Year: 2010 Page 2 of 7

The shooting yesterday in front of Grandpa Lauro’s house in Monterrey got me to thinking about how easy it is to become accustomed to what would have been unusual just not too long ago.  I have written earlier about how I got excluded from jury duty when the prosecuting attorney questioned me because I listed all the bad things to which our family and friends had been subjected.  The list included multiple instances of armed robbery, home invasion, assault, and shoot-outs.  One of our friends daughters was murdered horrifically in Guadalajara.  The mayor of my brother-in-law’s pastoral little town in the beautiful wooded hills outside of Monterrey was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by his own police force because he would not allow them to accept payments from the narcotraficantes.

Lauro and Conchita immediately laid down on the floor when the shooting started.  It went on for a long time.  They did not get up to look out so they had no idea what actually happened.  Nothing has really happened close to their house before, but they hear gunshots now and again.  Most of the family members have been caught in road blockades created when the narcotraficantes steal trucks, turn them sideways in a main thoroughfare, and throw the keys into the river so they can get away from the police or the army.  After the shooting, it did not dawn on them that it might be a bad thing to be out in the street.  They went down to the HEB supermarket to buy groceries.  It reminds me of the English going about their daily lives while the Germans bombed them during World War II.

There was a big shoot-out in front of Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita’s house in Mexico today.  The authorities recovered 60 spent shells.  There were a lot more, but the neighborhood kids picked up most of them.  It is getting to be a part of everyday life down there.  We are not sure or not whether anyone was hurt.  Jorge (Lorena’s brother) has communicated with Grandpa Lauro and everyone in our family is OK.  Actually they ran down to the grocery store to get some stuff, so Lorena is suffering greatly because she has not yet heard the gossip directly from the horses mouth.  The accounts we receive from that source are generally based on the truth, but I will try to get the straight scoop from Don Lauro or one of the brothers.

Here is a link to an early article the describes the event.  I will post more when (and if) we learn more.  Here is a second article.
You can see a video report here.

We have lots of things that are “in process”.  I suppose that is a normal state of affairs, but it seems a little overwhelming right now.  I like to sit down and make a list whenever that happens.  The work through such lists probably represents the most productive times of my life.  The kids are in the most work-laden and tedious part of their first semester in college.  The work like troopers every night.  I have the GaugeCam project, my weight loss plan, a new (very interesting, but very demanding) job, a road trip to Atlanta next week, and visitors from Oregon a few weeks after that.  Lorena and I had a great talk about this last night.  We are going to take some time to sit down and make some lists together.

I paid the tuition and fees for the kid’s spring semester at the community college this morning.  It was painful, but truly a great educational deal.  Tuition, fees, and books will be in the range of $7000 dollars for two full time students for the whole year.  We are very pleased, on the whole, with the quality of the teaching in the classes.  The kids have the same, very competent math teacher.  They are in different biology classes and both of their teachers are excited about biology.  Christian has a super history teacher who tells lots of side stories.  That is a little irritating to Christian, but I tell him the ones who tell those little side stories are WAY better than the ones who stand up and teach the class by rote in a monotone voice.  Kelly’s literature teacher is very confident in a world view that is worlds away from that of our family (I am making every effort to be gracious here), but a very fair teacher.  Among other things, she hates homeschool and the idea that parents should be in charge of their children’s education, even for elementary school, but she does not hold that against Kelly and appreciates Kelly’s hard work and preparation for class.

Now that I am back in the saddle with my blog, I got to thinking maybe I ought to see if anyone wanted to join me in another weight-loss death match.  Bryan beat us all like a drum last time and he is STILL skinny.  It has been a long, long time and he is still on track.  Warren is also WAY down and looking great.  I love those guys, but I really have not been too competitive weight-loss-wise.  Maybe I can co-opt David J. now that he has taken to cavorting with svelte Russian spies.  Well, if anyone wants to join me, let me know.  I am starting today, but you can start any time.  I will send Warren and David J and email to see if they want in.  Come to think of it, maybe my brothers-in-law down in Mexico might like to take a run at it, too.

Christian and started lifting weights about three weeks ago.  We are making some good progress and really just starting to get into the swing of things.  I was thinking it might be kind of cool to get him to join us in the death match, but to gain weight rather than to lose it.  Maybe I should take some before and after pictures?  I will keep you all posted and put up some pics as soon as I have them.

