I feel like it’s been forever since I wrote anything here. I just keep building up things that I need to talk about. Really. I have a list….but I’m ignoring all of these things just to write a quick christmas post. So. Merry Christmas.

We’ve had a good break. We’re out of Missoula for a whole month. School is great for this reason. We spent time in searcy and got to see a bunch of people. Including some people with kids, some with kids on the way, and some with marriage on the way. Good times.

I just broke this TV tray. Wood just isn’t as strong as it used to be. uh.

We’re currently with the folks in Kansas. We got a lot of ice and snow, and had to shovel the drive-way this morning. That’s always great fun. Anyway, it’s nice to be relaxing. You know, and not thinking about all the work that I have to do right now. All the work that I put off to do during the break. eek. the cat.

So that’s it. I’ve made a post. Take that monkey on my back. Go and wait your usual week or two before jumping back on.

“Oh look, a very useful,informative, and yet brilliantly penned piece of prose about the Wylie family” - is something you will probably not say after reading this, provided you read it. And what’s amazing about that last sentence is that “read” is correct whether present or past tense. Crazy, right? I know.

So, in a week and a half we leave for five weeks. That’s a long time to be away from home, but it’ll be nice to leave a lot of stuff as well. The semester has one week of classes left. I only have to go to one more lecture and then finish a final project. Easy.

And that my friends, is where I’m starting this here update(because this is the start, not the last two paragraphs). First the project. It’s for cryptography. I’m doing a project using covert mutli-party computation. Here’s what I implemented: An instant messaging service. It’s written in python using twisted for networking and pygtk for the gui. You can use avatars, emoticons, etc., but you can also add yourself to a group on the client side, and check whether another user you’re talking to is also a member of that group. The trick is that you only find out the answer if the other person also checks if you’re a member, and if the answer is true for both parties. That’s why it’s covert.

The usefulness in the im client is that if you do both check, and you’re both members of the same group, you can then send each other files like normal, except you have the option of using steganography in order to hide secret messages within your other messages. These can be hidden in your avatar, emoticons, whatever. Also, a key is used for each group to encrypt the messages before they’re hidden. Anyway, the implementation is done and I just have to write the paper. ugh.

Two, my independent study is almost at an end as well, but the software is far from it. The networked application server is going quite well and I’ve mostly been cleaning up things lately. I would really like several people with an eye for large scale application development to look it over. I haven’t designed too many systems that made extensive use of plugins before, and my design is good, but also allows plugins to royally screw up the whole system if they’re written poorly.

Three, I have successfully landed a kickflip and a varial kickflip while holding on to a rail. Sure it’s way easier, but it’s a start.

I signed up for google advertising - well, for adwords instead of adsense. I’ve been using them to generate money, but now I’m also using them to advertise my sites. You get $100 for signing up, so I capped my max to $10 a day, and I’m stopping when the money runs out, but holy cow…what a difference. For my every1000.com site, here are the recent numbers for visitors per day. See if you can guess which day I signed up for the advertising.

Date          Visitors
2009-12-01  	13
2009-12-02  	7
2009-12-03  	334
2009-12-04  	996
2009-12-05  	>1000 (by eod)

That’s right. I’m having to actually pay out today. So now I’m getting realistic figures as well to work with. In general I average about $1.10 per 1000, so $1 is a good payout amount. The goal is to get other steady advertisers and ditch most of the google ones. We’ll see though.

Okay, so this has been a pretty technical post. Um. Maya is taking gymnastics. I might have already mentioned that. She’s been taking it for about two months. She practices head-stands and cartwheels all the time. Interestingly enough, I found out that I could comfortably do a hand-stand. Who knew?

Right now Rachel is sick. Also, the things you have to say as a parent are weird. Such as “don’t lick the baby’s face”, “don’t pick up the baby by the head”, “the baby is not a doll”, and other things which you say like their normal. They’re not. But you know what’s great? kids. And even though it’s sad when they cry, it makes you feel good that even an eight month old doesn’t want you to leave to go to work, and the second you come home, she cries if you don’t pick her up. That’s great. I’m pretty sure heaven is going to feel like that.

