On a More Serious Note

Yes the last post was a joke. Yes I really did hallucinate due to lack of sleep on the way back but I would not advise it in the slightest. It was quite scary!

God continues to work on my heart day in and day out and it is amazing. He continues to place people in my life that are such a blessing to me. Someone once told me that God love us just the way we are, but loves us too much to keep us that way. It is so nice to have relationships with honest and real people that will tell you the truth and give you Godly counsel whether it be easy or hard to take.

For the first time in my life, I feel like my current relationship (girlfriend/boyfriend relationship) is a blessing from God. In the past, I think it has always been something I wanted and it was obvious because it would always be a fight in my heart between God and the person I was dating. It had always been a struggle to keep God as my number one priority. For whatever reason, it is radically different with this one. I have never dated a woman that you could see God so clearly in her heart. I have never dated a girl that I can talk to knowing full well that she will give me good Godly counsel. I really hope she feels the same way about me because for the first time in my life, I feel like my relationship with God is first and foremost and our relationship with each other is almost like we are walking together with God.

Praise be to God from whom all blessings flow. Your praise will be on my lips always. I will keep the Lord first in my heart and even though it is easy to praise Him when things are going well, I pray that I will praise Him always. I will make this prayer always, no matter what happens throughout my life:

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." Job 1:20

Thou and thou only, first in my heart;
High King of Heaven, my treasure thou art.

How To Hallucinate Without Drugs

Ok so I know what some of you are thinking, you are thinking, I want to hallucinate too! Also you are probably thinking, that Matt guy is so freaking cool. To that I can only say, I completely agree with you. In case you want to live vicariously through yourself as well, I have posted this guide. The following is a step by step guide to show you just how easy it is for you too to hallucinate!

1. Get about 5 hours of sleep tonight.
2. Spend the whole next day doing something, no R&R for you today.
3. At about midnight go out and watch a meteor shower until 4 in the morning.
4. Next, decide to go on a road trip to LA that night.
5. Have everyone go home and pack and leave for LA about 6 in the morning.
6. Stop and get coffee.
7. You will get to LA around noon or 1 in the afternoon.
8. Drive around for about an hour to find a parking spot.
9. Spend the whole day at the beach, and this is the important part. DO NOT SLEEP.
10. Then eat a frozen banana while watching the sun set.
11. Stop and get coffee again.
12. Leave LA around 8 to head back to Phoenix.
13. Wait until you pass through Blythe and cross into AZ.
14. Now the fun begins. As your vision starts to blur in and out, you should start to see the lights on semis in front of you start to turn in to different shapes and objects.
15. Hallucinations! Awesome!

And there you have it, it's that simple!

A Collection of Random Thoughts

Why is this iOS 4.0.1 update almost 0.6 gigs? They really need a 580mb software update to fix a signal reporting issue?

Apple will not be fixing hardware with the iPhone 4, at least not now anyway. They are giving out free bumpers. Still, this response seems a bit lackluster coming from Apple.

Stroopwafels go very well with morning coffee. Try it.

Inception is one of the best movies I've seen in years, see it. Just saw it last night with Angela, Stefan, Christina, and others....or am I in a dream right now? How do I know if this is reality? If only I had a totem...

Also, that thing I mentioned earlier this week that I couldn't yet say anything about, well it's official now-Facebook official, because we all know it's not official until it's on Facebook. Angela and I are dating and I am a very lucky guy! I just really hope this is not a dream!

For Better or Worse

As some of you may already know, I did not get accepted into my Navy officer programs of choice. Needless to say, I will no longer be leaving later this year for OCS. This was a major change in plans for me but I decided make the best of the situation and to trust God that He has other (hopefully better) plans for me.

In the past 2 weeks my life has done a complete 180. I went from leaving my friends and family for the next 4 years to staying here in Arizona. But more importantly, I was lost and now am found. It is so good to be back and I would not trade anything for this. I lost a position as a Navy officer, but rekindled something far more valuable, my relationship with God. I am happier now than I have ever been, all I need is you Lord.

I was a recipient of a mass text from my friend Tanner this morning. The text read, "It's a new week so let's try to focus on love because we have been shown so much that it seems undeserving, so let's do the same for others, remember that through God we have strength and with it let's prove our love to the world." God knows exactly what we need to hear and when we need to hear it. We should not be content by merely containing the love that we have (undeservedly) received, but rather we should extend it to others, for how else will the world know of His love?

Also, there is one other thing God has blessed me with and it looks like it could be the start of something beautiful. For the sake of not placing the cart before the horse, I will elaborate further in due time. As to the title of this post, for better or worse, I'm going to go with for the better.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him, all creatures here below;

Praise Him above, ye Heavenly Host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa

You know what will make your life instantly better? Watching these two world cup videos! Whoever made them is a creative genius! I seriously get the chills from watching these commercials, and of course having the best band ever to grace this planet as background music doesn't hurt either!

P.S. Do yourself a favor and don't watch them here. Click on the videos to load them in YouTube so you can watch them in 720p!

You Have Got To Do What You Love

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 as published in the Stanford University student newspaper.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Some Really Good News!

Just found out today that only the first 3 sections of the ASTB will count for me as I am not applying for an aviation position within the Navy. This means I only have to worry about the math, reading, and physics sections which makes this test a lot easier!

Also, I have 4 days, yes 4 days of class left until I am done with my undergraduate degree! Sadly if I get accepted into OCS, I will have another 8 months of schooling, but I am definitely looking forward to both OCS and Intelligence School!

Also if you guys haven't already heard, the new iPhone was leaked today, guess one of the software developers got a bit tipsy and forgot it in a California bar. More information can be found on Gizmodo.