Month: May 2024 Page 1 of 2

Two books

By Dad

On Friday, May 31, 2024

I finished the Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, Volume Three by Michael L. Brown on the trip to Oregon and started reading Volume Four today. These books have been major eye-openers for me in many ways, not only about Christianity from a Jewish perspective, but about Christianity, whole cloth.

I ordered a book titled The Farm at the Center of the Universe by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jonathan Witt that arrived while we were gone. It is a young person’s novel about scientific and other evidences for the existence of God. I got this one just because it looked like it could be very, very good. I hope to have time to read the second one this weekend.

I am doing a pretty good job of upping my reading game, but will have to put more effort into finding more good books. I have several that are pretty heavy reads, so I need to find some new ones that are both interesting and worth reading. Sometimes those ends are at cross purposes with each other.

The siblings

By Dad

On Friday, May 31, 2024

In Family, Friends

Lorena and I flew to Oregon to get together with all my siblings to celebrate my older brother, Doug’s, 70th birthday. We met together at a resort at Depoe Bay, Oregon. I am very, very grateful for my siblings. They hosted me at the hotel and at my sister Julia’s house when we returned to Portland. We spent the whole time eating and talking about psychology and God. Of course, we are coming from different places on stuff, but are in agreement on more than that on which we disagree. Most of all, we talked and listened to each other in good will. We have decided to get together like this every year or two. I hope we can do the next one in our house Texas or Mexico.

Friends and colleagues

By Dad

On Thursday, May 30, 2024

In Software, Technology, Work

We flew to Oregon last week to get together with all my siblings for the first time since our parents funeral, seven years ago. Part of the trip was set aside for a meeting with two colleagues of mine with whom I have worked for almost 40 years (Frank Evans) and around 30 years (Dr. Mark Singer). We got a meeting room in Tualatin, Oregon to discuss the technical aspects of work they do for me as contractors in my day job. It is a gift to be able to work with them. In our field, there are none better both technically and in terms of good will. I am writing this as a marker by which to honor and remember them–we are all old and live far apart–them in Oregon and me in Texas, so this might be the last time. I hope not.

GaugeCam GRIME Lab ML/AI

By Dad

On Wednesday, May 22, 2024

In Post-doctoral research, Retirement PhD, Software, Technology

Dr. J is exactly half-way through to his PhD at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research software is turning into something amazing indeed. This is an example of his (very preliminary) instance segmentation. Even though it is very early in the process, you can see this is going to be a powerful addition to his already powerful GRIME-AI software suite of tools. The software already downloads and merges images and scalar data according to a user specified, GUI-selectable recipe that includes data cleaning and image triage. Can’t wait to see the finished product.The software is part of the GaugeCam GRIME Lab research initiative at University of Nebraska.

Selling the house

By Dad

On Monday, May 20, 2024

No offers yet, but today we had the third showing in the first three days the house has been on the market. We have been trying to figure out what we should do to be out of the way while waiting for people to view the house and we think we might have found it. There is a place in Godley named Row 171 that serves drinks, but no food. The hook is that people come there for the music and ambiance AND the scheduled food trucks. Tonight, there was some stellar quesadillas and a glass of wine. The music was a little loud for an old guy like me, but it was not bad music. The feeling was that kind of feeling you can only get in a small town in America of a high school ambiance, but with beer, wine, and well drinks. You kind of expect to see Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite to walk by in his high school letter jacket.

Troy out in the field

By Dad

On Monday, May 20, 2024

In Post-doctoral research

Troy is out in the field at the Kearney Outdoor Learning Area working on our research targets. I actually really like this picture. He looks like a real working hydrology scientist. That is right in the same place where the University of Nebraska–Kearney research team got the killer snapping turtle image that I put up in yesterday’s blog post. I really hope he has on some steel encased boots!

KOLA Snapping Turtle

By Dad

On Sunday, May 19, 2024

This image of a fairly large snapping turtle was captured at the Kearney Outdoor Learning Center on Turkey Creek south of the Kearney, Nebraska High School by the water level measurement targets. The researchers at the site regularly wade around right there where the turtle is to clean and maintain the targets and equipment. It kind of makes me happy that I am not the one doing the wading and is giving pause to everyone else. The breadth of variety in the wildlife there at Turkey Creek is nothing short of amazing with owls, raccoons, herons, turtles and who knows what else.

House for sale!

By Dad

On Friday, May 17, 2024

In House and home

Our house in Godley is officially on the market. It hit the websites earlier today and we had our first visitor in the early afternoon. We are not sure what that means, but we think we have it priced right and hope it sells pretty quickly. We will be moving to Mexico between when our current house sells and the new house is completed. We have done a lot of work getting ready, but now we are in the hurry up and wait mode. Even though some of our houses have sold very quickly in the past this period gives Lorena and I anxiety!

Tío Lauro in Brazil

By Dad

On Friday, May 17, 2024

My brother-in-law, Lauro has had some pretty amazing jobs. Right now he runs a team of several groups of engineers located throughout Latin America. Right now, he is visiting a couple of those teams in Brazil. He and his family lived in Brazil a decade or so ago and he truly loves it there. All things considered, though, I think he has gotten to the point in his career (like I did), where travel is more of a chore if you are doing it for work. Sitting on airplanes for double-digit hours at a time with only work at the other end is pretty lonely and tiring. I am grateful to not be doing it so much anymore. Still, it can be enjoyable if one has a good group of people at the other end.

