This is what happens to people who plant tomatoes in the Willamette Valley in the summer. It is a really good thing I married the salsa queen.
Year: 2015 Page 5 of 13
See yesterday’s post for the back story on Christian’s presentation at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Read especially the part where I say, “Lorena and I are on pins and needles waiting to hear how it went.”
Three hours after the presentation we have heard nothing so I text him, “Give me a call when you are out.”
Over a half hour after my text, I get the following message back (sic):
I wont be out for a while.
Going to donner
It went well
That was the sum total. Ha, ha, ha!
Betty Blonde #379 – 12/29/2009
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If I have the time right, Christian, at this very moment, is presenting his Information Theory research at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. This is the first time he has done this kind of formal presentation (with a tie and all that). It is the culmination of a full year of research in a brand new (to Christian) area of Mathematics and Electrical Engineering. Lorena and I are on pins and needles waiting to hear how it went. If all goes well, this should eventually turn into a refereed conference paper and, with expanded research and content, possibly even a refereed journal article.
The next step after will be his “quals” presentation which will be this same research work but to his doctoral committee back at Arizona State. I am not sure what happens after that, but it probably has something to do with preparation for “prelims” or “comprehensive exams” which are usually pretty challenging.
Betty Blonde #378 – 12/28/2009
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We are slowly removing all semblances of our time in Raleigh. Christian got his Arizona drivers license several months ago, but Kelly did not get her Washington drivers license until yesterday. She did not even have to take a written test. Lorena and I will take the Oregon drivers license test either this week or next. That will be followed by the registration of our cars in our respective states. One of the only happy money related events in moving to Oregon from North Carolina is that we do not have to pay any sales taxes on our cars when we change the registration.
The only thing left now is to figure out where we want to live and move our stuff out of storage to wherever that is. This thing of living in a studio apartment has been very good for us. We threw a lot of stuff away when we moved out of the North Carolina house. We will almost certainly throw out a ton more when we move the stuff from storage to our new house. We are getting to the point where we are ready to start thinking about starting to think about looking for a house if we can ever figure out where we want that to be.
Betty Blonde #377 – 12/25/2009
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Christian is scheduled to fly to Boston tomorrow to give a talk on his research. He has all the technical material well in hand and a well organized presentation. Not so amazingly, one of his biggest challenges is to create professional and compelling PowerPoint slides that convey his ideas. It seems like none of the tools commonly used to create graphics for the slides have improved very much or gotten any easier to use in the last twenty years.
Christ has been creating these kinds of presentations for a long, long time. I bought the kids a desktop publishing program called Microsoft Publisher when Kelly was twelve and Christian was ten. You can see some thumbnails of the magazine they published below. Christian is fluent in the use of LaTeX, Inkscape, GIMP, GnuPlot and other graphical tools, but it seems like the tools of choice are MatLab, Excel and PowerPoint. It makes a whole lot of sense to use better tools than MatLab and Excel to create graphs (R is great), but every institution has their favorite PowerPoint template so he is probably stuck with that.
Betty Blonde #376 – 12/24/2009
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Kelly’s whirlwind visit ended yesterday afternoon when Lorena took her up to Vancouver to catch the train back to Seattle. This week has turned into a big week for both Kelly and Christian. I already spoke about Christian’s trip back east to present his research results for the year. Kelly is in the middle of a smaller, but still big chunk of research she needs to show to her boss when he arrives back to Seattle from a month or so away in Europe of some such thing. The upshot is there has been a lot of pressure and angst that should see some relief this week.
What better way to relieve angst and get some office work done than go on a train ride with great Wifi and coffee products. Kelly has now taken the round trip train ride between Seattle and Vancouver, Washington (the Vancouver around these parts). Christian has taken it once. Both of them love it. Last night, the train took an extra couple of hours for some reason. My understanding was that had something to do with the heat, but that does not make sense to me. The good part was that it gave Kelly an extra couple of hours of quality time with her research so she was able to get it mostly ready to show to her boss tomorrow morning.
I love train travel. Part of it is the feeling of travel without care of time restrictions. I have only taken a train ride one time to a business meeting. That was between Raleigh and Charlotte in North Carolina and I enjoyed it a lot, but it arrived a couple of hours late. On the few other times I have taken a train it was for vacation and I was able to plan for the possibility of lateness which happened all too frequently. I know some train systems are punctual, but I have not often been fortunate in that regard.
It all kind of fits into the Environmentalist Wacko theme that has crept into this blog, too. It feels like I am saving the planet when I ride the train. Don’t tell any Democrats, but I kind of like that.
