August 2003 Archives

Just a quick note between classes:

This morning, I checked my PO box in the UT Station on the West Mall. I did my usual thing. A couple of hours later, I realized I didn't have my keys. After a couple minutes of thinking, I had remembered that I had to have had them this morning to open the box. I run down to the office, get in line and ask the clerk. Sure enough, they found the keys. Matched the PO box key to me and sure enough, even remembered me from a few days before when I went in there for something else.

For all the trash-talk that the USPS gets, today, as Kari would say, they are rocking my face off.

My internet is still out of commissioned but with the great piece of plastic known as a University Catholic Center keycard, I'm able to write now.

I finally got moved into my new place. It's a great location. A block away from St. Ignatius, Martyr. A couple blocks away from St. Edward's University. Less than half a mile from perpetual adoration at San Jose.

Anyhow, what struck me as really awesome is at 10:55 a.m. on Sunday I am sitting in my bedroom doing something. I heard bells. Actual official church bells ringing just prior to Mass starting. I always loved the idea of it but never attended or lived near a church that did that. I assume it was St. Ignatius but I really don't know. In either case, I miss church bells.

Bed time for now thogh. Hopefully be back soon!

Okay, I had another person whom I'm on a single wavelength with take the test and it shot my theory out of the water. She's an INFJ- very close to me so perhaps it's acceptable.

Her percentages were very borderline though:
Introverted (I) 54% Extraverted (E) 46%
Intuitive (N) 55% Sensing (S) 45%
Feeling (F) 55% Thinking (T) 45%
Judging (J) 59% Perceiving (P) 41%

I wonder what the margin of error is on these tests? I figure for the one I linked to from kisa.ca, is a pretty short one so a higher margin of error.

I mention this for a couple of reasons. First, with my results (INTJ), I mostly agree with them but as my ENTJ friend mentioned, I'm a weird I. I'm introverted usually but very able and willing to become an extrovert when the situation merits. For example, I've MCed/led multiple events ranging from 600 to 3000 people. Secondly, my INFJ friend, I somewhat disagree with her results. She's borderline so perhaps that's why but I would consider her an extrovert. Also, she is much more thought-orientated. She's not emotional. Who knows? Just thought that was interesting.

Also, now I'm signing off for the week. I'll talk to all of my in silico friends soon.

Well everyone, my internet connection here will be down between now and the morning of August 30th. Long time, I know. E-mail and everything will be working and I'll probably check it almost as often as usual. I'll try to keep posting here as well, but in case I don't, now you know why. When I come back though, I'll be on a cable connection... oh I can't wait. Feel free to send my phone a text message at AIM screen name 'kraftcheesenmac'

Fr. Jim at Dappled Things has continued blogging about the personality results. So far with talking to people I know, I seem to be most compatible with are extroverted versions of my personality or ENTJ. I wonder if it's a balance thing?

After reading Fr. Jim's entry about his Myers-Briggs test results, I figure I would post mine as well.

Your personality type is INTJ.
Introverted (I) 82% Extraverted (E) 18%
Intuitive (N) 82% Sensing (S) 18%
Thinking (T) 75% Feeling (F) 25%
Judging (J) 68% Perceiving (P) 32%
(from kisa.ca)

Alright- what does that mean? Typelogic has an in-depth look at what you can assume about me.

Well, I got the site back up; however, the same problems on my end remain. I'm going to ask the MT people if they have any ideas. If they don't, I'm going to suffer through it while looking for something better out there that my system will operate correctly.

Update: Alright, actually, it's slightly worse. Before, it would just kick back an error when posting a new entry. Now, it rebuilds another entry and changes the category. Not only that but it sometimes changes entries on other weblogs I run from this server. Not good stuff. I e-mailed some people seeing if they had any ideas on how I could fix it.

Hey everyone, I've ran into some issues on my housing so I figure I might as well be productive. So, I'm going to take down and reinstall all of my webapps now. Hopefully it'll only take a day or two but here is your warning. Please refrain from commenting, adding yourself to the notification list, responding to surveys or anything of the like. I'm going to try to ensure that the actual content of the site remains online as much of the time as possible but all the cool features will be down. I'll post again once everything is working, checked and double-checked.

