Justin Acuff’s Blog

Will probably never come… In the meantime check out the pictures.

I’m fixing to leave for the Image Fusion 2005 Conference in Vienna, VA. Thankfully I am not speaking. Speaking right now is a very difficult thing for me to do since I have lost my voice. Its better than it was last night, so hopefully it will continue to get better since tomorrow I will have to do some talking.

Chorus:
Oh, It’s gonna rain
Well, it’s gonna rain
Oh, you better get ready
And bear this in mind
For God showed Noah the rainbow sign
“It won’t be water, but fire next time”

Now way back in the Bible days
Noah told the people that it’s gonna rain
But when he did they didn’t pay him no mind
So when it happenned they were left behind

Repeat Chorus

So when the rains began to pour
They knocked on the window and knocked on the door
But they didn’t know exactly what they should do
And you don’t want that to happen to you

Repeat Chorus

Then Noah cried out, “I’m sorry my friends,
But God has shut the door and you can’t get in
If something doesn’t happen to the hearts of men
The same old thing is going to happen again”
I said, “The same old thing is going to happen again”
You know, “The same old thing is going to happen again”

Repeat Chorus

You know…

Repeat Chorus

He said, “It won’t be water, but fire next time”
He said, “It won’t be water, but fire next time”

—————
Oh well, at least its not gonna flood.

Yeah you know how it goes, no need to finish it. Anyways, as promised I will continue the humble description of the service activities of Wednesday night. The group I was with went to Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee. As soon as we got there we were put to work. No tour as Todd had promised. They really didn’t describe what they do either. It’s alright with me though. I’ve worked with Second Harvest several times in the past. I’ve done the Tim Kerin Food Drive every year since ‘97 (yeah, it did actually used to be a food drive) and CANstruction a couple of times. This was probably my fourth time to the warehouse. For those that went for the first time, they didn’t get to hear stuff like all the baked goods that Panera Bread makes but doesn’t sell at the end of the day, gets donated to Second Harvest. Last night we sorted through some 1.4 tons of donated food and sorted them into boxes according to different classifications. One box might have soups, while another box has fruits, yet another box had corn, carrots, mixed vegeatables, etc.

OK, so your probably wondering what’s so significant about the title. Well Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee gets more beans donated than any other product. Some places will get more soups, while other places get more crackers. Recently Second Harvest has started an exchange program with other food banks that don’t get as many beans as they do.

Eric, Chris, and I invented a new game tonight at the CSC. Its even more fun that Chinese Firedrill Ping Pong. It incorporates Dodgeball and Ping Pong. You can imagine how its played. You can only handle the ball with your paddle. If the ball touches you, you get a point. After so many points, your eliminated. The last person standing is the winner.

Ok, so last night began the first in a series of service projects that will be done instead of Wednesday night class. One group went to a runaway shelter for teens (ask Mer about the experience in Seattle with a runaway shelter for teens) and another group went to the Angelic Ministries International warehouse. I was part of the group that went to the warehouse. This place was huge. We toured the facilities and learned a little bit about what they do.

When it came time to get to work, there were two tasks they wanted help with. The first task was sorting clothes. The second task was assembling theater seats and securing them to two 1×6 boards. Todd, Leslee, Lora, Jesse Dalton, Zach, and Charlie did the first task. David, Adam B, James, and I did the second task. The second task was way harder than it had to be. When was the last time you actually drove wood screws through a 1×6 using nothing but a screwdriver? For this very reason, drills and electric screwdrivers were created. I have blisters on my hands from actually doing this. To make matters worse, only two of the screwdrivers were even remotely suitable for this kind of task. The other two screwdrivers were just too small.

After doing about 28 screws and seeing that James was only on his 4th, I let him use my screwdriver so he could be a little more productive. At this point I went upstairs to see how the first group was doing. They were coming along well, but there was this one bag Charlie, Jesse, and Zach just refused to touch. What a bunch of wimps. The bag mostly contained panties, bras, and swimsuits. All you had to do was sort them into children’s, ladies small-medium, and ladies large. After completing the task nobody else wanted to do, I went back downstairs to the seats. They had just started the fourth set of chairs. It was at this point I really started to notice the blisters that were forming on my hands.

As we were leaving, Todd told the lady that he felt like we didn’t do much… Obviously Todd wasn’t part of the downstairs crew.

Where to begin? For the Martin Luther King break Alicia, Jesse, and I meet at the CSC to meet up with Michele in Johnson City. We were going to go hiking with some of her Med. School classmates and some people from the ETSU CSO, the equivalent of the CSC at UTK. It was an uneventful, quiet ride up to Johnson City. When we arrived there we found out that Michele’s Med. School classmates had all chickened out along with the folks from the CSO. Josh, one of the guys from the CSO, lead the way to the trail head in his car. We followed in Michele’s car because Josh was going to go back to the CSO to paint. The road to the trailhead was a bit frozen over. About a half a mile before the trailhead, we had to park the car because of concerns that the car may not make it back up the mountain. So we added another half a mile to the hike.

