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Two camping trips in two weekends? Oh heck yes. This time we’re driving all the way to the appealingly-named Convict Lake, cramming as much stuff as we could into the Insight.

I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when one of the fluorescent light fixtures fell from the ceiling and crashed into the lab bench. Naturally, the first order of business was to share my shock and surprise with others by taking a picture and updating my status.

Pleasantly rested after our miniature camping trip, we spent the afternoon at a local park. Despite my lifelong attempt to avoid all things relating to the playing of American football, I found myself attempting to learn how to throw one. I felt like a success when I was able to throw the ball such that the pointy end was leading, rather than positioned perpendicular to the ball's trajectory.

Naturally, the aforementioned camping trip came bundled with its own share of unexpected adventures. We took two cars so some of us could leave earlier (and so we could bring all of our food). I was in the late car with the food, and promptly managed to get us lost. My phone's been acting up and I'm still waiting for the warranty replacement, so my usual approach of teching my way out of problem was fruitless, especially after it got dark. Fortunately Rachel was able to patiently guide us to her location over the phone.

Once there, we cooked grilled cheese and laid out sleeping bags under the stars, watching meteors and allowing Mother Nature to tenderly lull us to sleep. Early this morning, however, we woke to not-so-distant thunder and lightning, using our phones (thanks, modern world!) to discover that there was an 80% chance of rain occurring in the next few hours. We packed up and headed back to Rachel's and my apartment, where we set up air mattresses and continued the "campout" in what is our friend J's ideal concept of "roughing it." Note how pleased she is to be back indoors. When we finally woke up, dreakfast was cooked over a fire that just happened to be connected to a stove instead of coals.

We did a few experiments with long-exposure photography with varying degrees of success. It was my first real attempt and I didn't spend a lot of time redoing shots, but I think I've learned a few things that should help me get to the correct camera settings faster next time.

You may recall that over Easter weekend, a few of us attempted to climb Forest Falls but were stymied by the high water levels. This past weekend a smaller group returned and successfully traversed rock and water until we made it up to the actual falls. Our sure-footedness allowed us to keep our socks dry, although the spray from the falls itself caused a general dampness.

I've been thinking, with some trepidation, about writing this for a while now. My friend wisely pointed out that if I feel like it requires "working up the nerve to do" it's probably a good idea. Essentially, I've reached a point in my life where I feel like my beliefs need to be aggressively cast off and reexamined, a kind of philosophical molting. Topics like this can step on a lot of toes, but I think that sharing my thoughts may be interesting for others, perhaps because they feel similarly or enjoy seeing me flounder about.

As a general rule, I I don't do much public writing about faith. As sincere as I may feel, when I read the words back to myself they seems so incredibly silly, as though I was invoking Jesus for help deciding between Baskin Robbins' 31 flavors. In addition, the people awkwardly handing out tracts or quoting the Bible at every opportunity leave a bad taste in my mouth; I don't want to be that guy. At the same time a good personal philosophy will guide one's life, making it come up in conversation as a natural matter of course. Perhaps some of my discomfort stems from a lack of assurance in what I believe, a doubt that leaves me bereft of a confidence that could, were it present, allow me to share my personal thoughts without the all-too-familiar abrasive awkwardness of a zealot.

A good life-guiding philosophy is similar to a hypothesis, a conclusion drawn from observations used as a basis for further inquiry. It needs to make sense given the available data, even as it is challenged by new input. Thus, it will exist as an ongoing process of evaluation against the accumulation of information and experience, a dynamic organism that changes over time.

Publishing something, even if it is only online on a barely-trafficked website, lends a kind of permanence to the words. That's more than a little scary when you're talking about something that is subject to change by its very nature. From the beginning, I want to establish that while what I say is what I was currently thinking, I may not feel the same way at later points in the future.

I was baptized into the Catholic church at birth, as is its way, but my parents started going to a Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA or Adventist) church when I was two. Effectively I was raised in the SDA church, learning its unique culture without the benefit of multiple generations of SDA family members. This made for some interesting social situations as we tried to break into a group of people whose grandparents were friends. I later made the decision to be baptized into the SDA church as well.

I socialized with people of all backgrounds during my childhood. I also didn't go to an Adventist undergraduate university, which for me was an excellent decision: At UMBC I was challenged to objectively evaluate what I believed in light of the evidence. My life until now has allowed me to surround myself with a diverse set of people, only selectively engaging with the "Adventist world." Studying at Loma Linda University is my first time in the "Adventist school system;" I am steeped in the SDA culture and faith tradition, some of which is hard-coded into university policy. It's disconcerting to stand up in the midst of that and question everything.

