"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

San Pedro Garza Garcia

Category: Blogging Page 1 of 3

Blog milepost: 4000 posts

Since I started posting back in 2004, I have written almost 4000 posts. There are a handful of guest posts, but the vast bulk of them are mine. By the time I hit the 20 year mark, God willing, I should be well over that 4000 mark. I have averaged just a little over 200 posts per year and plan to keep doing that as long as I can. The two big personal habits I have adopted that have had a monster positive effect on my life are 1) reading my Bible every day as the first thing I do (starting in 2006) and 2) writing in this blog, initially to have a record of our homeschool, but secondarily, to hold myself accountable with respect to many aspects of my life.

Bluetooth keyboard

I bought a bluetooth keyboard that pairs with my cellphone to make it easier to write posts. Works great!

New blog header (San Pedro)

I changed the header to the blog this morning. The image is of the City of San Pedro Garza Garcia where we have our house. The location of the house we plan to remodel and keep is about a quarter of the way up the left side of the mountain in the middle of the image. San Pedro is to the left of the mountain and Monterrey is to the right. The mountain is 6788 feet high. We should be able to post some new images in the next couple of days of the work Lynn has completed on first house we purchased that we plan to put on the market within the next month or so.

lauropedraza.art

My brother-in-law, Tío Lauro, is a painter with a fairly large and growing body of work. He works in oils, acrylics, and etchings. Yesterday, he started up a blog: lauropedraza.art. His plan is not just to put show his art, but also talk about some of his previous works and what he was thinking and doing when created them. In addition to all this, he has in the middle of the creation of a different kind of art, the creation of an atelier that is uniquely his style. That atelier is located right next to Allende, Nuevo Leon, the pastoral and classically Mexican pubelo of his ancestors. He started with a very much rundown, but quite old home in a quiet area close to the river that is not quite in the country, but not really in the city either. The atelier is really taking shape–after getting some basic work and reshaping done on the house itself, he has been working mostly on the gardens for the last little while. I expect to see pictures of the atelier, life in Mexico, food, and music in addition to his always stellar art.

Talking to Andrew

Journal Clip Art

I had a long talk with Andrew, my buddy and colleague from our Raleigh days, yesterday. It was really good to get caught up. We talked about many things, but Andrew made mention of my journaling habit. I thought about it a lot after the phone call. Journaling–blogging in this case–really helps me stay on track with things that I want to accomplish. The writing helps me refine my thoughts and consider things I would not have considered if I were not writing about it.

I need to stay organized on several things that might actually be of interest to a few people, but that would certainly be improved with some writing to give myself some direction. I have talked about this before, but now that I am into a couple of projects, I can talk about them in more detail. I do not want to try to do too much so I am going to try to focus on just three things. I have talked about #1 and #2 before, but have really just started getting into #3. The things I want to talk about, but in more detail are these:

  1. Doing a retirement PhD — just the part of being old and going back to school.
  2. The technical aspects of the PhD program — hydrology, machine learning and machine vision.
  3. Flipping houses in Mexico — something on which we embarked almost by accident

I am doing this all for selfish reasons–it helps me stay organized and motivated. It also helps me decide if/when I am done or when it is no longer worth it. All good things.

One more start

It is a beautiful snowy day in Centralia. The view is from my office. Western Washington State is kind of a crazy place to be right now. The current count for the coronavirus for the state is 37 dead and 568 infected. Kelly and Christian in Baltimore and Boston, respectively, have both been instructed to work from home until things calm down a little. As for me, I have been asked not to visit our home office in the Boston area for the same reason. That does not change much for me. It is nice to be home with Lorena, but we get cabin fever with no one going to the store unless they really need something.

The situation does lend it self to allow me work on my PhD project and I am making good progress. Since things are moving forward nicely on the doctoral front and I have the time, I thought it might be nice to start writing again. I will try to write several times per week going forward. There are lots of changes taking place in the world right now and it will be nice to have a place to comment on those things, too.

After 15 years of blogging

I am averaging 241 posts per year. I am going to try to maintain that as I go forward even though I have moved to more of a diarist posture where only I (and select friends) can see what I post. In a few months I will hit fifteen years. It has absolutely been worth it.

Last post of the year

The sun is shining in Centralia. The pure steam coming from the coal fired generation plant on the left side of this image and one cloud above Mt. Rainier is all that is in the vast expanse of sky behind the house. We are very thankful to be here in Centralia right now. We love our house, I love my work, there is a path toward retirement that might be a little rocky, but God is in control of all that–I have a lot of faith that I will get what I need and it might not be the easy path that is what I want, but it will be better to be out of my hands and in the hands of God than planning my own path.