The trail was a rocky trail and covered with snow. It wasn’t near as steep as the trail to Snake Den Ridge. It was mostly flat except the area near the falls. To get down to the falls, there were several rock steps built. This is the only part of the trail that had any kind of difficulty. Did I mention it was cold? It was so cold that the nipple of my Camelbak actually froze over. We eventually got back to the car and made it safe back down the mountain.

We still had some time to kill, so after we got back to Michele’s apartment, we went to the CSO. Josh and the new campus minister were there painting the house. Michele had seen talk on the blogs about this game called Chinese Firedrill Ping Pong, but I don’t think she had quite grasped the concept of what the game is. Of course the best way to learn such a game, is to actually play it. So the four of us went upstairs and played some Chinese Firedrill Ping Pong. It takes a minimum of 4 people to play the game, but its more enjoyable with more people. Then we went onto play some Air Hockey. The table didn’t actually keep score so only God knows if Jesse and Alicia beat Michele and me.

After we were done playing, we went back downstairs and just stood there. We decided to go back to Michele’s place. Jesse suggested we make some juice or milkshakes. Unfortunately, Michele’s food stock was rather bare and didn’t have any of the ingredients for one of those Jesse “Let’s Cook Something”s. Some discussion of playing a board game had came up, but Alicia needed to be back in Knoxville, so we left a bit earlier.

Well after Mustard Seed, I had to go straight into work. One of my servers needed to be repaired ASAP and I had been putting it off because of other plans. I was there from 9:00 PM to 2:00 AM. Since I had put in so much time at work last night, I just called in and said I wasn’t going to come in. I’ve still got some stuff to fix on the server, but for the most part, its running good. Seeing that the next few weekends are all full, there would be very little time to rebuild this system.

Ok this is newly added… One is the Elevation Profile of the trail, the other is the path taken.

After a brief hiatus of summer and fall semester, your local CSC Graduate School dropout, is a dropout no more. I will be making up my Ph.D. level course that I took an incomplete in last spring. The sad thing is, it looks like my class work is going to be pretty close to the same work I was doing so much of last year that caused me to not have enough time to do my class work. Essentially, my professor realized that the work I did last year can be done again this year, but this time for a grade. Well, I’ve got to do a little bit more of writing of proposals, reports, etc., but the general oversight is still the same.

Sometimes you pray for stuff and the answer God gives isn’t always very clear. This time, I hope it was pretty clear. Last semester we graduated several of our students, 4 of them had to leave, and 4 of them dropped out. The students are pretty time consuming on my part. Our lab had really grown too large for just me to handle all the responsibilities. Usually we replace the lost students, but this semester and the summer semester we are forecasting to only replace a few. I hope that God’s telling me I should continue my education by getting rid of the number 1 reason that took up so much of my time. Several of you know that I’m very happy with the degrees I hold and had come content with not getting my Masters. We’ll I’m still content with not getting a Masters, but I’d also at least like to have the opportunity in the future (if not now) to complete it. An I turns into an F after 1 year, so this semester was the semester the decision had to be made. Just looking at some of the other students that have gotten a Master’s degree, I know I am 100x more capable of better quality work than they were.

I’m just relieved my professor didn’t chew me out or call me a complete failure. I was worried about going into this meeting, but now that it’s over with, I feel a WHOLE lot better. Stupid me for worrying.

…its supposed to clear up this weekend… soooo… who wants to go backpacking this weekend? We had it planned for a while, but here’s the open invitation. Actually we’ll be deciding Wednesday night at church as to where we’ll be going. If you want to go, let me know. We’ll try to figure out how to get gear for you if you don’t have gear.

Ok, I am writing this very brief entry because I have specifically prayed for those at UT that will be going on an LST trip this summer. Its usually in my prayers, but this time, the prayer was solely for it. So… for those of you that are reading this entry and want to go on an LST trip this summer, go to the LST Website and fill out the online application. If your still unsure if you want to go, you can talk to any of us that have gone (Mike, Kelly, Amy, Meredith, and I are among many).

Let’s Start Talking likes to have the teams ready by the Intensive Training weekend. Looking at the schedule, that is the 21st and 22nd of this month. That’s very soon.

The New Year always seems to be a good time to reflect on the past. That’s just what a few of us did last night. A room with over a decade of CSC stories, a good time is gauranteed to be had by all. Many of the stories I remember quite well and a few of the stories I had forgotten. New details that I had never heard before really brought some of the stories back to life again. So does anybody need 50 cents?