I’ve come to the realization lately that “stuff” and “things” are nowhere near as precious as memories. I’ve got a lot of cool stuff laying around…and if my house ever caught on fire, and I wasn’t there, they’d all be gone. Memories though…those are different.

We all have memories of things that happened way back when, memories of things we wished would happen again, and even memories of things that we wish never happened. I hold all of those very close.

If you read down a little farther, you’ll see a post called “It Never Left”. I was talking about the medicinal depression I used to experience. The medicine is long since gone and so is the depression. I’m not depressed, and I’m not in denial, I just miss the way things once were.

For me, I hold high school memories most dear to my heart. Sometimes, I wish I could go back in time and relive them over again. Sometimes, I wish I could go back and change things. Fix the mistakes I made, the relationships I ruined, and hell, maybe even my GPA.

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Options. Everyone faces them and I’m certainly no exception. As of tonight, I have 3 options about school: changing majors, staying put, or transferring. Picking the right option is always a challenge, especially if its a big deal (like your future). I think I’ve got it figured out, but I’m still uncertain.

How do you deal with tough choices? Or do you?

After I watched that, I realized something. I’m signed into Google all the time. I don’t sign out. My phone’s are connected to GMail, my laptop to GMail, Reader, Docs, Calendar, etc….and I’ve signed up for their other services too…It’s freaky to imagine that they could figure me out really fast if they wanted to…Crazy.

How much of Google do you guys use?

Seriosly. This excited.

Ok, so these 3 things really excite me…except for Buzz, but that might excite someone else, so it’s cool.

PubSubHubbub is a protocol that’s an extension of RSS/Atom, but that probably doesn’t make much sense to anyone, so allow me to explain. Rather than waiting on other websites to ask An Altered Reality if there’s anything new here, it just tells them. Now, rather than waiting half an hour for Feedburner and Twitterfeed to ping (that’s the asking part) my blog just tells them (that’s the PubSubHubbub part). It really speeds up the whole syndication process, and that’s cool. I always hated having to manually ping everything.

Good ‘ol Buzz…Google Buzz that is. While the whole idea doesn’t excite me and hardly any of my friends use it (or even know it exists, really) I added a button so you can add my posts to Buzz. I figured it might excite someone even though it doesn’t really excite me.

Ice Skating. If asked which topic doesn’t belong in the post, this one would normally be it, but since this isn’t middle school and it isn’t a test, it does. I went ice skating for the first time in 14 or 15 years last Friday. It was awesome! I’m going to try and start going on a weekly basis and I’d love to replace any gym time with ice time. It’s just as effective as running, so all I’ll need to do off ice is weights. I’m cool with that. It’s rare that I find an activity that I really like, so when I find one, I get excited, and I’m excited! I really look forward to getting back out there this week.

I got this idea from Coach Shef and wanted to do something similar, so here’s what’s going on here:

As of today, there have been

• 672 Pageviews
• 162 Visits
• 50.62% of those visits are new people
• The bounce rate is a staggering 5%
• …and visitors are coming from everywhere!
• My RSS subscriptions vary, but range from 15-40 with an average reach of 20

This is off to a good start. Exciting!

I hope you find this as fun and randomly exciting as I do. Keep coming back. It’ll only get better.

An Altered Reality is an attempt at expression. I wanted to show and write about the world through my eyes. The eyes of a college student, a musician, and a semi-normal human being. I’ve been writing for years, but only chose to attempt to go “pro” in the summer of 2009 when I started T3xtual. Thus far it’s been difficult, and I wouldn’t lie about it. Constantly writing and updating a technology blog is hard work and requires online time that I don’t seem to have during the school year.

Because of the difficulty and impersonality that T3xtual has, I decided to start An Altered Reality. This is all personal, all my views, and a place for me to share things that pertain to my life and not the techno-sphere. Saying Typing that out loud sounds far more conceited than it is meant to be. Point is, this is personal.

I wanted to say all of this because this blog excites me. Writing about stuff that I truly care about excites me. Being able to share a random stream of posts rather than a focused topic is awesome. Getting to write about my passions blows me away.

Having a personal blog is a totally different experience than what people probably think. Maybe it’s not, but I think it is. Most blogs revolve around one central topic. This doesn’t. If you look back to day one here, you can see that. I don’t have to follow a topic. My topic is my life, and since that’s ever-changing, so is this. It’s freedom at its best.

I just wanted to share again, my excitement and to add a passion to my growing list: writing.