One thing that has become evident over the last months (maybe years) on which I need to operate, is that it is not good, not scriptural even, to engage with people of bad faith or bad will. The good news is that there are a lot of people of good will and good faith–not perfect by any stretch, but of good will and good faith. So, after doing an inventory of the things in which I am currently involved, I have decided I will work on one and possible two of five projects. All of them are worthy projects, but the people involved in the one or two are people in whom I have confidence. The other three or four, not so much. Life is too short and I do not have so many years left to invest in projects with people of dubious motivation. It is not that I am such a great prize myself, but I want to be.

Niggling malaise over New Year’s reflections

Usually I do not feel the sense of malaise that is my current frame of mind at the seeing in of a New Year, but reminders of the nature of man can start to get in the way of progress. That is especially true when one realizes their nature is susceptible to the same defects as those that caused the current jaded outlook. Still, I must say that I am grateful for what I have in this life and the hope I have for the next one. I will just list a few of the things, good, bad, and indifferent, that are happening as we move toward 2019. First and foremost, we are healthy and free to pursue our dreams more than any time in our memory. The kids are making it on their own and progressing in ways that would make any parent grateful.

Second, the malaise comes out of a desire to do something good. Desiring the good is, of course, not the problem. The problem is figuring out how to partner with others of good will who have a world view, work ethic, and level of passion similar to your own. Right now I am contributing to three projects where there is a fairly large disconnect in at least one of those areas. This has given me pause so I am taking a few days to reflect on where I really want to go as my career winds down and “retirement approaches.”

This my first post since I decided to take the ChapmanKids blog private. It will allow me additional freedom to discuss things about which I have been reticent to write in the past. Frankly, that is a relief.

Keeping a calendar/blog

This post is inspired by the exemplary calendar keeping of Brett Kavanaugh and, more impressively, his father. I have never really kept a calendar, but I have been assiduously attentive to writing on this blog for a long time. I hardly believe it, but I have been keeping a blog now for over 14 years at a rate of over twenty posts per month. I started in 2004. At the writing of this blog, the post count stands at 3551 posts. Only a handful of them are not mine. One of the more significant addenda to this blog is the tracking of my Bible reading. I started that in 2006 (over 12 years) and my Bible reading and enjoyment of reading has gradually increased to the point where I am on track to make it through the entire Bible in a single year–something I have never done before and thanks, to a large extent, to keeping track of my reading on this blog, 

The honest truth is that I do not have much of any real significance about which to write since our homeschool end a little over four years ago. I had heard that people who keep diaries from an early age through their active years tend to accomplish more. There must be some research somewhere that backs that up? I know it has been true for me. When I am inspired to write stuff down, planning before I do it, documenting my steps as I go along, and analyzing the results when I am done, I certainly seem to accomplish more.

My thought, thanks to Judge Kavanaugh, is that if I find something that inspires me to write, maybe that will up my game a little as I move toward retirement–from my profession, hopefully not my active participation in significant projects.

Diet and blog update

We have been slammed since the first of the year so I have gotten behind on blogging and fell off the wagon on my diet at least a couple of times. Now however, the holidays are over, our annual church special meetings for the year are over, annual sales meeting up in Canada at my day job is complete so I will not have to try to lose weight on restaurant food or on big meals Lorena prepares for visitors. I actually did better than I usually do and currently at my lowest weight since I started the diet-16.5 lbs. lost. Only 44.5 lbs. to go.

In addition to the diet thing and my day job, I have a couple of side projects (a development project with my buddy Gene I plan to chronicle quite a bit more and a, believe or not, real estate project with my buddy Mark P.), and a three or four more remodel projects. So, I plan to write on all this until one of the side projects turns into a business and/or I retire and continue to try to find a work from home business. Over the next couple of days I will talk about the development stuff Gene and I are doing and the business idea/model behind it.

Weight, travel, hobbies, and home improvement

Life is getting back to normal in the Chapman household. I guess I should make the caveat that it is about as normal as is possible based on adherence to the recently adopted New Year’s resolution to which I hope to stick. Lorena does not really have that first of the year resolution life modification thing because she sticks to what she is doing through thick and thin. Nevertheless, after one pretty big fall from the wagon and a brief smaller one, both due to visits and special circumstances, I am back in the game and hit a new “this diet” low in my quest to lose over sixty pounds.

