New Twitter Page

Having fun customizing my Twitter account. This has got to be one of the coolest/memorable days of my life! Getting to play bass guitar while my dad was leading on electric at The Rock church was such an incredible experience for me! This was the first time I had ever played bass during a worship service.

Awesome Music Video

Check this video out when you have a chance. Very inspiring.

Mt. Rainier

Mountain Rainier was beautiful. The last time we went up was in 2004. It was a cloudy day and couldn't see anything. We were always saying how much we wanted to go back. We finally had the opprotunity last week. It's such a blessing living so close to it. We left at 4:00PM and got back at 11:00PM that night.

Twitter Account - iortizvictory

I just ran into a cool site that I just found. It's called twitter. You can give people up to the minute reports on what you're doing. Very cool. Check it out

www.twitter.com

my login is iortizvictory

Incredible Story -- Lost and Found!

My wife posted this same story on her blog but I definitely think it's worth sharing from my perspective. I've been meaning to post this story but never got around to it until now. Last year she had filed a petition to become a "FINAL" permanent resident. We must have waited 6 months for her card to come in the mail. When she called the office, to follow up, they told us that in order to look up her information that we needed her original I175 form. GET THIS!!! They said that if we couldn't find it, she would have to reapply and pay 500.00!! At this point we were totally paniced. And to top things off, I did some spring cleaning and threw away some of our excess documents. My worst fear at that point was that I might have trashed it on accident. Mimi rummaged through the house searching for it. We both started becoming very frustrated and extremely nervous at the same time. Mimi looked through her pouch that had all of our important documents at least 10-20 times. Still no luck! The emotion levels started to soar, "Are you sure you didn't throw it away!!" was the question of the day for me that rang through the house every 5 minutes it seemed. Mimi had been searching the house for over a week and still we weren't even close to finding it.

Finally we said, "That's it!!, It's gone. There goes $500!" We were both very upset at this point.

THEN SOMETHING TOTALLY AMAZING HAPPENED!!!!! I walked out of the room and when I came back in Miriam was holding something in her hand. I went over and picked it up. It looked official but assumed it wasn't the correct document. When Miriam handed it to me I said to Mimi, "Have you already looked at this one?" Feeling silly as I assumed that she did. SHE IMMEDIATELY YELLED!! THIS IS IT THIS IS IT!!!!!!!!! I TOTALLY COULDN'T BELIEVE IT!!!

It was a total miracle and mystery how Miriam found it! Out of all the documents we had scatter out and looked over time and time again she was able to find the one we were looking for! She was only 2 when this happened. We still to this day can not find a logically explanation for this other than God giving us a helping hand. All I can say is it was a miracle. What are your thoughts on this? Please post your comments.

Algebra Goals

Wow! I'm almost ready to take the Algebra placement test. It took me literally a 2 weeks to learn how to factor Polynomials. I was up until 1:00 AM solving this monster. I found that documenting each problem has been key to my learning. Anyways here it is.

12x^2 + 12x + 3

a. What 2 numbers added together equal the middle term 12?
(6)+(6) =12
b. When the 1st and the 3rd terms are multiplied together, does this equal the
product of (12)(3) which is 36?
(6)(6) = 36

12x^2 + (6 + 6)x + 3
12x^2 + 6x + 6x + 3

c. Now factor by grouping

12x^2 + 6x + 6x + 3
----- ---- --- --
6x 6x 3 3

6x(2x^2 + 1) 3(2x + 1)
-------------- + ------------
(2x^2 + 1) (2x + 1)

(6x + 3)(2x + 1) The 6 and 3 still have common factors so
--- -- break it down even further
3 3
----------
3(2x + 1)

ANSWER: 3(2x +1)^2

Miracle Road Trip Back from Oregon

Wow!!! I have an amazing story to share about our trip back from Oregon. Totally unbelievable. While leaving Newport Oregon. I discovered that my clutch was about 95 gone!!! In the past I've just filled it up with fluid to fix the problem. I recently found out from Midas that you never want to do this. When it's low you should immediately have it serviced. Anyways, we left Newport and I went about 40 miles to the next town and stopped at a gas station. I thought I would just temporarily top off my fluid to get me back to Olympia. When I popped the hood it was full. I thought to myself, "MAN THIS IS REALLY REALLY BAD!!!!." When I pulled in you could smell the burnt break fluid. And worst of all, the auto repair stations are closed on Sunday!!!!! The only way to get back home was to kick it into 5th gear the whole way and hope that where no major traffic jams. I couldn't help but think that I was in the middle of the woods with no cell phone towers in sight!! What worried me is I knew that there was 4 stop lights in some of the towns coming up. Luckily I only had to stop at two of them. Every time I stopped the car it got about 1-2% worse! About an hour went by with me holding my breath. Finally we made it to I-5! On I-5 getting on the freeway I managed to shift down onto the on ramp -- I had a lot of resistance on the shifter!! I mean, I really had to pull it to get it in gear. Anyways, we made it without any problems until we were leaving Portland. I started seeing break lights! Nooooo WAYYY!!! Luckily we only had stop and go for less than a mile. Still I had to baby the clutch and give the person in front of me a huge amount of space so I wouldn't have change gears. After Portland it was smooth sailing! What's amazing is my clutch totally went out as we pulled into the parking lot of our apartment. I could barely even move the shifter.

Anyways I wanted you to know how awesome God is for getting us home safely. Take a look at the map and see how far Newport Oregon is from Olympia. True amazing!!!! Below is a link to our photo gallery in Oregon.



View Larger Map

Here are some pictures of our trip.

http://picasaweb.google.com/iortizvictory/NewportOregon2008

How To Become Saved - Great Video

Here is a great video!