My truck bit the dust yesterday. Coming out of class and getting into my truck, I turned the key and just got continuous revving, no turnover. I try again, nothing. I go to the back of my truck and pull out my trusty hammer.

Laying underneath the truck and give the starter a few whacks, hoping that just maybe, it was caught. I try starting it again, nothing. So, I do some more narrowing down of what the problem could be and then call a friend to come pick me up.

Around 8pm I leave my group meeting and walk back to the parking lot to have the truck towed. The tow truck arrives and because of the closeness of the parking lot we have to push the truck out. A student who had been working out at the rec sees what we are doing and runs over to help. We talk for a while and he says, “Are you going to need a ride?”. I was a little shocked and told him that yes, I needed a ride to the place where they were taking my truck.

On the way to the car care place I tell him that he needs to give me his number so that I can pay him back for his gas (or something to say thanks). He tells me no and doesn’t let me insist, instead he says to me, “Where I’m from we have no problem dropping what we’re doing to help others”.

There are still some good folks in the world.

To save up some money for my move to Dallas I have taken a temporary job at a local college bookstore. It is interesting to see the way that things work from the inside and how chaotic the book sorting process is.

A lot of work goes into keeping books that will be used in the summer or next semester and processing those that will not be used again until next spring. It is a somewhat convoluted process with, in my opinion, a few too many steps.

On top of the process, the prices at which we buy books back from the students is outrageous and insulting. A girl came in yesterday with an organic chemistry book that was priced in our computers as selling for $250. The computer’s buy back price? $40. Not only is that wrong, it’s highway robbery. I understand that the bookstore is trying to make a profit but a $210 one? Seems excessive to me.

It seems like it isn’t just happening to me.

Over the last few days I have received close to 1,000 unique hits from the phrase “305-503-8068” across different search engines. If you are looking for an answer as to what that phone number is, it is an illegal, unsolicited number. You can ignore the calls or contact the provider using Telcodata.us

I have had a prescription for the past few years that my body requires. Multiple doctors have prescribed the medication to me on different occasions. My dad recently changed jobs and I needed a refill on my prescription. I went to the doctor and did the routine checkup, and he filled out another prescription form.

When I dropped the prescription off to Walgreens they told me that they would have to contact my doctor to get authorization for the prescription. I called my doctor’s office and they said they would need to fax some things to the insurance company. A few days passed and I called the doctor’s office back. I was informed that they had faxed the information and were waiting on a response from insurance. Today I called back again and they told me that insurance needed me to call and verify some things.

Not being in the mood to deal with the insurance company (and since it isn’t my insurance company) I let my mom call. She tells them that I have taken this medicine for the better part of three years now and that there is no reason they shouldn’t cover it. They respond by saying that the medicine is “technically” for short term use and that they can’t cover that.

My old insurance company had no problem covering me and paying for this medication over a long period of time, so I don’t understand the problem here. I think it comes down to simple greed. The insurance companies are starting to get stingy when it comes to paying for prescriptions that they think are unnecessary. Who are they to say that a prescription is not needed? This is one reason a national healthcare system should be put in place, so people don’t have to pay an arm and a leg to receive a prescription that they need.

An interesting conversation took place tonight. It was a conversation about faith, beliefs, Christianity, evolution, and creationism.

I am a Christian. I believe in Creationism as the cornerstone as to how the Earth was formed and how we as humans came to exist. My thoughts on evolution are that yes, evolution occurs, but not on the scale to form new species. I believe that we see evolution in the level of melatonin in people’s skin depending on where they live or the height of a population depending on their diet.

In the conversation this evening, I was asked if I believed in life elsewhere than on Earth. That’s a question that I cannot answer and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Space is huge and so is God, so who knows, but quite honestly, who cares? Does it really matter? What would occur if life was found elsewhere?

For years scientists have been touting that they have found ice particles on different planets and that these may be the keys to the foundation of life. Yet, everytime, that’s all we hear about it. We are told that conditions on different planets or moons are perfect for life to form, but that’s all we get, never a follow-up with “Yes! We’ve found life!”. This strikes me as odd, and as possible proof that we might be the only ones out here.

I may not be able to back up everything that I say with fact or scripture, but I still will stand up for what I believe in. Most of the time in conversations that I have with people, they use convoluted logic or “facts” that they received from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. The produce no real argument, yet criticize my thoughts because I stand for them so firmly.

I am not saying all people are like this. Not at all. There are just a certain few that do it. The same goes for Christians as well. If we push and push, we end up just pushing people away. I have learned that if I listen to people and their thoughts and reasoning behind it, I can better relate, and the more willing they become to listen to me. I am not here to shove Christianity down people’s throats, I am merely here to share it when the time is right.

Today I received a phone call from the phone number 305-503-8068 but when I picked up, the call ended. I tried calling the number back but received a pre-recorded menu in Spanish. I hit “9” for the operator and was greeted by a Spanish speaking one. Not knowing enough Spanish to have a full conversation I tried to convey that they should not call me again (this has happened before).

After getting off of the phone I looked up the number by simply typing it into Blingo. I came upon this. It gives some useful information and I will probably follow through and report the number to the provider.

This is just frustrating, having to pay for a 1 second call on my cellphone. Spam was once a problem but that’s easy to filter, it is much more difficult to filter phone calls, just because it is so easy to get a phone number and use it for something like this. The way it works is that these scams wait for your answering machine to pick up, then they leave a pre-recorded message (usually in Spanish). It is illegal to do this but most people do not know this or how to go about handling it.

To put it simply, report the number using Telcodata.us

I am reading Michael Crichton’s new book, State of Fear and I can’t put it down.

It is a story about global warming and Crichton’s personal beliefs that it does not exsist. More specifically he believes that humans have a much smaller impact on the climate than scientists give credit for.

The book is well written and has some interesting footnotes with information about global warming and research papers/documents that point to cyclic climate.

I have finally trekked my way back from Dallas this morning and am glad to report that I found a place to live.

We (my mom, my brother, and I) were pressed for time near the end of our trip just because none of the apartment offices were going to be open today because of Easter. Nonetheless, at the last minute I came to a decision and signed a lease. Stephan: 1 Stress Level: 0

I will be living near where the Cowboys practice, which I guess is alright, I’m not a big pro football fan so it doesn’t really matter to me.

It is definitely a nice area of town and there is a nice amount of scenery, including hills, something that we lack in Lubbock and Houston.

Definitely a stress reliever to have all of that settled and taken care of. Now to just focus on school and moving.

As promised, I have a picture of my arm after the shotgun mishap.

To everyone that has contacted me in the last couple of weeks, I get the message. I need to redesign, open up comments, and work on the feed(s). The reason for lack of new design or comments is the fact that I am graduating in about a month so things have been a little hectic.

As far as the feeds go, I have been asked to provide full text feeds as well as summaries. I still have not decided what route I want to go on these and I will probably play with a few different formats to see what works best and gets the most use.

There are a lot of things I would like to enhance in my design, including reader friendly URLs and a tagging/category based system for archives. Making the time to do these things has just been difficult. My apologies. Hopefully soon there will be a lull in the excitement and I can this stuff done.