Betty Blonde #375 – 12/23/2009
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Twice now, we have had five people around our table for dinner in our tiny studio apartment. Kelly and Christian have both stayed with us over the weekend a couple of times. All of that worked out really well. This weekend, our apartment manager came around to ask us if we wanted to extend our stay so we signed up for another six months. We do not really know where we will land next. We do not even know when we will be able to make the next changes. Alzheimer’s is like that.
What we do know is that we like to live a downsized existence. The apartment, in spite of its small size, works just great for us. We are close to shopping, work, school and restaurants. We can walk just about everywhere we normally need to go during the week. In addition to that, we have a small, economical car so we do not really use too much gas. Now I have been a good (conservative) Republican as long as I can remember, so I pretty much hate the environment, clean water, clean air and all that sort of thing. It pains me that we have such a small carbon footprint.
Even worse, the plans we have for the next place we get, wherever and whenever that is, have shrunk dramatically. We want to get a small house with as open a floor plan as possible and three small bedrooms, two of which have Murphy beds. What will people think? We are not planning to do this to save the environment–we actually like to live that way. I guess we can do the small stuff by letting people know our garden is definitely not organic and we use real pesticides. And of course we will have a gas burning über-stove. We will have to quit eating granola, too.
Well, these sacrifices are probably worth it. We do not want to lose our redneck friends or hang out with angsty, environmentalist hippie types, but we really like to live small.
Betty Blonde #374 – 12/22/2009
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I always get slightly nervous when Lorena and Kelly hang out too much with my sisters. For the first two years of our marriage in Florida I had Lorena pretty well convinced that Walmart was much classier for shopping than the mall. Julia and Jean completely wrecked her with respect to that within 50 milliseconds after we moved back to Oregon. This morning, they all went down to Biscuits Cafe in Wilsonville together while I had breakfast with Harold and Curt Nichols, Jeff Cloyd and Justin (that, incidentally, was very, very nice). Now I am waiting for the latest bombshell that the J aunts dropped on them. Thankfully, Lorena has figured out that most of the stories told by the Chapmans are only very roughly based on the truth.
Still, Kelly looks entirely too attentive in this picture. She is down for the weekend. She has an old computer that has been dropped, the battery is about dead and a lot of other stuff is wrong with it. I found a Dell Outlet coupon and got her a great computer for less than $600 so that was a very good thing. Kelly has a big meeting with her professor on Monday to show that she made herself useful so far this summer so she is spending the day in the coffee shop studying. In the meantime, Christian has a monster presentation to make to people who are funding his research at MIT Lincoln Labs next Thursday. He has great research results to show them, but spent so much time getting the results right, he has not had enough time to prepare or practice the presentation yet. He flies to Boston on Wednesday, gives the presentation on Thursday and flies home on Friday.
Betty Blonde #373 – 12/21/2009
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An article in an East Coast rag known for employing the odd plagiarist, describes an earthquake that is expected to hit the Pacific Northwest that reminded me of some of Lorena’s hurricane preparations when we lived in Raleigh. The picture to the left is a pretty typical representation of her efforts. Notice at least half of the essential food groups are included in the stuff behind the water stores–tomatoes, chiles, avocados, onions and sour cream. That is what is needed to make salsa, the other main food groups being refried beans and tortilla chips.
Last night, Lorena made her signature fish tacos, but was not sure whether our dinner guests would be happy with that so she went down to the local Mexican food store/restaurant and bought fresh tortillas. While she was there, she made friends with a lady working at the store who told her they made barbacoa every day. So she bought some barbacoa. Her reaction when she opened the barbacoa at home was that if did not look right.
She smelled it, tasted it and said, “They did it wrong.”
I tasted it and it was awesome, just not exactly like the kind they make in Monterrey. Everyone but Lorena loved it. It is probably a good thing Lorena does not like it because it would definitely kill my diet if we had it in the house on a regular basis. Our visitors, Doyle, David and Kelly ate several tacos of both flavors: fish and barbacoa. It was all good enough that I went backwards a little on my diet, but today is another day. Well, at least it is another day if the big earthquake does not hit.
Betty Blonde #372 – 12/18/2009
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Lorena and I will have lived in our studio apartment for six months by the end of July. We have a great view from the apartment. We can walk to restaurants, shopping, work and two grocery stores. Our 24/7, very excellent fitness club is in the same building as the apartment. Lorena can scratch her gardening itch at the community garden where she has a small plot for $22 for the season. The only downside so far is it is hard to entertain for dinner or have overnight guests. We want to move into a house eventually by enjoy where we are right now and have no idea where we should be. So we are going to sign up for another stretch in the studio and wait.
