OOPS

The freakiest thing happened today. As I was leaving work today, I started to go out an emergency exit. Now this is a door that is always unlocked and isn't truly an emergency exit. As I put my hand on the door, the fire alarm went off. Now, it was a coincidence, but it made me jump for a second.

I had a Steve Urkel "did I do that?" moment.

In other news...

My vacation plans are progressing. I looked into Red Sox tickets, not realizing that Red Sox tickets are more rare than error free speech from George Bush. I did find some tickets on eBay, but they're all terribly expensive. I don't "need" to the see the Red Sox, but it would be nice. I need to figure out my itinerary.

Here are some possibilities:

•Museum of Science
•New England Aquarium
•Skywalk Observatory
•Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
•Harvard Museum of Natural History
•John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum

I have to update my website with my itinerary soon. It'll be done soon. I need to come up with a new design. I promise I'll do it before I leave...really!

A new beginning

This is the week of reckoning... all hopes and dreams begin and end here.

Congratulations Tiffany!
Class of 2006

Faith

(Hebrews 11:1)Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.

(Hebrews 11:6) 6 Moreover, without faith it is impossible to please [him] well, for he that approaches God must believe that he is and that he becomes the rewarder of those earnestly seeking him(m*).

*** Marginals ***
(Zephaniah 2:3) seek Jehovah, all YOU meek ones of the earth, who have practiced His own judicial decision. Seek righteousness, seek meekness. Probably YOU may be concealed in the day of Jehovah’s anger.

(Matthew 6:33) "Keep on, then, seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these [other] things will be added to YOU.

My Summer Vacation

Here's the vacation plan:

July 6 - 9 - Philadelphia
Sheraton University City
Attending the 2006 District Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses

July 12 - 16 Boston
Comfort Inn & Suites Logan International Airport
Bumming around Boston :)

I'm driving to Philly, but flying to Boston. As soon as I make flight plans, I'll post them.

Catching Up

I haven't written, really written, in a while. I think that the break in classes has left me devoid of grandiose ideas. I did read an interesting article today claiming that the sane half of TomKat maybe experiencing post partum depression. I wonder if old Tommy has stocked up on Flinstone chewables for his baby girl...and her mom.

On a lighter note, I got an A in my web design class. I was really happy when I saw that especially given the trying circumstances I endured with that class. I still haven't gotten my grade for my Intro to Computers class. Intro to Physical Science starts next week. My sister Tiffany, who is graduating from high school next week, took one look at my text book and basically told me that I'll be taking high school level science. I hope I'm up to it.

I'll post my feelings about LOST tommorow.

End of the week

This week, although devoid of homework or class obligations, was still pretty busy. I had plenty to do and discovered some work that still needs to be done. Hopefully, things will stay slow for a while so that these issues can be resolved.

Tomorrow, I'll be at the alumni and friends reunion. It's 3-6 (open house) and 6-8 (evening reception). It's been lots of planning but I think everything will be fine.

What's going on?

In case you haven't heard...

There was a bat in my apartment on Sunday night...

Bats in the house and dogs in the car... what's next? A plague on my household? Boils, frogs, a day in darkness?

1 John 4:18

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love throws fear outside, because fear exercises a restraint. Indeed, he that is under fear has not been made perfect in love."

Blog things

Your Linguistic Profile::

50% General American English

25% Dixie

20% Yankee

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

You Should Be a Joke Writer

You're totally hilarious, and you can find the humor in any situation. Whether you're spouting off zingers, comebacks, or jokes about life... You usually can keep a crowd laughing, and you have plenty of material. You have the makings of a great comedian - or comedic writer.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

You Passed 8th Grade Science

Congratulations, you got 7/8 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Science?

Our Town

This is a story about Grover's Corner...



I saw this play tonight at Howard Community College. I've seen a couple of plays at HCC, but I have enjoyed each one. This simple story set between 1901 and 1913 takes you back to a simpler time...A time when love was more pure, life was slower, everyone knew everyone's name. Your guide, the narrator, is there to fill you in on all the important details of the town.

I thorougly enjoyed the play. I know they'll be many more.

Web site project

At long last, my project is done (http://polaris.umuc.edu/~jjones). It was a lot of hard work and frustration, but I think it's one of the best sites I've done. There are things that I don't like about it, but they are things that couldn't be helped in the framework of my class.

