|
mortis_sum
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Mark
Country: United States
State: Arizona
Gender: Male
Interests: Let me tell you a tale of the little mouse who wanted to go to the fair: Little Johnny Mouse wanted to go to the fair. Can't remember the rest, but in the end he gets his little apendages ripped off and eaten by a cat. The end.
Message: message me
AIM:  ieatsplatypus
MSN: yayoldpeople@hotmail.com
Member Since:
3/29/2004
|
|
| basically, this website is er cool for learning chinese:
A new nciku, our early Christmas present to you
December 13th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Posted by the nciku team, nciku.com
If you are looking at this post, that means nciku, your free online
Chinese dictionary, is back with all sorts of new stuff. The look, feel
and inner-workings of the site are all a little different. Some
functions have been added, some renamed, and others merged together. We
would like to introduce you to some of the new features that we are
excited about and hope you will be too.
- 1. Smarter Dictionary Search
We changed our search engine to help you get the results
you want quicker and easier. Set your learning language to Chinese and
nciku does the rest. Search for an English word and all of the Chinese
words with that meaning will display first. So, if you search for
apple, 苹果 p璯gguǒ will be at the top, not apple.
- 2. More Convenient Handwriting Recognition
A redesign to the handwriting recognition tool gives you
more comfortable and efficient performance. The drawing area now looks
just like those notebooks for learning Chinese characters we are all
used to. Also, putting your mouse over the character you want to select
makes it pop out for simple identification.
- 3. Text to Speech
A totally new feature to nciku. All examples and
conversations can be heard in proper pronunciation. Just click on the
speaker button, and you can see and hear the pronunciation. Make a
conversation and hear it come to life!
- 4. Better Vocab Lists
Study notes were upgraded and renamed to vocab lists. No
need to click to save a word now, as all words you view in the
dictionary are automatically saved to your nciku page. You can move the
words to other lists or edit them however much you want. Also, improve
your language skills with memorization tests and more print options so
you can study on the go!
- 5. Useful Conversations
Learn how to do everything, from opening an account at
the bank to buying tickets for the movies, with nciku newest main
section. Browse conversations by place and topic, or search for words
you want to know how to use, then grab any ones you know you will need
and they are saved to your personal nciku. Check them out again before
you leave home so youl never be at a loss for words again.
- 6. And the rest!
The rest of nciku has been redesigned and updated to make it easier for you to improve your Chinese. Theme Words has an better layout - making finding the themes that interest you quicker and easier - and the Q&A
was completely reorganized and divided into sections to help you find
the answers you need when you need them. And of course, the itty-bitty
nciku mini will always be on your side.
Thank you for all the advice and support throughout our first 7 months.
We hope that you love all of the new things that nciku has to offer.
Take the time to check out the new feel and features, then let us know what you think. We will always try our best to meet all of your Chinese learning needs. Get started with the new nciku now! and improve your Chinese today!
| | |
| Tu me manques 幯orm幦ent.
but then it's all just a muse of the frontal lobes, now isn't it?
back from college for three plus weeks. it's a different feeling from thanksgiving break.
still feels as though everything really happened.
this break seems like another summer break
except cold
no tubing
or swimming
unless tiffany can get us into her old apartment's pool.
maybe movies? hannah johnson and me are throwing another party.
maybe sex on the beach?
hugging puppies?
saigon :)
the world outside of stanford is too gorram complicated
los extra隳, mis mejores amigos
y te extra隳, my asian racial slur.
| | |
| last night was awful.
we began the horror around 9pm, thinking that since we had already finished the arduous task of scraping off all the wallpaper in the bathroom, priming all the walls would be a cinch.
little did we know, however, that the priming crap required the wall to be smooth and free of wallpaper paste residue, with which the entirety of the bathroom walls were covered. so we headed over to Home Depot and bought some sandpaper. we thought everything would be alright as long as we smoothed out the wall.
