary to all scientific observations) can be considered scientific fact beyond any doubt. Heck not even order but actual information…order implies that simple repeated patterns form, but evolution has to produce DNA which is actual information. Let me illustrate the difference with an example...a simple pattern would be "INININ", but information is a nonuniform pattern that conveys a thought such as the word INFORMATION...no repeated pattern but ordered symbols to convey a thought. Those that study DNA basically describe it as a library of information written in a 4 letter chemical alphabet and it takes between 1200 and 2000 “letters” to build a single protein.

Honestly there is even plenty of other evidence to support dinosaurs and humans being on earth at the same time…this of coarse would leave no room for even an evolutionist to claim that dinosaurs lived so long ago (well maybe I give them too much credit because when they found a prehistoric creature several years ago they called it a "living fossil"). If dinosaurs and humans are separated in time by millions of years than how is it possible that in every culture around the world there are stories about dragons. Why would primitive cultures that never saw a large reptilian creature walk on earth all have stories about them and paint similar pictures of them that resemble dinosaurs…well I guess once again luck must have played a role. There are also stories of them recorded from only about 4000 years ago found in the Bible (Job 40:15 – 41:34). Obviously at this time the term dinosaur did not exist (it was invented in the 1800s), but in the book two very large beasts (the behemoth and the leviathan) are described in great detail. Some have claimed that the behemoth was simply a hippopotamus, but it says the tail sways like a cedar tree…well unless some really fast evolution has taken place on them in the last few thousand years a hippopotamus tail looks much more like a wet noodle than a cedar tree.

Well if you couldn’t tell this topic causes some frustration for me…why don’t we just look at the evidence and draw logical conclusions based on it. Then we test those conclusions over and over to confirm or disprove the hypothesis…you know science. Some time in the future I hope to write an entry on my feelings about science in general, but for now I’ll just stop at this.

A Tribute to Farmers

I have the utmost respect for farmers…yes dad it is true. Honestly they are the true jack of all trades…only a farmer will take a piece of equipment that costs more than their yearly salary, completely disassemble it, modify it, reassemble it, and then claim that they don’t really know what they are doing. My current favorite country music song I think does a great job of capturing part of the life of a farmer so I figured I would post an entry explaining the lyrics. The song is “Amarillo Sky” by Jason Aldean, and I hope that this will give everyone a little more appreciation for the farmers of America.

Verse 1:
He gets up before the dawn
Packs a lunch and a thermos full of coffee
It's another day in the dusty haze
Those burnin' rays are wearing down his body

I’m so thankful to have been raised on a farm because hard work isn’t something you avoid…it is simply something you do. No one will ever yell at a farmer for being to work late, but farmers are typically working earlier than anyone else. I remember when I was 6 years old our whole family would get up at the crack of dawn so we could hoe in the fields before the sun got too hot. That work ethic has paid off in everything I’ve done, and will always give me an edge. I actually was talking to my father a couple months ago and was telling him how I have to work 12 to 17 hours per day, and his response was “that’s good…isn’t it.” That is such a refreshing response compared to the typical “man that must really sucks.” I really should just be thankful that I have a job and that each day there is something that I can do that is productive.

And diesel's worth the price of gold
And it's the cheapest grain he's ever sold
But he's still holding on

These are my favorite couple lines…it really portrays the reality that every farmer has to face. Everyone in the United States knows the price of gas just keeps climbing just like all costs. So for a farmer the price of diesel to run the equipment climbs as well as other costs, but the price of grain doesn’t move much and can actually drop. In fact the cost of a bushel of corn in 1980 was about $3, and today in Pigeon a bushel of corn sells at about $2.

Chorus:
He just takes the tractor another round
And pulls the plow across the ground
And sends up another prayer
He says Lord I never complain I never ask why
But please don't let my dreams run dry
Underneath, Underneath this Amarillo sky

First of all if anyone doesn’t know a round is driving from one end of the field to the other and back…farmers do this many, many times. In fact my dad often decides if the day is over by whether or not he can get another round in before sunset. The rest of the chorus brings up something that ever farmer must have…faith. As my father says, “there is no such thing as an atheist farmer.” You take everything you have to purchase these dead little seeds, put them in the soil, and pray that God brings life to that dead seed and multiplies it. Farmers work hard but are always aware of the fact that their success or failure is really out of their hands (don’t get me wrong…there is a lot of knowledge required to be a good farmer).

Verse 2:
That hail storm back in '83
Sure did take a toll on his family
But he stayed strong and carried on
Just like his dad and grandad did before him
On his knees every night he prays
Please let my crops and children grow
Cause that's all he's ever known

To most people a hail storm is a bad thing and they worry about a couple dings in their car, but to a farmer it can completely destroy their livelihood. If the crops have sprouted then a heavy hailstorm will just destroy them, and that is basically the form that all their money is currently invested in. This is obviously a problem that we are completely unable to avoid…as a fluid mechanic I can assure everyone that at least as long as I’m alive we won’t even be able to predict the weather accurately more than 5 days in advance let alone develop methods to avoid severe weather (at least on a large scale). The only thing anyone can do to avoid this is prayer.

