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Name: William
Country: Please select...
Gender: Male
Interests: Philosophy, Web Development, Chemistry, Web Development, Theology
Expertise: Web Design/Computer Programming
Occupation: Web Developer/Full-time Studen
Message: message me
AIM:  sirvanderwal
Member Since:
10/18/2005
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| A post on Xanga has been much overdue, and much has happened since my last post.
Before I post an update, I should mention that I'm working on setting up two new blogs. My new personal blog is going to be andysurface.com/blog. On there I will be writing the philosophical/theological/thinking stuff that I like to write about. Vanderwaal.net/blog will be my computer-related blog. Posts are lined up for both of these blogs and will be added within the next week. My goal is to make these two blogs my main means of communicating my thoughts over the web. My website too has been completely redesigned. I've been working on updating content which will be released soon. It will include pictures, essays, articles, and lots more links. At the moment I'm expecting to upload over 2000 photos from my high school and college years, as well as every essay and article I've written in the past five years. Also, I've been at work on a new music CD. And, additionally, I learned how to ice skate this summer as well as ride a unicycle. So, altogether its been a busy summer, with its ups-and-downs, its trials, its errors, its successes.
As many of you know, this past year at H-SC was extremely busy for me. Last semester I had 19 credit hours and two jobs (so no spare time). With God's help only, I made it through the semester. In the end of the year, I had applied to a research program at VCU, in the Medicinal Chemistry Department. I heard back that I had gotten it, and that's where I've been all summer. I lived in an apartment downtown in Richmond (provided by VCU) from where I commuted to my lab in BioTechI, in BioTech Park. There I worked in Protein Molecular Modeling. With the help of a graduate student from Italy, I managed to create a mathematical system that predicts water behavior in protein binding sites (really important in drug design) with about 90% accuracy (previous attempts by others were only in the high 70's). The research has now been sent to be published.
Additionally, I got to take a trip to New England this summer and visit a good friend of mine, as well as get to meet his family. I spent 5 days in Massachusetts, and visited Boston, Quincy, NYC, and several other places including Sagamore Hill, N.C. Wyeth's art studio, etc. The trip up there was amazing . . . I got to drive through New York's Bronx at 3:30 AM . . . it was truly the most frightening driving experience I've ever had.
So there's a short update of what's been going on with me in the past year in a nutshell. I now head back to HSC for my Junior year of college in four days. Time flies---- it feels just like yesterday I came to HSC.
So I turn 20 next month . . . I will be so old. I can't believe how short life is. I remember thinking that 20 was so old when I was like 8, and how long it would be until I turned 20. Now I'm here, now I'm an adult. Not that age ever is a predictive analysis of adulthood . . . but I think that life experiences can be, and considering all that has happened already in my life, I begin to wonder what lies ahead, what God has in store for the rest of my life. That's been the biggest lesson I've had to learn this summer, far and above a bigger thing than any of the other events combined: that is trusting in God's timing and plans for one's life. I had a lot of curve-balls thrown at me this summer, and I think that the biggest struggle was grappling with these, trying to understand what God was trying to teach me through them. I don't profess to have all the answers, but I'm still working toward to the goal, working as hard as I can and as fast as I can. I am not there yet, but I am closer than I was yesterday . . . more later on my other blogs. Keep in touch.
-Andy
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| I haven't posted in a while . .. a long reason for that. But today the
band I'm part of here at Sydney performed our first public musical
piece. Kit Moore, the dude on the banjo, wrote the melody, and I wrote
the harmony. We had just finished writing the song yesterday, and today
we performed it in front of 100+ people. It was an instant hit, and
people were shaking our hands afterwards, wanting us to to a CD, to do
more performances, etc, etc. I've no idea where this band will go, but
we shall see . . .
Kit was the man who came up with the name of
the group: The Itching and Burning Sensations. It consists of Kit Moore
(electric banjo), me (piano), Stuart Tinsley (guitar), Chris Beaver
(mandolin), and David Vandeveer (string bass). Let me know what you
think . . .
Oh, btw, it's also been launched on Google Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-428417524100214028&pr=goog-sl&hl=en
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| So, tomorrow morning bright and early, I leave for college yet again, to begin my Sophmore year at Hampden-Sydney College. I'm still trying to decide if I"m excited or just ready to complete my second year of college education. College, you know, is a thing I've always had mixed emotions about. While I love the stimulating environment it provides, the knowledge it offers, and the degrees and opportunities it gives, the experience it provides is often more one of temptations and fights than anything else. It offers such an unreal environment to "grow up" in, an environment that encourages individualism, selfishness, and even worse: ungodliness.
Of course, this is looking at it in a negative light: College also affords life-changing opportunities, and offers so much more than I've eluded to. Particularly, though, I need prayer as I begin this second year. Looking over my schedule I have left little time for myself to even think this semester, and I'm more involved in the student body than ever . . .
I"m looking forward to the late evenings of work again, the long and desperate challenges of wrestling with mathematical and chemical problems, studying for tests, and, of course, the charge one gets from the academic stresses and challenges tough professors afford--but I"m not looking forward to being weeks away from home, the constant exposure to drinking (etc), and the constant fight with myself to stay grounded and humble. It's part of growing up you know, and that's what I keep reminding myself of.
Actually, though, I am writing too reflectively. More accurately, I'm very excited about the opportunities that this semester will afford me: because it is going to be so challenging it means my weaknesses will be all the more exposed, which means God will have all the more opportunity to work through me and in me. I know how much I changed last year . .. the question for me this year, is will I change that much again?
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| So I was fooling around with Timothy after his party . . . and this is what we were doing:
What's the world look like from my perspective? 
I leave for school in two days . . . my this summer has gone by fast.
More to come . . . stay tuned  | | |
| I think I mis-wrote the first part of my last post, where I said I shall go "nobly, dutifully, and honorably." I was trying to be sarcastic, adding levity to a sad topic and I think it flew over like a lead balloon (it failed).
It's dangerous to mix light things with serious things; and I do it way to often . . . and when written in words, it becomes even harder
So yes, I was joking.
Now, to make this post a bit more interesting, I'm going to leave you with a quote from Areopagitica, a writing by John Milton on the importance of having free speech and free, unlicensed printing. This is a sample of the stuff that we read in Oxford, and this was one of the more interesting books . . .
I promise something more interesting, perhaps, later
"What advantage
is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only escaped
the ferula to come under the fescue of an Imprimatur; if serious and elaborate
writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar-lad under
his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporizing
and extemporizing licenser? He who is not trusted with his own actions,
his drift not being known to be evil, and standing to the hazard of law
and penalty, has no great argument to think himself reputed in the Commonwealth
wherein he was born for other than a fool or a foreigner. When a man writes
to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him;
he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers
with his judicious friends; after all which done he takes himself to be
informed in what he writes, as well as any that writ before him. If, in
this the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no
industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring him to that state
of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry
all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings and expense of
Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much
his younger, perhaps his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew
the labour of bookwriting, and if he be not repulsed or slighted, must
appear in print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor's hand on
the back of his title to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or
seducer, it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the author, to
the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning.
"
I saw the Matrix the other day with Emily-- I'm sure I have some interesting things to share about it shortly . . .
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