Month: April 2008 Page 1 of 2

We have now finished reading Dave Ramsey’s book, Financial Peace Revisited as a family. We enjoyed it very much and have started gathering information and filling out the forms at the back of the book to help us make a better financial plan. I have had a plan all along that is not dissimilar to what Ramsey recommends, but this has given us an excellent “teachable moment.” If provides some structure to the life skill of financial planning that is not so onerous that it is painful to do. When I mentioned that we had finished reading the book and were jumping into our family plan, my buddy Eric popped me a note with a recommendation of another book. He wrote:

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad? I would encourage you to read it and have your children read it (a great and practical homeschool subject!). It is not about getting rich as much as it is about how to wisely grow and manage wealth. It is akin to Dave Ramsey’s books, but less focused on debt and more focused on wealth. (Ramsey is good but he depresses me with all the talk about the negative aspects of money.) Anyway, we read the book several years ago and it has helped us.

I concur with Eric’s comments about Ramsey being a little bit depressing. I sometimes listen to his radio show on the way home from work. He is doing good work. It is especially inspiring to hear how people got out from under horrendous amounts of debt through hard work and perseverance, but there are some pretty sad stories, too. What is fortuitous about his recommendation is that, when we finished reading Financial Peace Revisited the kids both wanted to read another book about finances. I ordered the book this morning. I think we will learn something from it and it will be a good inspirational book for us while we are going through our new budgeting process, too.

Bryan and Lyle, you are in big trouble. We had one of our ministers over for dinner and to stay the night last night. Lorena pulled out all the stops. We had shish kabobs, rice, and a big salad. I was really worried, but when I got up and weighed myself this morning, I was well below 200 lbs! I hope it is just not that the battery in the scale is starting to give out. I can see the running competition is really heating up over on Lyle’s blog. Eric thinks he is going to run a marathon. I think he is not wise and apprised him of my motto when it comes to running marathons–“No pain, no pain.” Still, he ought to get in on Lyle’s competition and show those whippersnappers how it is done.

Last night I went out to the sit in the screen porch while I corrected math for the kids. It was wonderful. It was a little cool, but I like it that way. Every thing smelled fresh from the recent hard rains. The large oak, maple, and pine trees behind the house were swaying in the breeze. Kelly sat out there with me. It really has been amazing to watch the kids learn math. It is a different feeling than when they learned to read. Both Kelly and Christian learned to read over a few short months, but math takes a lot longer. They are both in algebra right now, Christian in Algebra I and Kelly in Algebra II. They both really get it. The Teaching Textbooks program we use does a stellar job of presenting new material both in the text and on video clips.

The kids do the problems after each lesson every day. Sometimes they get almost all of them right, but they usually miss a few and sometimes they miss many. We go back and correct every problem they miss using a process that works well for us. First they try again without any help. If that does not help, I help them rework the problems. There are detailed explanations of all the problems to which we infrequently resort if I am very, very busy, but it is one of the small joys of our day to work these hard math problems together. The really good part of the program is that it repeats a lot of material in a way that is not so boringly repetitive that the kids hate to do it. Just this week, it was neat to see Kelly’s genuine excitement when she learned how to solve systems of equations for the first time.

She said, “They said it is Linear Algebra.”

I looked at it. It is linear algebra. I remember that excitement myself.

We often talk about what will be ahead for the Christian and Kelly in the community college. After we finish Calculus, I am not sure whether I will have them repeat it in college so they can get a handle on how to take a college level math class before they jump into the higher level classes. I think we will just wait and see how much we like the calculus material, how well they do on it, and then how they do on the placement tests. Since we have decided to keep the kids at home through their senior year in high school (a fairly arbitrary thing if you are a homeschooler), I have been looking for goals that are both challenging and useful. How good would it be to get the kids through all the math they would ever need to take in college before they even start? That probably means Differential Equations and Linear Algebra for the both of them.

The ability to “do the math” is truly a gift. We are making progress in that direction.