Yes, today is our seventh anniversary. Crazy. Let’s recap. In these seven years, I’ve attended three universities, we’ve lived in three different states, six different houses, had four different jobs, and we’ve had three children-one in each state. And yet, I have not been to the dentist once. That’s right! I didn’t have a cavity the first 21 years of my life, so I figure I’m probably not going to get one…ever. If you graph if, that’s a pretty safe function to draw conclusions from. I’ll give it to you: f(x) = 0*x. Go ahead, test out my age, you’ll see that there’s no reason for me to go.

So Rachel and I did go out-for about an hour, and then a baby beckoned us to come home(by crying). We had a really good time though. Rachel also made(and brought) me apple spice bread with homemade butter today. My office mates were also very appreciative that the bread came in loaf form, as opposed to slice.

Something that is funny - because it is true and actually happens all the time. You should also watch this one. Okay, since I’m posting stuff, watch this.

Okay, so I have the screensaver loading plugins and doing all kinds of crazy cool magic stuff. The only thing I don’t like is the pygtk widget set. It’s just not as easy to use as c# or something like that. I realize I could use GTK through C#, but I’m doing everything in python. And I chose gtk because it’s cross platform and using pygtk I can also use things like ogre and other 3d gui libraries. And that’s important.

Okay, I need to go help Rachel clear off the table so she can sew. She asked me about 10 minutes ago and I told her “just a minute”. So stop getting me in trouble!

That title is assuming you’re asking the question “how has it been so long since you’ve posted?”, which, by the way, is nice of you to ask. So I’ve been busy - and I don’t mean “make a list and get it done” - busy, i mean more like “if i stop to make a list things will start exploding” sort of busy. now, time for the run down.

Aunt Dawn and Uncle Danny visited a week ago. That was fun although extremely short. So short it might have actually been a dream. I’ve finally finished all the installers for ISIS and ccsm is on hold, so I’m doing thesis research! Yay! Of course, I’ve spent the last two days compiling and installing software, and I still have dependency issues. I’m using PHAML along with a few other adaptive grounding line techniques and the higher order ice model to correctly model glacial dynamics at the margins. It’ll be pretty awesome….assuming I ever get it done.

My independent study is going okay. That’s the screensaver project. I have a client server and basic plugins loading/etc, but there’s so much to do that every change requires a lot of work. It’s not going as quickly as I had hoped. I’ve also been doing quite a bit of programming in pari, which is a really nice math library. I’ve been looking at a few cool things that I won’t bore you with - not that they’re at all boring, but some of you don’t know what’s interesting. I’m not pointing fingers, I’m just saying.

I’ve been contemplating using more three word contractions. Besides having to make some of them up, they would also force a new dialect. Some flow naturally like “Thisn’t fun.”, but some would require different rules, so instead of saying “he didn’t seem candid”, you could just say “he candidn’t seem.” - and that’s just cool.

I’m thinking about joining the ranks of bean bag makers along with my wife. I want to make a game. so cool. Also, I’ve been working on my halloween costume. For some reason I’m going to be the little bee hanging guy with a propeller on his back that I got in Greece. Yep.

And I’ve been hanging out with friends. So, I was totally at a bar playing pool at 1 a.m. Sunday morning. That’s not going to happen anymore. I need some sleep. Also, that’s just not a world which I am a part of.

I was making another video, but then I stopped. I hurt my knee bowling as well. I’ll do it when I have some time, but that is not now. Oh, hey look at my script NOT compiling software, I apparently am not running -lmkl_gnu_thread. Well that’s awesome, let me go see what I can do about that for the next couple of days. Yay for software. <—– that’s sarcasm.

Oh sure, it’s pretty common for 10 year olds to be making videos to put on youtube, and it seems like knowing how to use a video editor is about like knowing how to use an ipod these days. Well first of all, I don’t know how to use an ipod, so deal with it because I’m not going to learn, and second, it’s pretty uncommon for me to be making videos. By “pretty uncommon” I mean “has never happened” - that is until tonight. Admittedly, the video I did make was really just trimming the video, adding a song, fading some stuff and exporting. I’m sure it’s not going to win a pulitzer or anything. What’s that you say? The pulitzer isn’t given for videos… um, yeah. I know. I’m just saying I’m working towards a video that’s so ground breaking there won’t be words to describe it, so they’ll give it to me for expressing something the OH so mighty pen fails to.

