stimulate this (that's what she said)

the economic stimulus package thing is such crap. mainly because i don't get anything and neither do my parents.

my parents claim me as a dependent so i can stay on their insurance and they pay for a lot of crap. so they claimed me on their taxes this year.

people will be getting $300 per dependent child. any child who was claimed does not get the payment themselves.

however, you have to be under the age of 17.

basically if you're in college and still claimed by your parents (as a majority of college students are), you get nothing and your parents get nothing. you could even be in high school and not get anything.

i'm a full time college student and i earned about $14,000 last year which translates to like a billion tax dollars paid, but noooo. i don't get my freebie borrowed money (that i will surely be paying back in my lifetime).

eff.

ufo in kokomo?

some weird stuff went down in kokomo tonight. some weird weird stuff. basically around 10:45, there were lights and fire in the sky, and a loud boom. cameron freaked out and alerted me to this, and of course we began listening to the kokomo police scanner. it began going insane and nobody knew what was going on. people were saying it must have been an airplane crash. they were searching everywhere for it. they were all over the place, nobody knew where to start looking. the faa says all planes are accounted for, and the military bases say there are no crafts in the area. they went to western to meet and start a search, then apparently messed up and were to be at northwestern. then there was a fire reported, it was on the news, someone called and said they smelled a gas leak, alarms went off at the business surrounding the area. then they said it was a meteorological event and called everything off.

now...what? here is the timeline as i understand it:

10:45 - fireball in the sky splits into 4 perfectly lined up blobs, along with a loud boom that was intensely felt through all of the kokomo, not just one specific area. cameron craps his pants. katee is freaked out because she just got home from work and saw the fireballs and thinks it was a ufo.
10:50 - no idea where to look still since witnesses are calling from everywhere. mention of calling in nationl guard. people reporting debris and cloud of smoke.
10:53 - mention of ground troops
10:56 - mention of switching to emergency (not broadcast) channels for some personnel (so they can talk freely and not be heard on the scanner)
11:10 - mention on news via tv and internet
11:30 - start to call it meteorological event (one officer says he doesn't believe it is one since it was too intense) same thing happened in cass county two days earlier.
11:45 - search is called off

if i were a sci-fi conspiracy theorist, i would say it's interesting that they were speaking freely until they were asked to move to the emergency channel, and that they stopped talking about military as soon as that occurred. and then they couldn't find anything and gave up relatively quickly. if i were into that sort of thing, i would say kokomo is the roswell of our time.

but what's likely the truth? somebody (a pilot) mentioned seeing F-16s heading back to the base in Fort Wayne tonight. he said he figured they were shooting flares and one of them went super sonic, accounting for everything we saw. of course, the air force bases denied having crafts in the area but they always do. so that's what probably happened and somebody is getting yelled at for going super sonic over kokomo at night and causing a panic. but it doesn't explain the debris first reported, the cloud of smoke, or the fact an entire area was blocked off for a while. flares? smoke? not the same.

but if i were you, kokomo, i'd be watching out for super soldiers, the black oil, or some little green men. if i was in kokomo tonight, i would totally go on a wild goose chase.

its BLOG BLOG BLOG

so what's up with everyone and their mom in kokomo getting a blog all of the sudden? did something occur at an event that inspired everyone to blog? i always find it funny when this phenomenon happens because it dies out after a few weeks or months and then there are a bunch of dead blogs laying around (thank god the internet doesn't generate waste, our planet would be covered in sludge from all the dead websites). sometimes one or two blogs make it through to continue living but most of the time, rest in peace.

i've been blogging since before "blogging" was a word (oh, aren't i amazing?) in various venues on a regular to semi-regular basis. my first online journal was on deadjournal.com in 8th grade, i think. the continuous blogging picked up in 9th grade for sure. i've been on deadjournal, livejournal, xanga, blogger, myspace, facebook, blogspot, and in various places on my own. it's entirely possible to trace my online presence from place to place over the years (though it's getting harder with inactive accounts getting deleted all the time).

now i update a blogspot account, nathanandkylee.com, and sometimes myspace. they all reach different audiences, so i cross post. i think it's amusing how easy blogging and generally keeping everyone updated on your life is nowadays. when i was in hs, we all depended on aim away messages. now we have the ability to text our status to facebook or twitter in real time. blogs themselves are way more user-friendly than before - it's so easy to have an amazingly awesome layout with no knowledge of web at all.

do you think that if i ever got famous, people would find my old blogs from when i was 15 and publish them and everyone would pick apart my words and somehow declare me a psycho?

i forgot my point, but welcome to the blahg world, whoever. i hope you survive.

interviews suck

So......we all hate this project. Not the final product I mean (my group hasn't even seen it yet), but this assignment. We all hate interviewing. It's the most boring thing imaginable. I wasn't able to be present at either of the interviewing shoots since my life is so busy right now, so I took on the task of editing. I kind of took a VH-1 sort of style to this video to make it bearable. Of course I only spent a couple hours on it (mostly looking for my camera cord to capture with) so I didn't emulate that style to the best of my ability, but it's not bad. I think the pacing is ok - slows down a bit in a couple spots because I was PMSing and didn't care - and I'm wondering how it'll be received in class. The whole purpose behind the project was the lighting and field production techniques behind these types of interviews and I think our shots were good.