I look forward to An Altered Reality, and honestly, I hope you do too.

I’m admittedly not one to really write responses to stuff that I see, hear, or read. I usually don’t see a point in it and most of the time just tell the people around me what I think. This time it’s a little bit different.

I was watching church yesterday because, as bad as it sounds, I didn’t want to speed to my church for a service that I knew I wouldn’t get much out of. I ended up watching Northpoint Online for the first time. It was a very clean feed, very few buffering problems and it looked fantastic. Besides the technical aspects of it, the message and the new series was great too.

Andy started a new series entitled White Flag. The idea is just what a white flag usually means – giving up, quitting, running – away from God.

Yesterday’s message focused on running from God, and as an example, he used Jonah. Jonah ran, and he ran really far. He ran from an area near modern Turkey to Spain…for the rest of that story, you can read it here.

The message had 3 main points:

• People who run from God run to the strangest places
• Runners are often the last to make the connection
• You can run from God. You can’t outrun God.

It was great, and definitely spoke to me a lot more than any message has in a very long time. I used to be a runner. I ran far, fast, didn’t realize what I was doing and what is was doing, and then realized that God caught up with me, passed me and was making plans for my future that I still don’t always understand.

Here’s the bottom line: you can run from God, but you can’t outrun God. God demonstrates the kind of

love that the Bible describes as steadfast. It’s the kind of love that waits for you however long it might

take. It’s the kind of love that cares enough to discipline, not to pay you back, but to bring you back. So

let that sink in for a little bit. Because next time, we’ll consider actually doing something about it.

Here’s the bottom line: you can run from God, but you can’t outrun God. God demonstrates the kind oflove that the Bible describes as steadfast. It’s the kind of love that waits for you however long it mighttake. It’s the kind of love that cares enough to discipline, not to pay you back, but to bring you back. Solet that sink in for a little bit. Because next time, we’ll consider actually doing something about it.

I’m really excited about the series and look forward to watching next Sunday.

North Point Online is part of North Point Community Church located in Alpharetta, Ga.

You can watch the message here.

Man. This is nothing short of powerful. I love the combination of the bass, the tap, and the vocals. I love the message, and its total truth. We live in a world with a growing lack of verbal communication. It’s weird, when you think about it, how we’d rather text someone or IM them way before we’d even consider calling them. We avoid real communication, the kind our parents are always telling us about, but like he said, you can master Sociology (that’s the study of people, societies, etc.) online- it really is ironic that we can learn so much about something we never use or even intend to. I try and tell people as often as I can out loud that I got their back, but I too prefer it all online.

This made me think, and it’s the first thing to make me think in such a long time. It’s so true and it speaks to me, and it’ll probably speak to you. We should talk more, do more, and be more.

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I’m one of those people that just wants to do a lot of things and be good at them all. I love music, I love photography, and I love IT. ll of that combined is what I’d love to do on a daily basis…I just can’t seem to fit it.

Music…First off, I’m a “classically trained” pianist and a guitarist. I put “classically trained” in quotes mainly because no one knows what it means anymore, so let me define: I was taught all the theory and technique required to play classical music (I can tickle ivory). That said, I rarely play it anymore. After I stopped the classical part of my piano career, I went pop/Broadway/jazz. I’m pretty versatile. I also worked on accompaniment for a while too, so I can play to someone singing…assuming they know how…now that I’ve said all that, I want to start playing piano/keys on a professional basis. I’ve got the experience required to do it; I’m just missing the gear. I’m buying that this summer…MacBook Pro, Reason 4, and an m-audio interface.

Photography! I’m a very visual person, so photography is awesome. I’ve got a pretty nice camera, some nice glass…just no time to shoot. It’s a bit of a pain. I’d love to do this more…but just don’t seem to have the time.

IT…It’s my life, my major, and one of my passions. I do it all the time, and I think it might be the reason that I don’t do much else. I can’t wait to start a career in IT and even enjoy most of the related classes.

I just feel like I want to do too much. Maybe I don’t and maybe this is normal.

Anyone else ever feel this way?

Image via: Ilianna López

For those of you who know me, you know I’m a nerd. I love IT and everything that that entails. I applied for an internship…I can’t say where yet, but I have a pre-screen phone call tomorrow. Uber excited! Pray hard.

UPDATE: That one didn’t work out…but not because I’m not smart enough or anything. The availability just didn’t work. I was needed immediately and because I have school right now it just didn’t work. Waiting for more opportunities to come. Thanks for the prayers