Joel Gross's Blog

Feel free to add entertaining questions or answer these… most of mine are goofy or religious or philosophical…

-Why can I cross my eyes towards my nose, but am unable to move them in opposite directions?
-Why does god need to forgive me of my sins when he has committed far worse ones (killed a planetary population with a flood except for a few who worshipped him unquestioningly, tortured a man for many years and destroyed his familiy and property just so i could prove he was loyal, created evil (God is all-powerful and created everything right?)?!?… read more “Unanswered questions”

I have a friend who is going to visit an ex who is attending Harvard for a weekend. She sent this email to a bunch of her friends and him to see who wanted to join them in their activities… rather intimidating, eh? And I thought I was ridiculous sometimes with my schedules… but I suppose it’s these time-management skills that got her into Harvard in the first place, right?… read more “Scheduling”

I went out on the art walk tonight (first Thursday of every month) with Fletcher and Leah and Ashley (who left early for dinner). It was a lot of fun even though most of the art I saw was pretty poor. Leah had a good friend who was a dancer with a company based out of New York, so we went to her gallery.… read more “Art Walk Seattle”

Lately, I have been reading a lot of articles about problems with accountability in the government. For instance, a rampant problem in many state and city governments nationwide is that they have spent massive amounts of money they didn’t have in recent years. New Jersey has spent massive amounts of money out of it’s workers’ pension funds and used sly accounting tricks to hide it’s misdeeds.… read more “Government Accountability Issues”

I have begun to look for new housing. Yesterday, I looked at some condos that were for sale on 5th and Yesler and they were pretty nice and I could afford them. Only I am still not sure if I want to make that kind of commitment. It would probably be a better call for me to get an apartment.… read more “Housing hunting”

(*) college/seattle [univ. washington, 4 years, Finance degree]
(*) frat [Sigma Chi]
(*) dorm [McMahon]
(*) apartments [many rented, looking for new one]
(*) job [Visible Technologies, Business Analyst]
(*) pumping iron [290 bench, 24 pullups]
(*) web design [html basics, css]
(*) mountain climbing [Mt. Adams]
(*) read Bible [2.5 times through]
(*) start to learn to dance [tango, hip-hop, need more]
(*) 4 Earl’s drinks [blacked-out, great photo]
(*) predict final 4, championship teams & winner [2007, espn bracket]
(*) 1st car (own money) [1990 Ford Ranger]
(*) 2nd car (own money) [1999 Ford Contour]
(*) Me [6’5”, 215, green eyes, light brown hair]
_ mountain climbing [St.… read more “Me, Experience, Things & Goals”

I am starting to get worried that I may have some weird form of insomnia. For the last three mornings in a row I have awoken really early and felt agitated and really awake and not been able to go back to sleep for at least a couple hours. Sleep is one of my most reliable old friends, but apparently it is abandoning me.… read more “Insomnia”

Something about the three Saw movies holds my attention. I haven’t been frightened by any horror movies in many years, but the Saw movies are pretty suspenseful. They aren’t exactly award-winning material, but they are a good way to make a couple of hours fly by. Plus, I like my movies every so often to NOT have happy endings.… read more “I just saw Saw 3”

Yesterday after work I went and visited Fletcher and Andy at their house and we were sitting around discussing movies based on books, books based on movies, planned trilogies and that sort of thing, when Fletcher said, “I think the cheesiest part of Lord of the Rings was that Gandolf, supposedly the second most powerful wizard in the world, didn’t help the protagonists more.”… read more ““You can’t outrun a Balrog!”/ Nerds are cool”