Why are you guys always leading me on tangents? Here’s my video.

I made this with openshot, which is pretty cool, except for “undo” isn’t implemented yet. Bummer. Anyway, now that I’m pretty much an expert at video editing it’s time to start my ground breaking film: Bill and Ted’s Amazing Odyssey.

So, my daughter is now six, and by “my daughter is now six” i mean “What the crap? How did my daughter get to be six???”. Crazy. So, many things need to be written. I will do my best to record some of them here. First we had a party for her with a kick-you-in-the-face good ice-cream cake. She finally got the game elefun and likes it very much. It was a fun party. We finally broke her pinata from last year(yay!), and in general overloaded our brains with sugar to the point that we would laugh at anything.

Some fun kid stories. Rachel said she was going to run to the store for something, and when she left Maya watched her leave in the van and very indignantly said “HEY, she said she was going to run!” I laughed. Rachel and Casal were talking about the baby and Rachel asked him what the baby eats(meaning nursing) and Casal said “Baby eats paper”. Rachel laughed and asked what else: “toys”.

Casal has now perfected the second line of “more precious than silver”, which is “Lord, you are more cocky than gold.”

One morning last week we had this giant cardboard box in our living room.(we bought a small chest freezer), and for almost an hour Casal, Maya, and I played the three little pigs. Two of us would hide in the house and the other would be the wolf which would blow the house down. It also resembled a house because I cut a door and window in it. Anyway, the kids loved this game. When Casal was the big he would say “No hair, chin chin chin”, which was awesome. And as the wolf he would usually say: “Let me in, chin chin chin”, and then would say “huff puff blow house down”. Anyway, crazy fun.

Okay, those are the stories I’ve been needing to tell. Other news. My screensaver project is making some progress. I have been writing some crazy twisted code with insane deferrals and callbacks. Just crazy stuff. I’d post some, but it’s not tested very well yet and I’ll probably have to change it a bit, but you should know, twisted is pretty dang awesome. I have so much work to do though. I’m keeping a log of what I’m doing each week and the subsequent relevant goals for the next week. The list just seems to get longer and longer the more I get done. Hopefully I’ll have something semi-functional by the end of the semester.

On completely unrelated, yet awesome news: I had this great idea for a website, but as I was going over all the details with Rachel, she suggested a much more simplified website idea which was spectacular. That was friday. I launched the site today. Now that’s a quick turnaround. The site is every1000.com. Here’s the premise: Every 1000th visitor gets a dollar for free. That’s it. Check it as much as you want, and if you are one of the thousandth visitors, you enter in your email and I paypal you a dollar at the end of the day. The end. No catch. The site works based on ad content per 1000 views. So no one has to click on anything, and I still end up making 2-5 dollars for every one I pay out. If you have anymore questions there is also a FAQ on the site. Anyway, I think it’s a funny site.

Good day to you all.

Well, last night (Saturday) I started having massive sneezing fits and sinus issues. Unfortunately, it also lasted all day today. As in, right now even. Maya had a complete breakdown this morning. Screaming, yelling, and such. Rachel and I actually stayed calm and just made her lay down because it was clear she needed a nap by noon. Anyway, things finally settled down and before we left I told her that I loved her and she needed to find a way to be happy today so we could enjoy the day. She did. She didn’t break down at all again and we had to go to several stores.

Well, my head cold was just crazy, and by the time we got home around 5 I was dead. I couldn’t really do anything. Rachel was taking care of the kids, the house, food, etc. and I was pretty much just sitting on the couch breathing through my puffs plus with vicks(best idea ever) tissue like it was my oxygen mask under water. And Maya was trying her best to take care of me. She put on my favorite kids show: The Emperor’s New Groove, which for the record, Maya doesn’t even like. Then she brought me an apple, a plum, and a piece of dark chocolate. Then she made me a big glass of ice water. I didn’t ask her for anything. She wanted to make sure I felt better and had everything I needed. She then got me a mirror just in case, and a Shel Silverstein book in case I got tired of the movie and wanted to read. And then she got out her colored pencils and made me a card. It was a picture of me and her playing outside next to the tire swing.