::Update::
This weblog is back up and working great for the moment. I haven't fully tested it yet...

China Paper Bites on Onion Gag (Wired.com)

First off, yes this is late. Very late. This happened in early June- but this is the first time I ran across it and I thought most of y'all might like the little laugh that it would give you. We all know and love The Onion for it's news-parodies. One Bejing newspaper didn't understand the concept of a parody.

The newspaper published a story that was based on The Onion's story of Congress threatening to leave if a new Capitol isn't built. The parody was designed to mock new great American institutions: baseball and Congress but the 1.25 million readers of the Beijing Evening News are waiting to see if Congress will in fact leave D.C. for a community more willing to support them.

What's next? Will they reprint the story about how Former President Carter is going to be tried for peace crimes? Only time will tell...

"Some guys might not agree with this, but the most sensitive milimeter of tissue on the body is in your eye" -- Professor Oler, Psychobiology, Trinity College in Hartford, CT (as recored on Trinity's Daily Jolt)

So far, this website has hosted two polls. The first was "Graduate Programs", a poll asking what you think I should do in the years following graduation. It has been by far the most interesting poll ever taken in the quest to tell me what to do. The other poll is the "Meeting Places" poll. As of today it no longer exists. I'm throwing it out. I'm throwing it out and writing a poll that makes sense. You cannot poll the audience without asking questions that people want to answer. I consider that top priority and I will go door to door if I have to, but I'm going to convince Americans to answer the poll, and I'm going to get the answers.

*Notice anything about that? E-mail or leave me a comment (below)*

Well, times like this are when I am glad I don't use Xanga. Xanga, the host of virtually all the weblogs I read, went off the deep end. Maybe something to do with the Microsoft worm that's been in the news lately? Just a random Denial of Service attack? Who knows. In either case, just forewarning for anyone else who wants to let me know the links don't work.

My system is still a little buggy. After I return to Austin (and get my cable internet hooked up and all of that jazz), I'm going to backup the database and do a fresh install. The site might be down a short while or at least things like the Comment feature and the Notification feature will be offline. I'll let you know more when the time comes.

This weekend, I was going through old disks I had in my room in Wichita Falls just to see what all was on them. I found this old picture of two of my friends, Brandie (left) and Prissy, with Santa.

It looks like just any normal picture of two teenage girls with Santa, right? (Note: this was taken almost four years ago)

Look a bit closer...

Notice his eyes...

Yes, granted, I know they just have random guys play the part of Santa but when they take the picture, why are his eyes staring down at her chest? We'll just ignore that she was only 15 at the time and that Santa is, in most circles, considered a childern's character. My words of advice to Santas: Don't look. If you simply must, don't look when the picture is being taken.

So yes folks, that is one of the reasons why I don't trust Santa. =)

This is a little quiz I found while searching around the 'net for whatever. It's for techies so many of y'all out there, don't worry about trying it!

On that note, whatever happened to Cardinal Law? I am not all that sure- officially, he is retired with the title of Archbishop Emeritus of Boston.

The Pastoral Provision website, last updated September 2001, still names Cardinal Law as Ecclesiastical Delegate- a position he has held since the position was created in 1981.

The so-called Pastoral Provision is a provision that Pope John Paul II made in 1980 to assist in the reconciliation of priests and laity from the Episcopal Church. In short, in accordance with the provision, a Episcopal person may reconcile him/herself with the Catholic Church as they would have already, a Episcopal priest- even those who are married- may reconcile himself and be allowed to be re-ordained a Catholic priest, or even an entire Episcopal congregation could reconcile itself with the Catholic Church and be able to use a modified, approved version of the Divine Book of Worship they had previously used.

With all the recent events in the Episcopal Church, I wouldn't be shocked to see the provision enacted a bit more.