I'll post a link to the site from my personal website soon.
Updated on 5/14/2006 - http://www.jmjdesigns.com/dayspa

Nightmares again

Once again, I had the twin towers dream. Every now and again I dream that I'm in one of the twin towers on September 11th. This time, I was in the building and I could see the planes coming toward the building despite being on the first floor. I managed to get out in time before the towers fell.

This has got to be one of the most disturbing dreams I've ever had. The fire dreams are distressing, but the twin towers dreams are far worse. I can't imagine what it would've been like to be in the twin towers when they were hit. It was the worse day in American history.

If you're not a part of the solution, you're a part of the problem

I posted the following on a message board in the hopes of getting some helpful answers:

I need some help with a couple of XML pages I'm developing for my web design class. I think I may have done something wrong because when I try to view my xml pages in IE I don't get anything. But when I try to open them in Firefox, they open.


Here's my site: http://polaris.umuc.edu/~jjones/


Go to Massage and Face and Skin for the links.


My XML pages:
http://polaris.umuc.edu/~jjones/massage.xml
http://polaris.umuc.edu/~jjones/faceskin.xml
I am linking to the wrong file? Should I be linking to the .xsl file? What file extension should I be using. I'm confused and tired.

The only answers I've gotten so have been nothing but my problem rewritten.

• I'm not sure how to fix it, but this is the error I got from Maxthon The XML page cannot be displayed Cannot view XML input using style sheet. (If you don't know how to fix it, why did you bother to email? )
  
• I have noticed that your XML pages are not showing up. (No, really?)
  
• Ok, I think I may have figured it out. What do you have your default browser set as? If you change your browser to IE, maybe it will show up correctly in IE. (Did you even read my problem? It doesn't show up in IE)
  
• The first link I click on just brings up a page with you background color. The second link gives this error message in IE:
  
  "The XML page cannot be displayed (Yes, I know, that's the problem!!!)
  Cannot view XML input using style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.

Here's my theory (and plea): if you can't help me, KEEP QUIET!!

I should've gone to bed

I feel guilty for not keeping up with my blog lately. Life has been so hectic with school and work projects. I'm working on my Web Design class sememster project. It's a web site about a day spa. It's not as easy a topic as I thought it would be. But I'm plowing through.

Thinking of plowing through... I was working on my project Sunday night. I started around 9 pm and at one point looked up at the time and it was 4 am. I was shocked to say the least. I ended up working on it for four more hours and at 8:15 am I went to bed. I called and left a garbled message on my supervisor's voicemail and went to bed. After 2 hours, I woke up and started getting ready for work. Here's a tip for you, if you don't sleep for 22 hours, you don't get to decide what's best for you that particular day. Going to work was such a mistake because when I finally got there, I was so tired, I couldn't even think. I'm glad that no one asked about anything of any importance because they wouldn't have gotten anything intelligent from me.

Just talking about it is making me sleepy... I need a nap.

Laurel Spanish Congregation

I went to the spanish congregation today and it was very nice. The talk was about Galatians 6:7, "whatever a man is sowing, this he shall also reap". There were really good points about meeting attendance, personal bible study, being careful about our associations, and certain kinds of entertainment. I was surprised because I picked up about 30% of the talk. The rest was over my head.

The Watchtower study was easier to follow because I had my english copy of the magazine along with the spanish copy. I'm still not ready to raise my hand and answer a question, but maybe one day. I met a sister named Christine who said that she decided to move to a spanish congregation, but she hadn't had any classes. She found that just being there and attending the spanish and english meetings helped her. She suggested that I do the same. She also suggested that I go out in the ministry with the spanish congregation as well. Their public talk is on Saturdays, so I could go on Saturdays at 2pm for spanish and then Sundays at 3:30 at my regular congregation for english. I friend of mine, who is now in a sign language congregation, did that for a while until she felt comfortable going to the sign language congregation all the time.

So I'm going to try to keep at it.

Deja vu

I was thinking today as I was watching LOST, we're never going to see Harold Perrineau anymore. Then, they showed a preview where Michael comes back with a big ol'fro.

Then later on, I was watching the Cosby show on Nick @ Night and low and behold who do I see? Harold Perrineau... He played Scott, a guy that was dating Theo's girl friend Justine... and he had a big ol'fro... except it was in the shape of a box because, of course, in 1989, that was the style.