My work is back in full swing with a trip to Canada and tentative trips to China and North Carolina in the works. I work on stuff that is of great interest to me and that is a gift. It is enough of a gift that I actually work on it as a hobby, too. Hopefully, within the next few months, I will be able to write about the hobby project some more because it is something that could have a fairly high level of interest for those in certain small businesses and maybe even for those with serious coffee snobbery. More on that when we (my buddy Gene and I) have more to show.

In the meantime, we continue with our home improvement projects. The entry to the house now looks less like an overgrown vacant lot, but only a little bit less like that. This month there is some good chance we will have all the new floors installed in our house, but that will depend on how often I have to travel and/or am stuck at home by myself while Lorena visits her mom in Mexico.

Where to take the blog

My blog posting has fallen off quite a bit over the last month or so. Part of this is due to a lack of time with work on the sickle cell disease project and my day job and the travel required for that, getting Grandpa Milo’s and Grandma Sarah’s estate settled, remodeling the house (even though the new kitchen is in, we still have about a year to go at our current pace), etc., etc. Really, though, I have not been so inspired to write too much. It was nice to be able to put up pictures so friends and family in other places could see pictures of what was going on with the remodel, but there has not really been any greater goal in my posting. The early posting about homeschool, CLEP testing, and posting about skipping high school to go to college had a greater appeal and still draws a lot of traffic to the site and was well worth the effort. After some thought, I have to find something better about which to write or just turn this into a personal blog with pictures and posts suitable for friends and family. I am working through that now. I do not think it will be a short process and I plan to continue to write as I go, but my desire is to find better things about which to write.

A new blog header and some new and old memories

New Mt. Rainier Blog Header

You might have noticed we put up a new blog header. Lorena found my old Canon PowerShot SD 750 pocket camera when she unpacked the house. I immediately went out and took this picture. I am not a great photographer and the camera, while it may not be the best in the world, is small enough to fit comfortable in a shirt pack, still takes good enough pictures that I cannot tell the difference.

This move has really been a joy. We are thankful for it all from our old friends in Texas (Dan, Al, Jill, Gary, Debbie, Sue, the Lee’s, the Drake’s, all of them) to our new friends, starting with Bob and Gena, there is much for which to be thankful. The least of these things for which to be thankful is the “stuff” we are unpacking and even that brings back memories–this is the camera Grandpa Lauro always used while he was with us.

KellyJean.net — Kelly’s new blog

KellyJean.net -- Kelly's new blogKelly Jean started her new blog (KellyJean.net) just in time to show off her Pi Day pink rhubarb pie in her inaugural post. Who knows what she will post there, but seems like a not inauspicious start to what will, hopefully, be a long and prosperous blogging career. I hope she has as much enjoyment with her blog as I have had with mine. She drew and published a comic strip for two years so I hope she does some of that.

The blog design is very simple which is good and there is a heavy use of the color pink. Surprise, surprise. You will be able to get to Kelly’s blog both from a link in the banner at the top of the page and from the blog roll in the column to the right of the posts here at ChapmanKids.net.

Getting ready for the memorial service with a finicky blog

The blog was down for a few days due to technical issues. I am kind of glad for that because so much has been going that if I would have written about it in real time I would certainly have just confused everyone and probably even myself. The good part is the plan for the memorial service for Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah is coming together nicely. Lots of people plan to travel to Oregon and there are lots of people within driving distance. The venue (Milwaukie High School Auditorium in Milwaukie, Oregon–yes I spelled Milwaukie correctly, it is the people in Wisconsin who spell it wrong!) has enough room for 600 people. I am sure there will not be remotely that many people there, but we have plenty of room for everyone to attend who so desires and a great place for a potluck afterward.

The complications have to do with just about everything else: work, houses, travel, etc., etc., but more about that later. I am glad to have my blog back. Those technical difficulties happened at the absolutely least convenient time ever. For the first time in history it was actually being used to get some useful information to people and then it goes down.

Test for tweet purposes

KellyRubixIf anyone wants to follow me on twittery you can go here to do that. Trying to figure out how to tweet my posts. This post is my test post to use to figure that out. The photo was of Kelly at Thanksgiving time this year in Wilsonville.

Update: I found out the way to make it look good is to use Twitter Summary Cards. I am also adding the ability to tweet my posts from a button click.