We have a hard and fast rule in our household that was not really necessary until Kelly turned 10 or 11 years old.  The rule is there will be no Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.  Many of you will understand.  The rest will think I am evil.  At any rate, I found a video that, while not breaking the rule, is very border line.  I loved it.

We went for our usual Saturday breakfast at McDonald’s this morning then headed down to the NCSU main library so the kids could research their speeches and papers in a decent study environment.  I have found that McDonald’s coffee is a lot better than the swill stuff the offer here in the library, so Lorena got me a large to take along with me.  McDonald’s coffee is really pretty good, but I still do not think it is as good as Dunkin Donuts.  It is a hard choice, but you cannot get biscuits and gravy at Dunkin Donuts.

We really like to come down here to study because there is usually a few moments of high drama that gets intermixed with the studying.  I remember lots of posturing and opining when I was college age, but I don’t remember looking so foolish or ignorant.  I am sure I was not much different at that age.  I am probably just like I was then.  The difference is that it embarrasses me now.  Still it is a lot of fun to watch the antics.

The Betty Blonde and ChapmanKids web sites, blogs, comic strips, etc. are hosted on a service called echristianwebhosting.com.  We have been there for six years now.  Yesterday they experienced a denial of service (DOS) attack that took us off line for a couple of hours.  There hard work to keep us informed, get us back on line, and put remedies in place to solve the problem are very much appreciated.  I was reminded again of why I am a customer and a fan of this hosting service.  I highly recommend them.

I have started blogging again regularly.  I had a big blog post written before the DOS attack occurred and I am really thankful it did not get posted as I was pretty irritated and the post was pretty acrimonious.  Still, this all got me to considering how we are going to improve the web site.  Christian has decided to use Drupal on the rework of his NerdHow web site.  I am in the process of figuring out how I can upgrade Kelly’s Betty Blonde site and both the ChapmanKids web site and this blog.  Our plan is to make some big changes by the end of the year.

The hardest part about all this is the change in direction required by the fact that the kids have finished homeschool and started college.  I want to write about stuff I like that might be relevant and interesting.  I like a lot of stuff, but some (if not “much”) of the stuff I spend my time doing is either only relevant to 0.000000001% of the population, or is covered better in other venues.  I am sure I will get it all worked out.  Kelly and Christian are both have better ideas about what they want to do than I with their web sites.  I am looking forward to watching that.

In the meantime, I have returned the Betty Blonde and ChapmanKids sites back to an older state until I get the new stuff worked out.

The kids studied all weekend long for their big Calculus test this morning.  Friday and Sunday afternoon and evening they studied at home.  Saturday they spent at the NCSU Main Library.  I worked on GaugeCam most of the time they studied.  It was good to have a reminder of the difficulty of learning hard material.  Preparation for history, writing, and literature tests is fundamentally different from preparation for math, chemistry, and physics.  Biology is somewhere in between.  I was particularly proud of the intensity and amount of work they did this weekend.  We do not know how the tests will come out.  They worked hard to prepare and they understand the material, but who knows what quirky problem or brain freeze might happen during the test.  I always tell the kids that the point of education is not to get a grade, but to understand the material.  The grade is a way for teachers and students to know whether the information transfer took place and its works as feed back loop between the teacher and the students is its most important function.

Kelly and Christian signed up for spring semester classes this morning.  It is a harder schedule than last semester, but it is all on the campus right by our house so there will be a lot less running around.  I think we will be able to drop the kids off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon everyday.  The kids have three classes in common, but the only one they have together is Calculus II.  The kids both upped their load; Kelly has 16 credits and Christian has 17 credits.  I think the class Kelly is most fired up about is her Public Speaking classes.  Christian is most excited about his Design I art class.

We decided to try to get them each a class that would help them with the research they do at NCSU on the GaugeCam project.  I wanted to get Christian into C++, but they have only one section of that and it was full.  Kelly will take Probability and Statistics so she can help us crunch and present some of the data we gather.  We bought a book on the R statistical programming language that Kelly, Christian and I will study over Christmas break.  Francois Birgand, the professor at NCSU that works with GaugeCam on this research recommended Ross Ihaka‘s course material on R and statistics to take us deeper into the subject, so we are going to have to make time in our schedule for that, too.  I will post some here and on the GaugeCam blog on how that goes.