I would assume that he would remain in that position since a) he was with the provision since the start and b) assuming wrongdoing on his part with the sex scandal, he has no power to transfer or discipline priests- that's the job of their respective diocesan bishops.

I just closed the Graduate Study survey and so here are the results....

20% felt I should go on to a MA/PhD in History from UT
20% felt I should go on to a MA in Pastoral Studies
60% felt I should go other places with most of the people (all but one) saying I should I should be a magazine writer or an editorialist (yes Shellie, it is a word)

One clever young fellow (Ben, I'm assuming it was you but yell at me if I'm wrong) said that I should "travel around the States in a string bikini in honor of the late 'Thong Man'." Although when first hearing the idea, my heart leapt with joy, I feel that after much deliberation, I must leave the idea as just an idea.

The next poll is online...

I was reading my hometown newspaper, the Times Record News yesterday (Tuesday) and there was a front page article that caught my attention. The TRN leads with the story of a traffic signal being turned on. That's right. The intersection connects an upper middle-class neighborhood, Tanglewood, with a major artierial, Seymour Highway [note: the map linked above is incorrect, Seymour Hwy is now Business US 277, not US 277].

Anyhow, why am I writing about this? Well, the traffic signal itself- sure, it's a good thing. What I get a kick out of is the neighborhood's reaction to the signal being turned on. From the story, the signal has been requested for years and so "the day was so long in the making that about 50 neighbors gathered at the intersection to wave at the newly-stopped traffic on Seymour."

Not only did they just waive at the traffic on Seymour Hwy though; they also had a party to celebrate. Below, Bob Horth, a member of Tanglewood Neighborhood Association, is giving out hot dogs to residents who came out for the event.

What am I trying to imply by all of this? I really don't know. It caught my attention though. I can't decide if this is just more evidence of why I can't explain what Wichita Falls is like or evidence of a great community where people can gather for any little reason. (On a quick aside: for those who take the former to indicate that Wichita Falls is a small hick town, I'm not going to try to act like we're the next Fort Worth or Austin but we do have three sporting teams- one hockey, one outdoor football, one arena football and home to the largest one-day bike race in America. We're not that small.)

What do you think? A sign of a small town (or a mid-sized town trying to act small) or a great example of a community being a community- post your comments.

(photo by Harry Tonemah, TRN)

Just a quick note to mention that the Texas 11 entry written on July 30 about the Democrat's exodus to New Mexico was published as a letter to the editor in the Wichita Falls Times Record News this morning.

Also, if you're one of the people that saw this site's address in the TRN, welcome to brandonkraft.com and feel free to comment on the letter, to add yourself to this blog's notification list (right column) or shoot me an e-mail.

I hope everyone is having a good Monday. This is my last week of classes and so I'm keeping things light while I'll prepare a couple of reports and get ready for finals. I wanted to let you know about a little notification list I have ready. On the right side of the page, there is a place for your e-mail address. Feel free to add yourself and I'll send you an e-mail about once a week letting you know what's new. Well, that's all I have for the moment, I'm off to read Machiavelli's The Prince but enjoy a little Homestar...

Mr. Shmallow makes good! (two weeks without a SB e-mail = not a happy Brandon)

Archbishop Sean Patrick O'Malley, OFM Cap. was installed as the sixth Archbishop of Boston on July 30 marking the start of a new era in the torn archdiocese.

I think it's fitting that a Franciscan brother now sits on the cathedra in the Cathedral- if we recall, St. Francis started the Franciscan movement after hearing the call "Francis, rebuild my Church" from the Lord. At the time, Francis took that to mean the physical church but he later realized it was meant for the Church as a whole. The Church of Boston is in great need of being rebuilt and it is quite poetic that a successor to the call of St. Francis has been appointed for the task.

In his homily, the new Archbishop sounded ready and excited to begin this process in the area. With his record of accomplishment in the dioceses of Palm Beach and Fall River, I really believe he is going to do the best job possible for everyone- priests, victims, everyone.

Next Friday: What happened to Cardinal Law? What is this 'Pastoral Provision'?