Kelly went to a piano seminar on Saturday put on by a guy named Jim Brickman. There were a hundred or so people there. He picked three people out of the crowd to play something for him. Kelly was in the back row, but when he asked for volunteers to play, she raised her hand. He picked her. He gave her lots of praise and told her he would like her to submit a video to his biannual competition. She was very inspired by the whole event (as were all the rest of us).

Christian and I went to a University of North Carolina Tarheel baseball game on Saturday with our friend Lester. It was a great time. The are currently the second ranked college team in the country. They were playing against Florida State University, the third ranked team in the country. North Carolina really did not play so well, but until the game got postponed because a thunderstorm was coming in, it was super fun evening. The game was at an absolutely beautiful facility. I think it is where the USA Olympic baseball team trains. At any rate it is called the USA Baseball National Training Complex. I was reminded that going to baseball games is as much about hanging out with your friends as it is about baseball.

We took Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita to the airport early on Sunday morning. It was so good to have them here with us for a week. Then, after meeting, our friends Troy and Youngin took us to a Korean restaurant for Korean barbeque. It was truly amazing. Of course, I ate way to much, but that is some of the best food in the world. They do these taco things only they use lettuce leaves instead of tortillas to hold everything together. The spices are absolutely wonderful. We just had the best time in the world.

Update: Bryan found a very cool link and sent it to the kids. Christian and I are BIG fans of this kind of thing–a grassroots effort to launch nano-satellites into orbit–and it based out of Portland State University, of all places. It would be WAY fun to get involved in something like that.

Yesterday was a nice day. Several nice things happened. First, I got my pickup back last night. It looks great. Life is a lot easier now that both Lorena and I can get around. If gas did not cost $3.50 per gallon, it would be even better, but it is still nice. Then, Conchita had the idea of putting one of our tables out in the screen porch. It was a great idea. We have one of those gray molded plastic tables with steel legs that we bought at Costco. We also bought some matching gray molded plastic chairs with steel legs at the same time we bought the table. The table is round. It does not really fit very well in the house because it cannot go easily go against a wall. The screen porch is the perfect place for it until we can get some wicker. We ate dinner on it last night. That was very, very nice. The temperature was about 70 degrees last night at 7:00 PM. We grilled up some steaks, ate them, then sat and enjoyed the very pastoral and calming scene with all the trees around the back yard. Nice.

Then, Christian and I went up stairs to install and play with the new Ubuntu Linux version that came out yesterday. It just keeps getting better. I had one small hiccup on install that had to do with the new eye-candy desktop, but there was a very easy solution that I was able to implement in a few minutes. My buddy, Brett, from work called and I walked him through the disk partitioning part. It is not hard, but a little hand-holding is helpful the first time you do it. That was all nice, too.

We are having some firefights at work right now as we are coming up to another big laboratory trial of the product we are developing with one of our biggest customers. The system is not performing as it should so we are making modifications and performing tests runs like crazy. After we got one of those runs going last night, I spent some time cleaning up our homeschool computer. The release version 8.04 of Ubuntu Hardy Heron is coming out today and we want to try it out. This version of Ubuntu is what is called a Long Term Support (LTS) version which means the desktop version of the software will be actively upgraded and supported for at least three years. The server version will be upgraded and supported for at least five years. Ubuntu has worked so well for us over the last 2-3 years that we are looking forward to getting the next one. We highly recommend it. As of 8:00 AM EDT, it was not yet available. I am supposed to download and burn install disks for a number of my friends and colleagues, so I hope it go comes up sometime this morning. Sometimes the server load is so high it is impossible to get a copy until early in the morning, but I am hoping they are sufficiently ready for the load so that I can get an install disk in time to do our install this evening when I get home from work.