Hayek vs. Keynes Sequel Sneak Peak at The Economist Buttonwood Gathering

There  are three guys in my group at my current job.  One of them is my boss.  He has a PhD in Physics and Applied math from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  The other guy in our group got his PhD in Chemistry from Moscow State University.  Part of the reason I do not understand them is that they are way smarter than me.  My insecurities were mitigated a little bit this morning when it dawned on me that they speak Russian to each other most of the time.  It is very, very cool and it really makes me want to learn another language.  I love it that we speak Spanish at home.  Still, a whole lot fewer people around here speak Russian than speak Spanish.  Kelly is well on her way to speaking French.  Lorena says she is going to learn French, too.  I think Christian and I should get on board to learn a third language, too.  French might be good for Lorena and I, but Kelly and Christian are young enough that it would be great if they went on to Russian, Mandarin, or something else hard after they finish up with the French.

Lorena and I ran into Garner yesterday afternoon to vote.  There was not a big crowd, but I spoke with the people who worked there and they said there is a big crowd at the time the voting booths are opened each morning, then a small, but steady stream for the rest of the day.  We were part of that small, but steady stream.  It still boggles my mind that no one checks the voter’s identification.  All we did was go in, give our name and address, and receive a ballot.  Unbelievable.  That is just wrong.

Estefania!  Hija de Rigo y Minita.  Nació ayer.  Check out her little cousin, Brandon, looking on through the window.

We are now starting to get our heads above water after the transition from homeschool to college.  We spent the last three or four Saturdays at the NCSU main library studying.  We plan to keep going there every Saturday for the rest of the year.  Every other Saturday, I go over to the GaugeCam team work session in the Weaver Labs Building, but enjoy working at the main library, too.  The kids are about halfway through the first semester, have taken some mid-terms, turned in papers, and spent some late nights cramming.  I think they are getting closer to figuring out how things work in the new environment.  Kelly’s biology professor made the statement that if you don’t get discouraged, keep up the pressure, and work hard, you will prosper.  I think that is very true.  It is easy to get discouraged in a new environment where you believe you are the only one who does not know how things work.  That is only overcome with effort and consistent focus.

There is a lot of pain in learning math.  For me, the biggest thing to overcome, was the idea that something was beyond my understanding.  When I realized that, with most things, if others could figure it out, I could, too.  Kelly and I discussed that recently and I believe she has come to that understanding way earlier than I.  Calculus is just a lot of hard work with a lot of difficult concepts.  Both Kelly and Christian are now to the point where they know it is hard, but they also know it is possible to understand and own.

Hugh Hewitt had a link to a blog about a girl named Katie Davis.  It was VERY impressive.  I googled Katie Davis and found links to two women of the same name.  Both of them make spiritual claims.  Which one do you think is actually doing some good?

Katie Davis Amazima Ministries.
Katie Davis other.

It is a long story, but this is part of the reason I think yoga is evil.

Update:  I thought this was a very thoughtful article on the subject.  It articulates my own thoughts on why Yoga is a bad thing for Christians to practice.

I talked to my mother this afternoon.  Every year, I receive a call from her so she can tell me I was a beautiful baby.  That is the best part about my birthday.  I love my birthday.  One of the epiphanies of middle age that I hold most dear is the realization of how important it is to embrace and enjoy one’s age.  Tomorrow is my birthday.  I will be 55 years old.  I am very thankful to be 55 years old.  We are going to have a small dinner party to celebrate with a few of our friends.

After about my 28th birthday, I quit enjoying the celebration of my birth.  I am wildly thankful that I started to embrace the celebration again after about my 45th birthday.  I think some of it had to do with the fact that Lorena and I had kids.  They were getting old enough to want to be older rather than enjoy their current age.  That seemed like such a waste and it dawned on me that I should also enjoy my current age.  The reality is that I am happier than ever.  I LOVE the fact that I am 54 years old and will be 55 tomorrow.  I think part of the reason for my change in attitude is that I want my kids to embrace their age, whatever it is!

Lorena loves it, too.  Partially she loves it because I will be able to get that extra 10% discount for everything in the store on Tuesdays at Ross Dress for Less.  Then there are all the senior discounts at the about a million restaurants.  She also loves to go to parties and this is going to be a great one.  Einstein died in April of 1955 and I just like to consider that maybe I was born as his replacement.  Chevy was building great cars, although some would argue the best one came out a couple of years later.  Disneyland opened in 1955.  Elvis first appeared on television in 1955.  The conservative National Review was started by William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955.  It was a great year.