Looking the Part

Over the past few months I’ve been the manager for a seven figure project funded by the U.S. government. The facility that I was using cost us approximately $10,000/day and nothing happen with the tunnel unless I gave the call. Therefore if we divide that by the number of hours I’m allowed to use the tunnel per day (~15 hours), we get that my time there was worth about $670/hour. So why am I throwing these numbers at you…obviously to impress everyone right…no actually this is one of those occasions that I get to share some irony (my favorite form of humor).

The obvious source of irony would be to compare my worth per hour with my pay…I’ll spare my dignity and not share what the second number is (lets just say that it only takes a few hours to equal my monthly salary). However there is a better one that made me crack up quite often. Lets say you are aware of those numbers and then go to meet the guy that is running all of this…you would probably expect to meet someone that was pretty decently dressed. Perhaps not a tie but at least nice clean shirt and khakis would be worn. When I compare that image with the one of me it just simply makes me laugh out loud. I looked so bad that one of the professors asked for my waist size so that he could buy me a new pair of shorts. Let me share with you my typical attire.

You might think that these clothes simply need a wash and besides that they aren’t too bad. Well lets take a closer look.

I’ll start with the shorts. First thing you should notice is the red stains…this would be rhodamine 6G. You might say, “Brian what is rhodamine 6G,” well it is a toxic dye that I was constantly covered head to toe in during the test. This dye stained basically every piece of clothing I wore in Memphis and washing has a minimal effect on it (side note that I also managed to stain a large portion of the facility…I don’t think they appreciated it). Secondly you should note that the right pant leg is ripped nearly in half. The rip was slowly growing from about the half way point in the test until the last day when they finally ripped all the way down. To get through the last day of work I took electrical tape (I couldn’t find duct tape) and taped my pant leg together…I got some sweet looks when I went to Home Depot to pick up a few things. I even had this one guy see me walk in then went and got his buddy and came looking for me to show him…they tried to be sneaky about it, but it was really obvious when they were spending more time looking at my shorts then at the hammers they were supposedly buying.

Now to the shoes…these things looked almost this bad after the first two weeks I was in Memphis. So really it is impressive how well they held up. Sadly this picture doesn’t fully show the damaged that has been inflicted on these shoes. Even still you get a good look at the nice big rip that runs along the side of the shoe, the rubber in the front that once went nearly to the top of the shoe but now stops on the bottom, and like everything I have it is covered in red dye. I’ve had many suggests for what to do with these shoes once the test was over. My favorite two are either cover them with gasoline and burn them or get them bronzed and leave them in our office as a memorial to Hiplate.

The real kicker is that not only did I look like this when I worked at the facility, but I didn’t change when we went out to eat. As you can imagine I would often draw a few looks when I walked into a nice restaurant (I even had a real nice double take once from a guy…you know he glances over then quickly wipes his head back to take a second look). There was only one restaurant that I actually didn’t feel comfortable eating at…I’m fine with going into a place that has candle light at each table and slightly dimmed lights, but the one that had red roses at each table was too much. We all agreed that perhaps this place was a little too nice for us and we went to a different restaurant.

I'm Back

So after 3 months hard work my experiment has finally come to an end. Thus everyone can look forward to regular updates once again on my blog. I'm probably not in the right state of mind to right much of anything, but I'll share a short story from my drive back to Ann Arbor.

I decided to take all the data and personally drive it from Memphis to Ann Arbor because I don't trust anyone else touching it (the 3 months of work now would be completely wasted if the data was lost). I originally planned on driving one set with me while shipping a backup separately, but since I wasn't sure exactly which drives had what data I opted just to drive everything myself. I was a little nervous about this because if I got in an accident or something everything would be lost, but hey I'm a good driver. When I went to leave Memphis I heard there were tornados to the north so I decided to cut east over to Nashville then head north. My hope was that the storm would die down somewhat and I would just get some rain. I was over 200 miles into the drive without a single drop of rain when I got to Elizebethtown, Kentucky. Instantly the weather went from calm to severe. I knew it was bad when I saw the rain moving horizontally and lightning hitting so close that it practically blinded me. Luckily I was right at an exit and was able to pull off the highway and right into a gas station where I parked around a corner from where the storm was coming from. All I could think was that this is unbelievable, I've never been in such severe weather in my life yet the one time I'm carrying irreplaceable cargo it finds me. After sitting there for about 20 minutes I decided to go inside the building and try finding out the status of the storms. When I went inside the gas station had just lost part of its roof from the storm, but the damage wasn't too major. They said for that spot the worst of the storm had passed by, but there was a good chance of a flash flood now that would last for the next 3 days. I decided to try to push on because I didn't want to get stuck in some town for 3 days. It was relatively calm for about another 40 miles, but than I got hit by another severe storm (I heard the gusts were between 70 and 100 miles/hour). At this point I conceded defeat (I was really trying to get back so I could go to the Michigan football game with a bunch of buddies from out of town). I checked the Weather Channel in the morning and found out that there were a total of 36 tornados that hit along the path I was driving, and even though the one I drove into at Elizebethtown wasn't a tornado the Weather Channel talked about how bad that storm was. I then finished up the drive in the morning/afternoon on Saturday. I didn't make the game, but it is still pretty sweet to be back in Michigan.