I am writing this blog post using a software tool called ScribeFire 2.0. ScribeFire is an “add-on” to the Firefox web browser. I maintain two blogs–this one and the one other over at the KamVu website. The ScribeFire editor allows me to write using a WYSIWYG editor, change fonts and color, add links, view and edit HTML, view the appearance of the blog entry before it is posted, and a host of other things. It allows me to switch between blogs with the click of a button, easily edit something I have gotten wrong on an all ready posted entry, add links, my own and Flickr images and YouTube videos directly from the GUI, set indentions and alignments, write and save future entries, maintain a list of entry ideas, etc., etc., etc. If you blog everyday and use Firefox, ScribeFire is a must-have.

Christian has been putting together a little trailer we got along with our John Deere garden tractor. Last night, we spent an thoroughly enjoyable hour together out in the garage finishing it up. After we finished, Kelly and Christian pulled each other around the yard in the tailer until we made them come into the house for dinner.

Update: Check this out! I think Eric’s kids were three or four when they started mowing the lawn! I do not know whether it is because he is smarter than me or his kids are smarter than my kids, but is probably BOTH! I wish I would have though of this earlier!

I have been working on the volcano computer in the little time I have available with my in-laws in town from Mexico. I might have mentioned that I got PuppyLinux up and running on the thing. It works great, but very, very slow. The problem is that the microprocessor in the computer is the equivalent of an old Intel 486sx. It does not have a floating point processor. That means that we have to recompile the kernel so that floating point emulation is enabled. Still, we will have to run the computer without a GUI which is OK because we are going to run it headless (without a monitor) inside the mountain anyway. In all the time I have been using Linux, I only compiled the kernel one or two times when I was using Gentoo. In the meantime, we are waiting for the next Ubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) to come out on Thursday. We plan to install it on the homeschool computer as soon as we get a chance to clean up and store the files there. The VERY cool thing about Ubuntu is that it is so predictable. We know that it does everything we want it to do already (Skype, Firefox, Thunderbird, Blender, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Samba, CUPS) so any improvements are just icing on the cake.

Our buddy Lyle from Oregon is joining us on the chart. I am pretty worried because the guy runs massive miles every day, tracks it on his iPod, and is WAY younger (and better looking) than Bryan and I. Bryan and I are definitely going to have to make some kind of a plan to send him jelly donuts on a regular basis. Good grief, he keeps his running log on his blog! We have no chance. The only downside other than that is that he uses a Mac. Pretty sad, really. At any rate, his blog is here.

Bryan was right. I feel off the diet wagon big-time when Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita got here, but it was worth it. It is so good to have them here. Conchita and Lorena have been huddled together solving the world’s problems ever since they arrived while the kids have been enjoying the special attention.

Kelly plays piano for Grandpa Lauro

Lorena and Grandma Conchita discuss world affairs

She thought I should laugh at this, but I thought it was quite lucid primer on a very important subject.

Two of the standing jokes in the Chapman household have to do with one time when we were driving somewhere and Christian saw a drive-through restaurant on the side of the road named Fast Eddie’s Burgers.

He asked me, “What is that place, Dad?”

I told him it was a Chinese food place owned by a guy named Slow Steve. I really do not think he was asking me what they did there, I think, based on something we were discussing earlier, was asking me whether it was part of a chain or an independent restaurant. It seemed funny at the time (the kids were MUCH younger then) and we laughed heartily.

A few years later, we were looking at some descriptions of some chemicals for a class or something and Christian asked me, “Why did they name it buckminsterfullerene?”

I told him they wanted to name it after a guy named Steve Smith, but they did not want to call it Smitereen, so they called it buckminsterfullerene instead. I don’t know whether it was the same guy who owned Fast Eddie’s Burgers.
Are those two stories somehow connected?