Update 2: Figuring out that I have a lot left to learn. None of this stuff really lines up right and the lining up syntax seems really arbitrary.[bctt tweet=”Testing to see if my ‘Click to Tweet’ capability works.” via=”no”]

Blog update 2016

It has been quite awhile since I did an update on this blog itself. First, I would like to say I am glad I have been able to keep writing on a regular (sometime only semi-regular) basis and I plan to keep going indefinitely. Here are a few statistics, milestones and comments:

  • I started the blog on April 6, 2004, so the blog is a little over 12 years old.
  • This is the 2978th blog post, so we should hit 3000 pretty soon. I, myself, have only written 2810, so I probably will not hit the 3000 post mark until 2017 if I can keep going.
  • We average around two comments per post, but that has slowed down since I write less now about Homeschool since the kids are gone to college.
  • I started tracking my Bible reading on the blog on February 9, 2006, so I have continued with that for over 10 years and have to say it has helped my reading consistency a lot. My plan when I started was to systematically read through the Old Testament three times and the New Testament nine times. I am on track to complete that within the next year or two. After that, I will probably set another goal and maybe switch versions to the ESV or maybe even the Reina Valera. What is most amazing and cool about this little program is that the amount I read every day has been on a steady increase over the last year or so.
  • I do not keep many blog statistics, but have a tool that shows the last month. On average I get a little over 100 unique visitors per day and between 300-400 page hits per day (not including spiders and bots). I know how to make those numbers go up, but I do not really enjoy doing the type of writing required to increase traffic all the time (I sometimes go on a binge) and that has never been the point of this blog.

Something that has interested me lately is that the use of the most popular social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (and probably even SnapChat) appears to have fallen off a cliff in terms of daily usage by the great unwashed masses at the same time these sites are increasingly dominated by commercial clutter. Meanwhile, the humble blog has maintained its attraction for people who have a message, like to keep a journal, want a place to put baby pictures for posterity or distant relatives or a million other personal, non-commercial reasons.

So my blog goals are modest. I plan to keep writing about twenty posts per month. I hope to find some things that are compelling to read for anyone else but me. I have found that to be a little bit difficult since the kids are no longer in homeschool, but I have hope with a couple of pretty big things that are happening with life and work. The include a business, a new house and, who knows, maybe someday we will have grandkids and I will get to participate in homeschool again.

Will Kelly share her art with us again?

KellyCaricatureKelly went to a conference in Las Vegas. While she was there, here group gambled at the craps table for a little while. Since did not gamble, one of the guys in the group had her roll the dice for her several times and she won him $300. The guy gave her $25 for her trouble which she promptly blew on the drawing she holds in the picture. It was from a slightly tipsy street artist and you can see it is a monumentally bad likeness. You know what they way about ill-gotten gains!

This has inspired Kelly to start to share her art once again. She has started a new Instagram account named Betty Blonde Draws. She has her first three caricatures up there now. They are very good likenesses, but of the very quickly drawn ones. She plans to do more quick ones, but she also plans to spend some time to create some that are more thoughtfully drawn.

This is all great because she is kind of an amazing caricaturist. One of biggest worries is that the kids would have a lousy art education if we homeschooled. It turns out the had a fairly amazing art education including the study of art history. Maybe it was because I am so weak myself in that area, we worked harder to make sure we overcame my weakness. It is certainly true that I also received much more art than I had before we started the effort.

So if you want to be drawn, send her a picture of yourself. She is always looking for more material.

Betty Blonde #491 – 07/02/2010
Betty Blonde #491
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Rejecting a comment

I rarely have cause to reject comments on this blog for anything other than span which Askimet pretty much handles on its own. Our content is not really very controversial in the whole scheme of things so inappropriate comments are not too much of a problem. I got a comment today that was aggressive and snarky with claims about qualifications that were impossible (and not worth the time) to check. The author of the comment took objection to something I said about getting a STEM degree (I think it was about this post) that completely missed the point of the post in a very snarky and unhelpful way. I enjoy a vigorous discussion and have been known to admit I am wrong and try to change my ways, but the purpose of this blog is to discuss topics of interest to me and my readership in a thoughtful and even vigorous and argumentative way. Anything that detracts from that needs to be rejected.

I was helped in this by a comment Tom Gilson made over at the Thinking Christian blog on how he manages his blog comments. He basically says any comments helpful to the mission of the blog that meet certain rules of decorum are OK. I will base my comment moderation on that model.

Betty Blonde #466 – 04/23/2010
Betty Blonde #466
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

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