I hope that the early 90's never comes back in style.

The end of Black White: the project

Here are my overall/concerns with the show:

1. It was unfair of the producers to make them live together. Living with people you don't know would be hard on anybody. They could've gone through the project living next door to each other and having scheduled meetings each day or every other day. This way, they could "pass" and then go home and reflect on it and really say what they felt without feeling like they would offend someone. The person I felt bad for the most in this situation was Rose because I think she actually got it, but she couldn't express it without upsetting her parents.

2. There were some definite family issues with the Sparks that didn't need to be played out on TV. The fact that Nick had been kicked out of school (and how stereotypical was that) didn't need to be played out on tv. That was a black cloud on that family that only served to re-enforce a negative stereotype about young AA men; they're only interested in bling, living a gangster lifestyle, they don't care about education, and they're all lazy. I was extremely unhappy that they showed that. The only good thing that came out of that was that maybe they discovered that he like photography and that middle class AA families can see that it's not just the poor kids who give up on college. Poor kids sometimes give up because they can't afford college. Kids who come from middle-class families don't always have that obstacle. But sometimes they don't see the value of education because they take things for granted. And I didn't understand why the Sparks didn't seem to do more about clearing Nick's name and getting him back in school.

3. I hadn't considered the fact that instead of Bruno being racist, he is classist. he can't understand the life of anyone outside of the middle class. I also think that his opinions are common of kids of immigrants. Early on, he said that his parents were immigrants and that they worked hard to build a successful life. I think that immigrant parents, in general, do a good job instilling work ethics in their kids. However, I sort of agree with Brian in that Bruno didn't understand any other culture because he didn't want to understand it. I do think that the producers took Bruno to some places that were stereotypical. The meeting that he and Carmen went to meet that lady was an event for women. So he really didn't fit in because he was a man. On the flipside, I couldn't believe that he didn't see the racism at the county western bar. It was so obvious.

4. The jumper cables thing was odd. If the cameras hadn't been there and they didn't look like two middle class black men, I think that the outcome would've been different. If they had looked like Nick (with baggy pants and bling) and the car had looked beat up, I don't know if people would've helped them because they would have suspected that they were being set up.

5. Rose seemed to learn the most throughout the whole project. I think she'll stay in contact with the Sparks. Hopefully, she will continue her poetry.

6. Overall, I think that the producers did a bad job on this project. They pulled out all the stereotypes and then didn't try to squash any of them. They focused more on the white people learning something negative and the black people learning nothing at all. None of the exercises the Sparks family went through were meant for them to learn about the "problems" associated with being white besides having "boring hobbies" like knitting.

I'm glad the show is over. I think they could've done a better job with it. I don't think it's fair that they made these two families the official representatives for each race. It was just too heavy a burden.

Funny coincidence

I find it interesting that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had their baby on the same day that Brooke Sheilds had her baby... hmmmm.....

I wonder if the two families will every meet at Mommy and me classes.

Star Trek 2.0 on G4

Star Trek Karaoke

Baby Steps

I have set a goal to be more active in the ministry and since I started working toward that goal, I'm finding new opportunities opening up to me. I'm getting to meet and work with new people, accomplishing another goal of mine, to become more social. I'm also getting out in the ministry and trying new facets of the ministry.

I was talking to someone today who has been encouraging me to auxiliary pioneer for months. Auxiliary pioneers spend 50 hours a month in the ministry, going from door-to-door, conducting bible studies, etc. I'm not quite at that point, but I am working towards that. I'm trying to get my hours up each month, but right now, my goal is to get to and remain at the national average of about 10 hours a month. It seems like a little bit of time in the grand scheme of things, but when I think of what the speaker said last night at the memorial of Christ's death, that Jesus Christ suffered 4 inch nails through his hands for all of us, not just his Christian followers, but for every single person on earth, it's hard to imagine that giving up 10 hours a month would even scratch the surface as something I can do in return to honor Jesus' life. He left his disciples the command to "go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit, teaching them to observe the things I have commanded you" and I want to really take an active share in doing this.

As for me, I'm going to continue to work on my goals and grow spiritually. My next hurdle is going to the Spanish congregation.