Kelly and I had an enlightening discussion last night about vocation. I have encouraged the kids to get a degree in something at which they can make a living. When I think of degrees that allow one to make a living I think mostly in terms of engineering and the hard sciences. I love being an engineer. In my arrogance, I grudgingly acknowledge that professional degrees in the medical, legal, and business fields can be fruitful, too, but mostly I have advocated for careers in engineering and the hard sciences. After our talk last night, I know I need to quit doing that. It came out in the discussion that the authors of the the most interesting books I have read in the last few years have degrees in things like Sociology (Rodney Stark), Philosophy (William Lane Craig and even William Dembski), History (Joseph Strayer and Cornelius Jaenen). They really had much more to do with changing the way I think than any technical book I have read. Books about history and people lend themselves to the spiritual much more than books about how to program computers or make things. Even the business books I have enjoyed most were more about biography and history than business practices. Wow. Kelly and I decided that while it is absolutely necessary to make a living, it is wrong to choose a vocation based only on financial returns. The key is to choose rightly. Choose to love what you study. Choose to study what you love. Choose to strive for excellence in learning and application.

Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita are coming to Raleigh tomorrow to stay with us for a whole week!

Last night, Christian and I were able to get Puppy Linux up and going on the little embedded computer we are trying to get ready to go into the the volcano. The version we ran was a special build of an older version that was modified so that it could run on the processor in the system. It ran very, very slowly because of the nature of the hardware we are using. Still we learned a lot. The take-away knowledge from this effort was that Puppy Linux is an absolutely killer Linux distribution for limited hardware. I have an older computer I lent to a friend that is coming back in the next week or two that I am going to set up to run Puppy Linux. The only thing we need it for is to run Samba, CUPS, and Firefox. It will do all that quite well, but the hardware is just to limited on our Norhtec MicroClient JrSX to run a desktop. Really the only thing we want to do with this system is capture images at intervals, store them to the flash disk, and transmit them via Ethernet to another system on demand.

I have been putting off learning how to build custom systems using Embedded Debian because the learning curve looks a little bit steep, but I think that is what I need to do for this project. The reality is that jumping into something new like this will help me with other projects I have wanted to do. The pain of starting something this big almost always pays off in the end, but it is always painful and frustrating to learn complicated new things, especially when they are as minutiae laden as this one. The funny deal is that it gets fun and exciting once you make the decision to set aside the time and jump into it.

Last night, I spent quite a bit of the evening playing with the new little Norhtec computer that arrived on Monday from Thailand. I made a good number of false starts, but by the end of the evening, I was at least able to get the system to boot from a USB memory stick to the install screens. I fooled around long enough to know that I was not going to be able to get a good install until and unless I rebuilt the kernel or found the exact install for the processor on the system. This morning I was able to find a Puppy Linux install disk (iso) that looks like it will do the trick. I think this is going to work just fine as a system to grab and store images if we can get our cameras going. That will probably mean an additional rebuild of the kernel. It looks like getting the wireless going might be quite a struggle, too. Nevertheless, I made some progress and learned a ton.

On another note, my buddy John S. from work painted a very cool painting. He knows a lady that gives classes in painting these kinds of paintings. A bunch of us at work (and Lorena, Kelly, and Christian) are planning to take a class or two from her together.

This looks interesting.

Update: I have decided to start blogging on this computer over at our KamVu website blog. I have put a rough, preliminary description of what we are trying to do.

After a bad day couple of days at the end of last week–wrecking the pickup, puncturing the tire in the riding mower, and then providing my children with a monumentally bad example of how to act when such annoyances occur–some unexpected good has come out of it all. The pickup is in the shop, so Lorena had to get up this morning to drive me to work so she could have the mini-van to take Kelly to her piano lesson, pick up the new mower tire, and do some other errands. It seemed like it was going to be a royal pain to have to go through that exercise, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was very, very nice. The kids stayed at home in bed while Lorena drove me to work. It was a nice quiet drive where we had nothing else to do in all the busyness but to talk. We do not get to that as often as in the past and we both enjoyed it very much. I am actually looking forward to that drive for the next couple of weeks while the car is getting fixed.