It is great to have been born in 1955 and it is great to be 55 years old.  And thanks Mom!  I am glad to know that you STILL think that I was a beautiful baby.

Life is a little bit strange for us right now.  The big change is that the kids are full time college students now.  My primary responsibility with respect to schooling is to to pay the bills.  Loren will be driving the kids to school for just this year.  They will be able to drive themselves after that.  That transition has seemed very abrupt.  We went from reading together every day over a bowl of popcorn to intense individual study in separate rooms.  Strange.  We want to figure out how to schedule our time better so we can continue to read some of the books we like, but the first semester or two of college are pretty intense and the kids load will go up from twelve hours this semester to fifteen hours next.

Even weekends are different.  Typically, we spent leisurely Saturday’s at a bookstore or a library after breakfast at McDonald’s.  This last Saturday was the first “free” Saturday since school started because we have had some out of town events.  We decided to run over to the North Carolina State University main library in Raleigh so the kids could access some books they need for Christian’s report on the Cathars for his Western Civilization class and Kelly’s report on Puritan poets for her American Literature class.  I worked on the GaugeCam project all morning while the kids buried themselves in their studies.  No more showing each other funny comic strips or looking at fashion magazines.  Just serious study.  Gratifying, but weird.

When we got to the NCSU library, we found a room filled with computers.  There were at least two of them with 30 inch plus screens for playing video games.  We arrived at about 9:00 in the morning.  There was a guy on one of the game computers playing World of Warcraft when we arrived.  He played for another three or four hours before he left.  Another guy with pink hair got there at the same time as us and got onto the other game computer.  He was still playing when we left at about 2:00 PM.  Amazing.  I had heard that some kids waste their educations playing video games, but I had never really seen it in real life.

One of the things I enjoyed the most while we were there was watching three guys from a Senior level Chemistry class work together on a homework assignment.  To say they were different from each other would be an understatement.  One of them was a wildly gregarious guy from Thailand who appeared to know everyone in the building.  He greeted just about everyone that came through the room and often went over and talked to the gamers.  He also had Facebook open on his computer along with the homework assignment.  The other guys were your run of the mill gringos, but one of them appeared to know what he was doing while the other was trying to get his homework done by getting the answers from the other two.  They obviously enjoyed working together and spent at least four hours together working on that single assignment.

We are enjoying the transition from homeschooling to NOT homeschooling.  Everything is new and we are trying to learn how to use our time more effectively.  I think it is going to be a great time of life for all of us.

Christian has been taking classical guitar lessons now for about a year and a half.  He played us a tune to celebrate his 15th birthday.  Even though a lot of people have already seen it on Facebook, I am posting it here so people like Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah could take a look.

Some you all may have heard about the difficult situation in Mexico these days.  Monterrey has generally been immune to some of the kinds of corruption that is endemic in Mexico, but it is visiting them with a vengeance now.  We just learned this morning that the Mayor of the pastoral little town where my brother-in-law lives with his family about fifteen miles out of Monterrey has been kidnapped and murdered.  We have many friends in and around that area who have been touched by the war that is occurring there.  You can read a little bit about it here.

Yesterday was a busy day full of new things for all of us.  Of course, just to make things more interesting, the battery in the car died and we had to have AAA come to bring us a new battery for the mini-van.  Then, as I drove to work, I noticed a TON of cars backed up at the entrance to Wake Tech.  There were about four wrecks that had occurred.  I quickly called Lorena to tell her to take the back route to the college.  Fortunately, she was not at the entrance to the college already because, it would have taken her an extra half hour if she would have tried to get through the front entrance.

Still, the kids got into their first classes without too much hassle.  They met some old friends from the YMCA swim team and made some new friends.  I think they are going to do just fine.  My job went well, too.  I have a very difficult challenge for the first two-three weeks of the job, but that is expected with this type of work.  My new title is Senior Research Engineer and I have an absolutely killer new computer with two screens (7.5 performance score).  It turns out my work is only a couple of blocks from a little dive restaurant and carniceria that hand makes their own corn tortillas.  My new boss, Igor from Russia, who is my old friend from my job at Centice took me to lunch there.  That is the place that sells arrecherra, the excellent, but probably not so healthy, Mexican style cut of meat that is so good for grilling.  I have good feelings about my new job.