and so we were set. i quickly figured out how to use the sander, and began sanding away all the walls while my step mom felt for remaining rough areas. after about an hour of sanding, my hands were jelly so i took a break. half an hour later i was finished, and took one final break before we began priming.
it was about 1 am when we began to prime the wall. luckily my step mom had already taped off the edges of the doors and cabinets, so all there was left to do was apply the primer. what i quickly found out was that evenly coating the wall was a lot harder than it seemed. getting at the corners and the edges was not so simple as i had imagined either.
after about 2 hours, we had almost finished the entire bathroom. we were home free. that is, until my mom began to scratch away at a black spot on the wall where mold had been reveled growing under the wallpaper that had covered the area above the shower head. since we bleached the area, we thought we had gotten rid of it all. however, the more she scratched the larger the hole became, until we realized what we were scratching off wasn't wallpaper adhesive, but actually another layer of wallpaper that the previous owners had just wallpapered over to avoid the trouble of de-wallpapering. turkeys. that meant that the entire bathroom, all the walls on which we had worked so hard to get this far, still had another layer of wallpaper on them. so we just said "screw this" and i rubbed off the layer above the shower with my finger (giving me blisters the next day), primed over the hole in the wall, and called it a night.
it was 4:30 by the time i got my blistered, primer-covered self to bed.
and now i am wiser. i will never in my life wallpaper a room. i will never in my life even offer to help someone take down their wallpaper. it is an invention concocted in the fiery laboratories of hell.
| | |
| college is drawing near.
it's strange, seeing august coming and finally realizing you're not going back to your high school.
you don't have the comfort of returning to a place you know, a place where you have friends and are familiar with the daily routine. they begin next week and we'll be left behind to start a new adventure.
and i'm finally beginning to get a little scared. at first the prospect of college was enthralling. i couldn't wait. but now it's a terrifying thought. i guess just imagining it caused no anxiety because i was still safe. but now it's actually happening.
we are creatures of habit. uninviting to change.
do wizards go to college? what the hell do they do before hogwarts?
and did anyone catch the allusion to Christ in the last book?
i didn't at first, but when i was explaining the plot to my mom,
i found myself phrasing things the same way i did when i was on the pulpit less than one week ago.
narnia did the same thing.
ironic that it's banned by churches.
| | |
|
Tomorrow is
our last day in El Salvador.
It all come and gone way too quickly. I don really want to leave. Ie
grown accustomed to the repetitiveness of the days. Get up every morning at 8,
have breakfast and worship, study the sermon, eat lunch, go somewhere, come
back, take a shower, leave for church, preach, eat, come back to the hotel,
watch Heroes, then go to sleep. Every day is like this. Ie also grown
accustom to my church family. Ie been preaching there every single night
since Ie gotten here. Ie become close to the people, and despite the
obvious language barrier, I feel a deep connection with many of them. Itl be
hard tomorrow night, when I preach for the last time. So far Ie been pretty
successful. Ie got seven baptisms so far I think. Ie only seen five. In the
end, it doesn really matter how many people are baptized, because through
trying to save others, I myself was saved.