The little computer we are putting together to go into the volcano was waiting for me last night when I got home. It looks exactly as advertised. I cannot wait to get the thing booted to Linux and start getting the cameras hooked up. This is going to be way, way fun. I talked to the volcanologist last night and asked him about the earthquake swarms that are occurring off the cost of Oregon. He had just heard about them himself and was wondering what kind of impact they might have on the interior. We need to hurry up and get this thing done. It would be great to have these devices in place if anything happened.

Weight loss death match note: I missed my workout yesterday because of some firefighting at work, but I also missed lunch for the same reason, so I finally got past the 10 lbs. mark to 12 lbs. this morning. It would be great if Bryan could keep us posted on his folks progress, too.

The kids had to do standardized testing this weekend so the kids spent a bunch of time doing what they do during the week–schoolwork. I was somewhat of a bear this weekend, too–probably self pity after the wreck. We did not have time to get hardly any exercise, and on and on. I do not know how my family puts up with me sometimes. Both Kelly and Christian commented that it really did not feel like a weekend. It did not turn out so bad in the end, though. We had lunch with our friends Gary and Sydony and their two kids, then drove over past Rocky Mount to Williamston to translate a gospel meeting meeting for some Mexican folks there. We had a chance to get to know Kenion Coleman in the two hour drive over, so the weekend ended on a good note.

In the mean time, Bryan has gotten his parents on the same program he is using to lose weight. It sounds like he is getting some pretty stunning results. Both of them have been at it for only three weeks and both of them are down more than 15 pounds. Wow! I am asking him for some before and after pictures when they get down a little further. Pretty impressive!

Some of you might know that I have been working on some machine vision stuff for a man who is a Volcanologist at the United States Geological Survey. He has a need to monitor Mount St. Helens with cameras to see what is moving around inside the volcano. I have a buddy at work named Evan who recently got his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Duke University. We have purchased an industrial quality, fanless, no moving parts, PC from an outfit in Thailand and a couple of cameras from a German company. We are going to add a derivative of Linux, probably PuppyLinux, and set it up as a low power, highly portable way for taking pictures in relatively harsh environments. The computer itself is VERY cool. You can get the most limited version of it for $85. It looks like this:

Nohrtec MicroClient JrSX

The thing to the left of the computer is a compact flash card. To those who know about such things, it will give you an idea of how small the system is. We are going to take the open source, machine vision software we are developing (KamVu), port it to Linux, add some functionality for this application and send it off to see whether the USGS can use it to put in their volcanoes. It should be a lot of fun.

On the way to work this morning, I got into a wreck. As always, those kinds of things are very frustrating. When I got into work after the accident, I sat down at my computer to read my bible and, of all things, I found that I had gotten to Job 1. I was hating life before I started reading, but Job lost virtually everything and maintained a right attitude toward God. We have all been through these kinds of things before. They are not fun and they require lots of additional time and effort, but you get through them and life is good again. The difference between Job and I is that Job was innocent when Satan was tormenting him. Most of the time, when I get myself into a situation that makes my life uncomfortable, it is because I brought it on myself. I have turned in all the information to the insurance company and now I am waiting for the adjuster to call. It will be well into next week before I am able to get the pickup in to be fixed. Life goes on…

Update: In the “be thankful for your own light affliction” department — our friend Carol from Idaho made it through her cancer surgery fine and is in recovery.

I am going to keep on trying to lose, but am I worrying too much about this? Check out this article.

The line that was most interesting is the following:

But isn’t overweight, as defined by doctors, dangerous to health? Not necessarily, provided the overweight person is active. In The Obesity Myth (2004), law professor Paul Campos, who struggled for years with weight problems and then began to research the issue, argues that the true health risks are often distorted or exaggerated. He notes that “fat active people have half the mortality rate of thin sedentary people, and the same mortality rate as thin active people.”

But there is another interesting quote in there about how diet really does little to help overweight people maintain their weight.

I have been waiting for this day for a long time. I just wish it would have come back when we had a push mower. I just hope the “fun” lasts through at least one summer.