Not much of anything happening in my life. At least not in comparison when a sibling has just announced being engaged. I need to finish writing a paper to submit to the AAAI conference workshop. My boss seems to think we have a good shot of being accepted to the workshop, I guess he would know better than I. So I'll finish that up this week for him to look over. If it does get accepted it'd be cool, I'd get to go to the conference in Chicago in July.

We had a Board party on Friday night, a mocktail party and viewing of Casino Royale. It was fun. I left before the movie ended though, I get tired around 11:30 and my new contacts don't keep my eyes as moist as the commercials for Acuvue Advance with Hydraclear would suggest. Though, I just saw the commercials for their new super-duper-extra-moisturizing Hydraclear Oasis lenses, oh well. So I only wear them for about 6 hours a day in general.

Saturday night Bryce and I went to see the Utah Symphony perform Video Games Live. It was fun, though I had hoped they would play more Final Fantasy VII music.

I bought a second Wii remote and nun-chuck a few weeks ago, and a second Guitar Hero guitar, so playing two player games has been kind of fun.

As I've said, not much of an exciting life. I'm mostly just looking forward to having the semester end in April, and then traveling to Europe in May.

Quote of the Day:
8:20 AM Sunday morning:
Josh: There's three inches of snow outside, I don't want to go to church.
Me: Sounds like a good plan.

[5 minutes later]

Me: We should probably at least go to Sacrament Meeting.
Josh: You're EVIL! Fine, I'll go, but I'm not going to like it.

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I got my passport in the mail today. It took 12 days from when I dropped off the application at the post office. So the 6 weeks processing time is a little on the just-in-case side. I'm now all set to fly to England in 6 weeks and 2 days.

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So I forgot to write about my adventures with eye trouble, and for those of you in the know the last bit is a bonus addition to the story, hot off the press of life.

Last week, on Tuesday I think, I went to an Optometrist for an eye exam. Having not had one for three years, I felt like my prescription needed an update, and this way I could try getting back into contacts. Upon finishing my exam I learned some interesting things. First, according to the physical shape of my eyes my right eye should have as bad of astigmatism as my left eye, but doesn't; apparently my right eye figured out a way to compensate for it somehow. Aside from that random information the Optometrist was a little concerned by the results of my confrontation fields test and a slightly larger than normal cupping of the optic nerve.

So he referred me to an Ophthalmologist (that's a tricky word to spell). I went and had an appointment on that Thursday with him. My test results suggested that my eyes were fine, though most of the tests came back as borderline normal. So they want to keep an eye on my eyes (hahaha), and I have an appointment in 6 months.

So with all this fun, I was rather concerned when sitting in class this morning I realized that I couldn't read the slides. I had a blind spot just to the left of my center of vision, accompanied over time by swirling sensations and overall visual oddities, including loss of peripheral vision to my left and above me. So I called the ophthalmologist and went up there to check it out. By the time I got across campus it had pretty much dissipated. So he looked at my eyes and said that any serious causes of temporary visual loss were not present, and so I had apparently simply had my first migraine. Confirmed by textbook symptoms of moving visual loss with other unusual visual phenomena. It was not fun, I don't like not being able to see, especially all of the sudden. I didn't have a headache at the time, (the visual phenomena usually signal an oncoming migraine headache, but I have had a mild headache since I returned to campus). Unfortunately, the migraines will probably be a continuing thing at this point; it is unlikely to have been a one time deal.

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Quick summary as I am tired:

Ran the Rex Lee Run this morning, had to scrape ice off my car before driving over to campus, not pleased. The air was freezing and very thin which made my lungs burn. My legs weren't even really tired when I finished, but I could hardly get enough air to stand up. The times posted afterwards said I ran a 25:46, not great, but I was expecting sometime around 27 due to lack of training this semester.

After the run I scurried home to clean up and then get back over to campus to give my presentation at the Spring Research Conference. I feel like my presentation went really well. The audience was engaged and responsive, so hopefully the judges were as well. I should get the comments sheets back from them sometime next week.

Then I went home, ate a bunch of food, watched X-Files, and napped. After which I met Josh at Smith's and we bought food to cook for the ward dinner. The idea was that the ward would meet for appetizers at the chapel at 6:30 and then split up to the houses of the people that had volunteered to host (as Josh and I had done). So we worked like crazy getting the house cleaned up and dinner made, and had everything just about set for 7:00. The entree was still cooking, but it would be done by 7:30 and we could serve salad first and mingle. Around 7:15 we started to wonder where people were. And at 7:40 we called the people in charge to find out that because we hadn't shown up for appetizers (we were at home COOKING! duh!) they assumed we had flaked out and sent our people somewhere else. This is after they called about 4 times this week to confirm, each time we made it very clear that we would be cooking. So that was obnoxious, and now we had food for about 10 people, and only 2 to feed. So Josh and I ate an amazing meal, while watching X-Files.

Now, as I'm exhausted, I'm going to sleep.

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CNN is currently running this article: Bush vetoes bill banning waterboarding.

President Bush has vetoed a bill that would ban interrogation techniques that Congress feels are torture, inhumane, cruel, or otherwise inappropriate for our nation to be participating in. To quote:
"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said.

Apparently giving the CIA the power to torture detainees is a vital requirement to keeping terrorists from blowing us up. How can this man be so delusional as to claim that we're bringing a better way of life to the countries we're occupying when we have stooped to the same level as the "terrorists" we're supposedly fighting? Apparently Bush has long since abandoned any of the ideals of modern Christianity (of which he is a supposedly practicing member) and has regressed to the Old Testament teachings of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth; all transgressions against the law will be met with death.

This is even more ridiculous because the Army recognizes that these "interrogation techniques" are inappropriate: . . . the Army field manual contends that harsh interrogation is a "poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the (interrogator) wants to hear."

If you'd listen to Bush, torture is the only thing keeping our country safe from terrorists attacks at this point. If that's the case one needs to seriously consider where that means we're heading as a nation. We've abandoned the principles that this country was founded on in the name of security. Unless the next administration works hard to reverse the perversions of our Constitution we will quickly find ourselves in a police state; no privacy, no freedom.

How can so many people in this country still be so blind to the disturbing destruction of our civil liberties that the Bush administration has led? How can so many people be so naive to think that these things "only affect the bad guys"? Have we completely forgotten how Hitler's Germany came to be? Little by little, piece by piece. He started by getting power by convincing the people that he could make them safe and provide for their well being. Then he turned them against an "enemy", and once he had control he slowly expanded who the "enemy" was. How long will it take before the definition of "terrorist" includes people that participate in "secret religious rituals" such as those performed in every LDS Temple in the world? Or even simply, "anyone that refuses a random search of their person/belongings"? Our government is already ignoring the Constitution, so I don't imagine it would take much longer to remove certain amendments as "outdated".

Why has Bush not been impeached yet?!

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