Here it is on youtube. Let me know what you think. PS I think it's kind of on crack.

22 days...

...til the end of the semester, and here are my due dates for the rest of the semester.

4/9
Interview video

4/12
Software Peer Review Lab
Gettin' Testy Lab

4/18
Quiz 12 - Cookies
Cookie Lab
Software Peer Review Lab
Gettin' Testy Lab

4/23
Yoga Center Visit 2

4/24
Chorus Powerpoint
Give That Back Lab

4/25
341 Final Project
Goin Goin Gone Lab

4/28
505 Evaluation/TY Letter/Postings
Green screen video

4/29
341 Final Exam

5/1
Foley Project


Optional Due by 4/28
UML Modeling Quiz
Coding Standards Quiz
Software Peer Review Quiz
Software Testing Quiz
Software Release Quiz
Software Maintenance Quiz
Project Closeout Quiz


Even though I'm taking summer classes, I can't wait for this to be over.

guitar hero

i was going to blog about how awesome guitar hero 3 on wii is but just thinking about it has triggered a desire to play it that i can't supress, so i'm going to go do that instead.

more later.




maybe.

open letter to churches.

Dear churches,

There is a problem with churches nowadays. I assume that it has always existed but I'm not an expert in this field by any means, so I don't know (or care to know). These are just my observations with the problems churches have now - from a patron's perspective as well as an employee/volunteer perspective from one or two churches ONLY. Remember, I never said this is all churches - I consider myself to be a Christian. These are my experiences only. So save your snark for another day.

1. Pushing faith on others

At one point in a person's faith as a Christian, the Bible asks for you to more or less "recruit" people. Many people are good at this. Many more are not. I don't believe you should do this unless you know what you are doing, because it tends to have the opposite effect on people - most often permanently. You and your sad pitch-for-jeebus are all they will remember. I think turning people away from God by being a douche should be a bigger sin than not sharing your faith with others.

2. All up in your grill

Whether as a volunteer, employee, or patron of a church, once you go there for a while and take the next step in your faith to get involved, it seems like everyone suddenly takes this as an invitation to get up in your personal grill. This step doesn't involve opening up and sharing all your hidden sins but that's how it seems. Honestly, I would love to know why people who work for a church feel it's their personal duty to talk to you on behalf of God. Obviously if you have reached this point you have a pretty open channel. Which leads me to my next point..

3. Judgy-judgerson

The more you are involved in a church, the more it seems you are judged. And the more it seems like people think you are open to being judged. God is the only one who should ever judge, because his judgement is the only one that matters. Churches really don't get this. They often veil judgement by calling it something like accountability or consultation - calling you into a meeting and asking you personal questions that you should only share with God himself.

4. Shady business practices

I won't go into details, but the experiences I've had have been oh so shady. I realize a church is a business, and is the source of income for many people. I realize that certain things must be done in business to keep a profit turning. But whether you are a church, a McDonalds, or a locally owned specialty shop, there are things you just don't do. You don't give people raises in shady amounts, you don't do things to get tax cuts, you don't screw or take advantage of your employees, and you don't ask your own patrons to donate more when you yourself don't take a pay cut in order to keep living above the standard in your posh 100k+ home in the suburbs.

5. All fluff, no stuff

Many churches are catching onto the modern worship sort of style. These churches build huge buildings, have elaborate audio/visual setups, spend all their time on branding their sermons and marketing them, incorporate specialty crowd draws like a coffee bar, or research the best meeting times to get the most attendance. All this stuff is used by few churches in the right way. The rest of the copycats just fail, and their problem is the staff. They think they are willing to take risks - have controversial topics, risky formats, interesting and new techniques - but they only go halfway. They stay in the safe territory too much and just look foolish. If you are trying to brand your church as a new wave, modern worship but you have attendees that may not be comfortable with this, you need to be prepared to have a traditional service AND a modern service. You have to have the staffing and resources for that. The modern service needs to be filled with young, independent, and very open-minded individuals who have experience in ALL faiths but a deep commitment to God. They need to be great at multimedia, storytelling, and incorporating all sensory experiences into one package. If you can't do this without compromising your standards, you shouldn't try (which goes back to number 1 - permanently scarring people from attending church ever). The churches I have attended fail at this, but I know there are some that exist successfully.

6. God god god god god godogdogodogod

God is in everything, that's true. But then churches chalk EVERYTHING that happens up to God, it becomes contradictory. "God gave us this gift of money." One week later. "God took away this gift because *some long winded explanation.*" It's never "Shit happens." And if I understand free will, I would assume that there would be some "shit" that would "happen" in between God's doings (shady business practices perhaps?) I admit I could have this point all wrong, but imagine how this looks to someone who has little knowledge of Christianity and what it entails. It just makes you look stupid, like instead of thinking for yourself you dismiss it as God's doings.

I'm not perfect - nobody is or can be except God. Some people are more imperfect than others. I think the one thing most missing from the teaching of Christianity in the US is the principle of OPEN-MINDEDNESS. I have found much better company in people outside of my church, with mixed faiths, beliefs, morals, and histories, than I ever did at my past churches.

I don't really think that's just a coincidence.

Love, Kylee