I know that
this message will, for the most part, fall on deaf ears, but Il say it
anyways. This trip was seriously a life changing event. I have finally realized
that for the last eighteen years of my life, Ie had a blind faith. I never
really understood why I was a Seventh-Day Adventist. It seems like forever that
Ie been wondering about the point of denominations, if it really mattered
what you belonged to. There are so many things that my eyes have been opened
to. As Ie been preaching the sermons every night, Ie been learning more and
more about what I believe. Before this trip I didn know what I believed or
why. When people asked me questions, Ie never been able to ask them. Ie had
many questions concerning the Bible and religion in general. For the longest
time, I was convinced that the Bible couldn be completely relied on. After all,
it been translated into many different languages and compiled by people who
were bound to have some sort of bias or ulterior motives. So how could we have
faith in the so-called nspired Word of God?if it was written by man? Well,
in questioning that, I forgot that God has been supervising the completion of
His word since the beginning. One of the first things Ie learned here is that
I CAN have faith in the Bible and what it teaches us. It has basically been the
whole basis of campaign. Some people (and I used to be one of them) just think
the Bible is a bunch of stories that have no use today other than to provide an
example of how to treat others good and all that jazz. But what they don know
is that the Bible actually is a guidebook to world events and is filled with
prophecies that for the most part have all come true (I say most part because
some of the prophecies won be fulfilled until the years to come). It was
amazing to see, my first night here, the prophecies in Daniel predicting the rise
and fall of four empires with chilling accuracy, predicted hundreds of years
before it would begin. Also, the prophecies of Revelations can be seen in
motion in today world. The Bible has predicted down to the very DAY when
things in history would happened, HUNDREDS of years in advance. I never knew
that until I went on this trip. The Bible remains historically accurate for
just about everything. It scary in a way, to see the prophecies of the past
fulfilled completely, and to know of the prophecies for today world which
foretell of many catastrophic events to come.
I was blown
away by the first couple sermons I preached. They weren ire and Brimstone?
sermons. Nothing like Jonathan Edward inners in the Hands of an Angry God.?
SDAs are completely opposed to the concept of a God that takes delight in
burning the people He created for all eternity. Out beliefs are all 100%
based on the Bible. Unlike Catholics (who almost never read the Bible, and only
follow the traditions of the church), and many other churchs, the pillars of
our church are built on NOTHING but what the Bible says. And it funny. Wee
SO different than every other church on the planet. That just goes to show you
how far everyone else has strayed from the Word. From the Truth.
But like I
was saying before, those of you who have made up your mind that there is either
no God, or that even if there is one, it doesn really matter anymore, all
have one thing in common: youe coming to a conclusion about a matter that you
yourself haven even attempted to resolve with the facts. And you think you
woulde, considering the gravity of the situation. Consider this: the IS a God
and youe turned your back on Him. When Judgment Day comes, youe resurrected
in the 2nd resurrection with the rest of the damned and fire from
Heaven comes and consumes your body and soul, and you are lost forever. And if
there isn a God, then youe alright?except that the ending is the same
since youe lost forever when you die anyways.
What I
saying is that religion may seem like a lost cause to you. You may think it a
stupid idea and technology has become to advanced these days that religion has
already become an antiquated notion. We are our own Gods. Well, take this into
consideration: I too have been subjugated to all the technology around. I too
have studied the same things in school as most any of you. I too have had my
doubts about the whole god concept. I too have read about many other religions,
and have seen the pain and destruction that religion seems to only have brought
to this world. But I too have chosen to believe. I very Liberal, but I still
see no evidence that disproves the Bible. Thinking logically, this universe is
just too complicated to have happened randomly. Life itself is too complicated.
The idea of the soul is too complicated for evolution. Evolution has no need
for a soul. The concept of an eternal God who put everything in order just
seems to fit. Random chaos magically arranging itself into a perfect and delicate
balance to bring about life on this Earth doesn. I not trying to act
conceited, but for Heaven sakes, I just as smart as any of yll. The only
thing that different is that I took the steps to look at both sides of the
story. Most atheists have never picked up a Bible in their life. They refute
its claims without actually knowing what its claims are. They are deceived by
the ugly outward appearance of the church into thinking that religion is evil
and turns people evil. The thing is, the church isn the evil thing, it the
people who are influenced by Satan who has infiltrated the church and corrupted
it from the inside out. The only hope of finding the true church these days is
to go back to the Original Church Cookbook: the Bible. Like I said above, every
church on earth has strayed away from the principals in the Bible, and thus are
not exactly the best examples of God love and grace. So don blame the
church, blame Satan who has corrupted people in the church.
And this is
one of the longest things Ie written. I could go on, but then it just be
even more ranting. It 12 am and I have to get up to preach at 730 tomorrow
morning and I haven even practiced my sermon yet. Yikes.
| | |
|