I'm more than a little inspired by my friend Caitlyn Mayers, who had the courage to speak openly about this months ago. Initially, I wanted to do something similar, going back to the Bible to see what it really said. I voiced this intention to another inspiration of mine, Dr. Matthew Schrag, who pointed out that the Bible seemed to explicitly contradict some of my observations about the world. That conversation planted a seed, leading me to question the validity of the Bible itself.

As a scientist, I can't believe something simply because I am told it is true, and I believe that same rigor should be applied to my faith as well. It's not enough to be raised a certain way, or to read it in a book, regardless of the infallibility traditionally ascribed to the text. I cannot begin with a conclusion and bend the universe to fit; rather, I must observe, hypothesize, and test, painstakingly grinding the lens through which I view it.

We’re in La Jolla right now, where thanks to the magic of smartphones and 3G I can share a few picture. I’ve never been snorkeling before, and it is incredible. Turns out the aquarium actually does make their environments look like the ocean. I doubt there’s a conspiracy theory about that, but if there were, it’s been debunked by fact. Ha!

There are also sea lions on the rocks, prompting my mermaid wife to swim out to sit near her oceanic brethren. I don’t have an underwater camera, so I can’t share the colorful fish I’ve been seeing, but at least I have some pictures of how beautiful it is here. Did I mention it’s 70s and sunny?

It's been an exciting week. Mark and Mom have been visiting us for the first time and we've been celebrating "family birthday month." Mark's on July 3, Rachel's on July 8, and mine on July 10. This has been their first time visiting us since we moved, so we've been trying to show them as much as possible: The Drayson Center water slide, Redlands and Market Night, LA, and Santa Monica. We've seen fireworks, gone shopping, avoided sunburn, and installed UV lights in my car, among other things.

We've taken a lot of great pictures (or rather, Mark has taken a lot of great pictures) but I haven't been able to process them since Mark's been sleeping in the office, and keeps using my desktop computer to play Runescape during our down times. A large number of my local friends have been going out of town: If they aren't currently away, they've either recently returned from a trip or are getting ready to leave soon. While Rachel and I aren't going to exotic places we're still having a great time hanging out and avoiding work. So there…or something like that.

As part of Rachel's birthday present we took a romantic ride on the Santa Monica ferris wheel as the sun set. We also both got excellent haircuts. This is a good thing because I was about to start wearing a paper bag on my head.

I remember the first time I got online, typing commands into Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3 to establish a dialup connection over our single phone line. From that moment onward our house answering machine message was effectively modem sounds – I kept a computer online as much as possible. Even when I was nowhere near the computer, I liked the idea of being connected (of course, much to my dismay, phone calls both incoming and outgoing were constantly kicking me off).

These days, I coexist with the internet as a kind of hybrid organism, my creeping tendrils simultaneously invading multiple domains. My belated acquisition of a smartphone has only strengthened this relationship. It's not so much about actually "being online" constantly, but about having the freedom to access the information regardless of my current physical and temporal location.

Another big strength of our increasingly connected world is being able to maintain contact with people around the world. As a kid I used to write letters to my friends and participated in penpal services to meet people in other parts of the world and talked to a few select friends on the phone. The internet lessens the effect of meatspace restrictions like distance and time, allowing me to both make and maintain friendships where doing so would otherwise have been unlikely.

Where this goes awry is with people who are particularly disinclined to use modern means of communication (I'm looking at you, high school friends). When people don't instant message (be it through AIM, GChat, or Facebook), or even regularly check their email, what remains? Letters are ineffective as people frequently move from place to place, and even with the correct address things mysteriously fail to arrive. There's the telephone, but calling someone takes actual time and planning – a block has to be set aside to have a conversation, whereas a chat can be impulsive and even asynchronous, as both people go about their day doing other things. As a result, as much as I would like to have a more active friendship, I end up being a mere observer of their Facebook updates, pausing every so often to click "like."

You may remember the great social purge from a while ago, where I deleted everybody from my Facebook friends list and slowly added them back, sorting them into groups as I went. It was my attempt to wrest a more granular control over my digital connections than Facebook seemed ready to allow. I recently got invited to Google+, where sorting these various connections has been elevated to a central role (with a drag and drop interface!), rather than being bolted onto a sub menu of options.

For many, such sorting seems to be about keeping others from seeing certain updates amid the constant refrain of privacy. While I believe privacy is important, I personally try not to put anything online that I'm not comfortable with the rest of the internet seeing. Rather, when I sort friends into groups it is to keep others' updates from reaching me. My ideal situation, as of yet unrealized on both Facebook and Google+, is to generate a pre-distilled feed of information from only the connections I value the most, relegating the rest of the chaff to a bin I can attend to or ignore at my leisure.

This is a delicious dish. Take that, Europe-travelling J!