Year: 2008 Page 12 of 15

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.

We are really happy to have our buddy Warren join us in the weight loss death match. Thanks, Bryan for helping out with the spreadsheet. Warren and Bryan stood up for me at my wedding in Monterrey and we all got to be twice the men we were before. Bryan is making STUNNING progress. The second picture is of how he looked when he had lost 20 llbs. He is now 38 pounds down from when he started. Check it out. He only has 22 to go. I think the race is now for second place.

Update: Bryan was good enough to send us a picture of how he appears today!!!

I finally got around to putting up a few pictures from our Kitty Hawk vacation. You can click on them to make them bigger.

We are going to do the PASS standardized tests this weekend if they come in time. In addition, we are going to buy a riding lawnmower, go to the library to get books for research reports, get caught up on homeschool read alouds, take a look at setting up to start assembling the radio we purchased, and maybe even spend some time working on the cat tower. On Sunday, we have a potluck after meeting. This time of year, as always, is very, very busy. Kelly got invited to a piano workshop of a famous pianist in a couple of weeks, Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita are arrive for a visit. And the weight loss death match escalates. I have to do all of the above on very few calories. I hope those deep fried Twinkies I sent, finally get to Bryan’s house.

Kelly passed her first CLEP test with an A, the PASS standardized tests arrived, and the kids have started their annual research reports. Everything is moving along at a fairly normal pace. The thing on which we are currently spending the most time is math. I do not think that will change through the end of the year and on into next year as we are at such a critical stage in providing a base of understanding for the calculus as well as other studies such as physics, statistics, and other hard science subjects. This year, Kelly is doing her annual report on Roanoke Island. She initially started with the idea that she would study the Lost Colony, but got so interested in the entire area, that she expanded the topic. Christian has narrowed his topic down to the history of Artillery starting with catapults, trebuchets, and moving on to modern propelled and exploding kinds of things. We were wanting to get started on the radio project this spring, but it looks like that will need to be postponed until the summer. That is the project where we will build a radio kit to learn radio theory to get ready for the kids to get there ham radio licenses. Yesterday, the kids did their first workout at the new YMCA that opened up in our area. Today, they will go down to be trained on how to use the equipment and learn the rules. We signed up for a one year membership and are all looking forward to using the beautiful new facility. Science, Spanish, history, literature, and all the other subjects are moving along according to schedule.

Bryan, I am finally on track with the whole weight-loss thing. I am down almost ten pounds and starting to accelerate a little!

We completely changed our telephone setup when we moved into our new house. We always got wired phone service from the phone company before. In addition to that, we had to pay for all our cell phones and the added DSL internet broadband offered by the phone company. The problem was that we almost never used our regular phone service because we have our cell phones. So, when we move to the new house we found that we could buy “naked DSL” which is DSL broadband internet without wired telephone service. ATT is required to provide that service as part of their merger agreement from when they merged with Bell South. We have used Skype to talk to our family in Mexico for several years now and it just keeps getting better and better. We talk from our computer to Grandpa Lauro’s telephone for two cents per minute and from our computer to all the uncles’ computers for free. It is hard to beat that. The only hiccup is that the security system requires a cell phone of its own, but we are hoping that will change soon so that the system will work over the internet.

Special note: JoAnn Waldo is often posts on comments here on the ChapmanKids.net blog. We are sad to note that her mother Mabel passed away last night. We were in meeting with Mabel regularly for several years. She is a wonderful woman and will be greatly missed.

It seems like no matter how well we prepare before vacation, when we get home, we find a million things we forgot to do before we left. It seems like we are behind on homeschool, yard work, house work, work work, and even our hobbies. Nevertheless, there is some good news. Our State of Oregon tax return check came in last week, so no we can afford to buy blinds for the new house so we can finally take down the sheets we have covering the windows. We also have to buy a riding lawnmower so we can mow our half acre (What was I thinking?).

On a much more interesting note, the kids started their annual research reports this week. Kelly is going to do the Lost Colony of North Carolina while Christian is going to do the history of man-portable weaponry. They are on the five note cards per day of facts for the next few weeks. It is very fun to watch the process. With their experience from Kaktus Kids, previous reports, our art classes, and other sundry projects, they have improved greatly over the years. I can hardly wait to see the final outcomes.

Trisha was absolutely right. The Outer Banks of North Carolina are absolutely awesome. We only went to one museum while we were in Kitty Hawk in spite of all our big plans, but we went to it twice because it was so good. The problem was that the beaches in the Outer Banks were just too much fun. The water in the ocean was not yet warm, but it was way warmer than anything we ever get on the Oregon beaches. We worked out three of our four days there (I mention that part for Bryan), ate way too much food, talked with our good friends the Larsons, had a birthday for Kelly, went to the bible study on Wednesday evening, and generally just had a super time. We are very happy that Kelly’s friend, Ethne came to be with us from Texas, too. It would not have been the same without her. We have a ton of pictures of which I will try to post a little bit of a montage later this week.

We went to the Wright Brothers National Memorial. I highly recommend it. I learned lots of interesting things while I was there. Probably the most inspirational is that Wilbur and Orville were just a couple of guys working in their garage on a dream. It really reminded me a lot of Grandpa Milo and his friend, Del Weber inventing machines. They were just a couple of self-taught regular guys who stuck with something until they got it to work. Their workmanship was pretty amazing. They had to invent a lot of stuff and find ways to hook stuff together using whatever tools and techniques they could cobble together. I always thought the only flight they made at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903 was the famous first flight of twelve seconds and 120 feet, but the end of the day, they had made a flight that lasted for 59 seconds and traveled 892 feet. They have it all marked off with granite monuments there at the memorial. It all occurred on level ground–it shows where the plan left the ground and where it touched down for each of the flights that occurred that day. We were all inspired enough that when Kelly and Ethne went for Kelly’s birthday manicure, we went back to the museum for a second look.

Posting will be very light (if at all) for the next week or so as we are heading off to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina for vacation. I might try to put a picture or two up, but we are hoping to be busy seeing the sights! Regular posting should start again on March 31.