Anyway, I feel very blessed to have her as my daughter. She’s such a funny, smart, and pretty girl who sees the world like I wished I still did. I can’t believe she’s already turning six. The older she gets the more scared I am of all the atrocities and other things that I’ll have to tell her about. I seriously tear up when we walk by the young girls section in target with all the training bras and such. I just can’t believe it’s going to happen. Until then, I’m trying to enjoy all the fun little things I can share about the world with her now: Slug trails, Squirrel’s nests, sports, games, uno, etc. I am often amazed at the vast amount of knowledge that children have to learn about the world and that I already posses simply because I’ve already been a child and discovered those things.

As far as school goes, she loves doing the math. Of course, she knows her addition/subtraction already so she’s just been enjoying doing what she already knows. A lot of times she won’t want to do her phonics because it’s not fun like math is. As a responsible parent I take these opportunities to say things like “Well, not everything can be as cool and fun as math.” which mostly irritates Rachel. Don’t worry, I always point out how fun reading/writing/etc are, but when an opening comes, I just can’t help it.

To jump children, I’ve already mentioned that Casal can only count to 3 and then he jumps to 9,10. He knows that’s incorrect though, but hasn’t bothered learning any more. Today Rachel asked him how many fingers he had, and he started counting and said “One, Two, Three……….Many many many fingers” which was great.

I guess I just had to post on this day. I’ve been needing to post for a while, and this day gave me a good reason.

Let’s see. We’ve been doing some farmer’s markets, festivals, and outside type things. I even got to play catch with Maya and she is getting the concept. We also flew kites this weekend. That was fun….well, minus all the kite breaking. Maya wants to take gymnastics which would be fun. Also, she has started her homeschooling. We’re doing a kindergarten/first grade hybrid curriculum. Just sort of letting her move at her own pace, so when she wants to work ahead we let her. I’ve been doing math with her every morning before I leave for work. She loves it. Most of the “math” is understanding ones/tens digits, basic addition/subtraction, and the like. She’s really good at it and we work ahead pretty much every day because she likes it. The math book at that level is fun though. It seems more like an activity book of fun puzzles rather than a text book. I can remember horrible worksheets in kindergarten…ugh. I’m glad this is better. Well, we chose it, so of course it’s better.

Casal has been counting a lot, but he counts “1, 2, 3, 9, 10″ and then repeats. It’s amusing. He has also found a past tense: the phrase “last night”. Anything that is in the past was “last night”. So even if he’s referring to yesterday, last week, or even earlier that day, I hear “You work last night?”. And a quick story. hilarious. So, at the farmer’s market there were samples of yellow watermelon (which, for the record is my favorite type and reminds me of my Grandma’s farm). Casal got a sample and a few minutes later as we’re looking around Casal says “Me no like this part, Daddy.” And I look down and he’s eaten all the fruit part and is halfway through the rind. I about died laughing while telling him that it was because you’re not supposed to eat that part.

I have officially made a facebook app. Two actually. One for me, one for money, and I’m considering another one for fun.

Elinor can sit up by herself now. She’s been able to for about a week or two. This is nice because a lot of times she doesn’t want to be held and wants to play on the floor, but before you still had to hold her up. She’s so different than the other two were as babies.

I’m still drawing. I’d like to upload some pictures to show, but then I’d have to scan them and such. I’m just too lazy for that.

I think that’s it. I have cryptography homework to wrap up, and twisted protocol handler to write, some programs to compile, and some reading to do.

Well, me at least - but since it’ll affect me and my writing schedule, it also directly affects you. So there.

Man, have you ever felt like you’ve been really busy, but when you think about it, maybe you haven’t been? I don’t know. I’ve been trying to discipline myself lately. I’m usually a “go with the flow” kind of guy. I have a lot of interests and things I like to do, but they get moved around based on what other priorities I have. This isn’t very efficient. Not that my life needs to be a model of efficiency…I’m just saying. For some goals though, I’m making a pretty determined effort to make time. I’ll list some because we all know you like reading lists and I like making them.