One thing we have decided is that there is no way we want to get a big house or property this time. Lorena would like to have a garden and we would like to be able to entertain better so we do not want to get a cracker box house. We actually think we might like to design something ourselves. We know how we like to live–we want a big open room that includes the kitchen. Also, our apartment living has taught us that Murphy beds are a fine thing.
Kelly arrives on the train from Seattle today to spend the weekend with us. She will be here for dinner in the apartment with our friends Doyle S. and David K. Should be a lot of fun even if it is a tight fit.
Betty Blonde #371 – 12/17/2009
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Yesterday would have been Grandpa Lauro’s 73rd birthday. Lorena and I were thinking about it and went back through the blog to find the portraits of him we drew as part of our homeschool drawing class when Christian was twelve. These were drawn shortly after we moved to North Carolina and some of our very first efforts, so they really were not that great, but it brought back great memories of both Grandpa Lauro and of our drawing classes.
The reality is that I have never been much of an artist so I had to study a lot myself to be able to teach our homeschool art class. I have to say, in the end, it was one of our greatest homeschool success stories. We got some art history along with basic drawing skills and had great time together. Kelly’s comic strip (you can see an example at the bottom of this post) was an outgrowth of our homeschool art program, too. Best of all, though, it put all of us together, sitting quietly, listening to classical music and drawing and talking for an hour at least three times per week for several years. I would not give that back for anything.
You can see some of my old posts on drawing by clicking here.
Betty Blonde #370 – 12/16/2009
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Grandpa Milo was a serial entrepreneur. For the first half of my career, I thought that is what I wanted to do myself. One of the happiest days of my life was when I embraced the fact that I am an engineer and not an entrepreneur. I was definitely neither inclined toward it nor good at it. After I went back to full time engineering, it took me another few years to realize I needed to attach myself to people who were good at all the business disciplines: marketing, finance, etc. I look back at my career and realize the importance of embracing who you are and surrounding yourself with people who are NOT you in terms of their vocation–if that makes any sense.
I work with a lot of young engineers these days. Many of them are “born” engineers, but a lot of them are not. I think it is a great path to get an engineering or hard science undergraduate degree even if one’s plan is to go into business, education, art, psychology or virtually anything else. That is probably just me, but a rigorous education of any kind seems to help a lot when it comes to the discipline required to perform well in just about anything one does. There is more rigor in engineering and hard science than in most, if not all, other degrees. For the “born” engineers, though, they need to surround themselves with people who are interested in doing the other stuff.
Now that I am on the back end of a career I have loved, I am thinking I really do not just want to quit being an engineer when I “retire.” So, one thought I have had is that it might be fun and maybe even profitable to find some of my old marketing/finance/management buddies and colleagues who might want to do the same thing as me. That is kind of what the BeagleBone Black project is about. A couple of buddies and I have talked about spending a couple years familiarizing ourselves with some tools that might help us develop a product to sell if we can think of something marketable. There would be less pressure to make a profit, but we believe, if our goal is to do something good, we might be able to pay for our hobby, do a little good, have some fun and even make a little money.
Betty Blonde #369 – 12/15/2009
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It has been an interesting year. The veneer of good will between warring world views seems to have been ripped open. I ran into three interesting articles this morning when I opened up my browser to read the news. The first article, titled The end of “news” was about once trusted news sources that are no longer read by anyone but extreme partisans because they are no longer worthy of our trust. I found myself nodding my head to this article as I read. I no longer get my news from the AP, NBC, ABC, CBS, the Oregonian, The New York Times or even Fox News. I mourn that. I always loved to read the newspaper over coffee in the morning. The thing is, they no longer report the news. Other news sources break the important stories. I visited the old, reliable news source for a lot of years before I finally gave up. Now I just ignore them.
The second article titled Punch Leftists in the Mouth by Daniel Greenfield of the Sultan Knish blog about how to deal with those who want to tear society down. It is a rework of Mike Tyson, the heavyweight boxing champ’s famous quote, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Greenfield says it is not good to play nice with people who want to perpetrate evil. I found this interesting because James 4 was the chapter for my daily Bible read today.
Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. –James 4:4
Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. –James 4:17
The last article is a hopeful one. The title of the article is The Sexual Revolution’s Coming Refugee Crisis. The subtitle is Many people are going to be disappointed, and even before they can admit it to others or to themselves, they are going to ask, “Is this all there is?” It basically says that a lot of the bad stuff that has gained approval in our society since the 1960’s cannot sustain itself. God’s rules are being broken and things do not end well when that happens. Many people will come to the end of themselves and start to look for answers outside of popular culture, politics and governments. There is a huge opportunity in that if we remain humble and point these people to something truly good. James 4 has some answers for that, too.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. –James 4:10
Betty Blonde #368 – 12/14/2009
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I have written here that I am a big fan of the Fitbit exercise/calorie management watch Christian and Kelly bought for me last year. I eat healthier, get more exercise and my weight continues to come down. I have been on it, since I started back, about six weeks now. My problem is that I fall off the wagon on weekends. I actually do quite well on the exercise thing, but when I am left to myself, I go get a snack in the kitchen and Lorena is queen of snacks in the kitchen. I think her fast metabolism and cooking ability are a big problem for me. She can just eat more than I and not gain weight. I am envious of that, but am what I am so need to figure out how to avoid temptation on the weekends.
So, I think maybe what I need to do is stay busier on weekends. That can be a difficult thing because after a week at the office, there is temptation just to lounge about, read books (with my bad habit of eating while I read, that is not a good thing diet-wise) and go out to eat with Lorena. So that was part of the reason I bought the BeagleBone Black yesterday. To get onto a project with a buddy so I am held accountable to finish stuff is something that might help occupy me so I do not eat so much. I have a couple of other technology projects on which I work for previous employers as an advisor, but that does not keep me away from the carbo-loading. Lorena has her garden and her school. I got nothin’! So maybe this will work. We will see.
Betty Blonde #367 – 12/11/2009
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My buddy John from my last job in Prescott and I stay in pretty close touch. Neither of us are anywhere near retirement. He has kids still in school and I think of retirement as working when I want to work rather than actually quitting work. Are skills are complementary and we like to work together, so we decided we ought to do a demo project so that if, someday, we ever have enough money set aside we can consult. There is a good likelihood that will never happen, but it is always fun to take on side projects.
This side project involves a BeagleBone Black single board computer, a camera and a wifi link. We have a couple of great ideas about what to do with it, but want to put a ton of infrastructure in place so we can produce quality work quickly when we decide what we actually want to do. This morning, I bought a BeagleBone Black, a USB Wifi Adapter, and a 64 gigabyte microSD card on Amazon to get started. I already have a webcam we can hook up to it. I am setting up a Linux computer as a temporary server to use to archive our work–temporary because I do not have a whole lot of confidence in the computer nor the hard drive. As we start making some progress we will probably make some other arrangements.
As we make progress, I might describe some of what we are doing here so that we can have a record of what we might contribute as consultants if everything is not already completely obsolete by the time we get to doing that.
Betty Blonde #366 – 12/10/2009
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I am putting this up for posterity. Lorena is starting to harvest some pretty amazing vegetables on a daily basis. I can eat a lot, but pretty soon, even the two of us will not be able to keep up. Just wow.
I have long been of the opinion that the government should not be engaged (no pun intended) in the marriage business. The problem with government meddling in affairs outside of their domain did not begin with the recent Supreme Court overstepping of its constitutional bounds here in the United States. It happened long before that. A guy named Matt Appling in an aptly titled blog post, If You Think the Supreme Court Just “Redefined” Marriage, Take It Up With King Henry the Eighth, really nails the issue. It is ironic that so many people interested in redefining marriage to include something that is not marriage (same sex unions) are calling out the Christian community on the divorce issue. This is something over which the Christian world has fought wars, divided and argued for centuries.
It is right to argue that Christian’s need to get their house in order when it comes to the issue of divorce, but it seem very disingenuous when it is argued by people who treat the institution of marriage (in the true sense of the word) in such a cavalier manner. Christians really need to get this issue right. People both inside the Christian community and out who dishonor marriage through unrepentant fornication, adultery and attempts to redefine it should be viewed with incredulity when they try to argue that Christians are hypocrites with respect to divorce. Some of us are, but some of us, even in our weakness and failure, continue to repent, live repentant lives and fight the good fight.
In the meantime government should get out of the marriage business.
Betty Blonde #365 – 12/09/2009
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Christian made a breakthrough in his Information Theory research last night. He has to write a report and prepare a talk, both of which he will deliver to his research sponsor at MIT in Massachusetts later this month. He had a hard problem to solve. For a long time, he felt like there might not be a solution. If that were true, he felt like the report and presentation would have been much more difficult to make, so this was a big relief. My understanding is that this report and presentation will serve as his formal Qualifying Examination which is “designed to test the candidate’s research skills and abilities.” This is an exam given at the end of the first year of studies to “early out” students not capable of work at the PhD level. This is not the infamous Comprehensive Examination he will have to take to demonstrate mastery of his coursework before he starts his dissertation, but it is a big step forward. His presentation is scheduled for July 23.
Betty Blonde #364 – 12/08/2009
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