1. Reading. I’m making sure I read at least a couple or so chapters of the bible a day. I’ve been doing this for a month or so, but I’m still doing it so it gets to go on my list.
2. Drawing. In preparation for my comic I’ve been making myself draw at least one picture a day. It doesn’t have to be anything fantastic, just something mostly complete. I draw a lot of people flying backwards firing a gun. I don’t know why. If it weren’t for faces I’d be ready for the comic now. I can draw faces, but drawing the same face, consistently, from many angles is a very difficult task. Maybe I should do a knight story where everyone is a knight. That’s right, even the princess.
3. Exercise. I’ve been riding my bike everyday this summer, but I’m also always opting for the stairs, I have bicycle pedals in my office so I can do some pedaling while working, and I still have my treadmill so I can walk at night some. I need to do more pushups/etc, but I’m not there consistently yet.
4. Bowling. I don’t think I’m going to bowl a league this season. I’d really like to, but none of them start after 7 which is what I want. I’ll probably just take an hour every monday night and bowl 3 games. I am getting better.
5. Music. I have been playing guitar a lot over the summer. I’ve written a lot. I’m hoping to spend at least an hour or so a week making sure I remember most of what I’ve done. Maya has also shown interest in playing and I’ve tried to teach her a little. She usually just wants to mess with the capo and make noise though. And that’s okay. Her and Casal call the picks “chips”, and I’ve started as well.

Well, that’s it for hobby related schedules. As a family we’ve been discussing our future a lot lately. It’s a cloudy sort of thing that is very difficult to see. Speaking of seeing. I have new glasses - as does Rachel. I finally went back to the eye doctor for the first time in seven years. To my surprise, my headaches and issues have been because my old glasses were too strong. Quite a bit too strong. My eyes have gotten better! My right eye went from 300 to 200 and my left from 250 to 150. Super cool. We also bought sunglasses, which is the first time I’ve ever owned a prescription pair, so watch out because my coolness just broke the meter.

Casal calls chocolate chips “locka whips” and the trampoline “locka wee”. Just interesting. He’s started singing lately a lot. I’ve mentioned him singing “someday”, but he also likes to sing “more precious than silver”, but the first line “Lord, you are more precious than silver” is sung “Lord, you are, precious, rover”.

Oh, we went to an Osprey game last wednesday. That’s the local minor league baseball team. It was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed it. We brought along their baseball gloves(and mine), had dinner at the park, and ran around.

Everyone is doing rather well, hormones and age aside, and we’re in a constant state of reevaluating values, goals, direction, and methods. This is an interesting time in our life. I often wonder what our kids will remember. I’ll just hope they mostly remember the nightly prayers, baseball games, and the bikecar. That sounds like a good childhood. Throw in a couple of picnics and popsicles and it’s perfect.

I’ve been contemplating lately what the church would look like if we stopped trying to model the first century church and started following based off of the same teachings the first century church had. You may think at first this would be the same thing, but I don’t believe it would even be close. So much of what dictated the way the church worked in the beginning was culture. The way synagogues were set up, women’s roles, persecutions, etc. Paul’s instructions were merely to guide some churches who were missing the heart of Jesus’s message. Nothing outside the gospel changes what Jesus said, they merely give some specifics to people who were missing the point.

So as a thought experiment, what happens to the way we set up our church using only the gospels. If we only had what Jesus said things would be a lot different. I’m not trying to discount the biblical authority of Paul’s letters, but I am trying to point out that we don’t have all of his letters, and they were intended for a specific church with very specific problems. Which is why sometimes they seem to contradict themselves(women should be silent vs. women praying and prophesying vs. there is no jew nor greek, male nor female). I think it’s absurd to make a “rule” out of what was meant to be a specific instruction for ONE group of people because of ONE thing they needed guidance on. I believe some of these rules are just like eating the meat sacrificed to idols. It really depends on the person.

So, given only what Jesus taught as the new gospel, we lose any difference between male or female. Jesus never touches on the authority of man. We lose any instrumental music claims. These are a stretch anyway, but without the one sentence by Paul there simply isn’t an argument at all. We lose the lame argument that the “church of Christ” is the only name that can be used. There are more, but this is the start. If Jesus came today, preached the same message he preached in the gospels, what would we do with the church given our current culture?