Turtles and rabbits

By Dad

On Tuesday, May 14, 2024

In House and home, Pets

This is the time of year when we have lots of turtles and rabbits in our yard. We are really hoping we will have them at our new house, but because it is in town, we are not so sure about it. We are close to a couple of fairly large parks by a lake so, if we do not have them at home, there is a good chance we will be able to see them when we walk. When we first got here, we found a really big turtle on our back porch which Lorena promptly painted with a red spot. We were hoping to see him come back and we have had lots of turtles, but none with a red spot.

Brilliant Mother’s Day

By Dad

On Monday, May 13, 2024

In Family, Granbury

Lorena and I had quite an amazing Mother’s Day yesterday. Both the kids called and we had long, interesting talks with them about life, plans, frustrations, and ambitions. Maybe there is no better Mother’s Day present than to have confidence your kids are on the right track with God. Lorena decided she wanted a steak for dinner so we drove into Granbury, had some baked chicken for lunch, and bought a steak. The dinner was the real deal, evidenced by our post-meal torpidity. Lorena plans to drive back into Granbury sometime today to switch the city water and electrical services over from the previous owner to us. It seems like we have moved from a potential path to an actual path on our plan to build the house even though selling our current house is a pretty big hurdle.

Mother’s day 2024

By Dad

On Sunday, May 12, 2024

In Family, Our Homeschool Story

This image above was captured at Depoe Bay, Oregon on Mother’s Day, May 9, 2004. This was just a short few weeks before I started this blog when Christian was 8 and Kelly was 10. I started writing as a tool to help prepare for their third and fifth grade school years, having decide to pull them from the truly horrific Albany, Oregon public schools and homeschool them ourselves. The image below was captured on the North Carolina State University campus when Christian and Kelly graduated from college on Mother’s Day, May 10, 2014. The kids had skipped high school and graduated from college when Christian was 18 and Kelly was 20, large due to the dedication and support of their mother. Seeing these picture and reflecting on those times and places were a good reminders of what a spectacular mother and wife is Lorena.And beautiful, too–then and now.

Cactus on the new property

By Dad

On Saturday, May 11, 2024

In Granbury, House and home

Lorena was quite pleased to learn there is edible cactus growing on the new property. I was hoping it would be the type with the sweet tuna (cactus fruit), but it was not, so we will have to start that on our own. Fortunately, they do not take a long time to grow. We walked the property again today and, while it is not big in absolute terms, it really is about as big as we think we can handle. There is plenty of room for the house, some lawn, a garden, a small greenhouse, and an out building we want to use as a workshop.

Lorena’s in-town property

By Dad

On Friday, May 10, 2024

In House and home

It is Mother’s Day in Mexico (not until Sunday here in the USA) and we just signed off on a piece of property closer to town where we hope to build a house. There is a lot of work ahead, but some of it is the kind we really love and we can get through the rest with such a great end in mind.

First house design meeting

By Dad

On Thursday, May 9, 2024

In Granbury, House and home

We were supposed to have the kick-off meeting with our house designer this afternoon at 1:15, but we started getting tornado warnings pretty early in the morning so we bumped the meeting until 11. There was a little bit of a storm and a good amount of wind at the specified time, but thankfully, it passed us up.

The meeting was great. We had it at the designers house. He is just a little older than me and he and his wife have very similar ideas about what they want their house to be as Lorena and I. Of course, it is nice to think about all the great things that are possible and that is fun, but the disconnect between what one can afford and what is possible is often very wide. Fortunately, Lorena and I have done this enough times that we know where we want to spend a little more money and, mostly, where it is OK to skimp. We liked the designer a lot and are looking forward to working with him.

Putting our house on the market

By Dad

On Wednesday, May 8, 2024

In Granbury, House and home

The closing for the property where we want to build a house in closer to town (within walking distance) is on Friday this week. The preliminary meeting with the house designer is tomorrow and, hopefully, our current house will go on the market before the end of next week. With all this happening so fast, Lorena was quite pleased that she could harvest this spectacular Texas sunflower to enjoy while we start to prepare the house for showing and, also hopefully, a move. Houses in this area are currently staying on the market for 2-3 months, but the traditional school year ends mid-May and the buying season kicks in because people want to get moved in time to enroll their kids properly into their new schools, so we have lots of hope that the house will sell within that 2-3 month time frame. We are doing a little bit of a balancing act because the house in Mexico where we want to live while the new house is being built is not quite ready for us.

The Jewish roots of Jesus

By Dad

On Tuesday, May 7, 2024

In Christianity

Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus by Lois Tverberg arrived yesterday. It is a book Kelly’s boyfriend, Adam, gifted here. I think it will be a good companion book to go along with my current reading: Jewish Objections to Jesus by Dr. Michael Brown. I am not sure whether it is a scholarly book (it has some pretty heavy endorsers on the back cover) or a pastoral book–maybe somewhere in-between, but it certainly looks interesting. Time will tell. The (pretty big_ guy in the other picture was guarding the mailbox when I went out to pick up the book. Lorena and I love seeing the turtle, rabbits, and hares in our area during this time of year.

UNL Adjunct Professor final process steps

By Dad

On Monday, May 6, 2024

In Retirement PhD

I am profoundly grateful for having earned my PhD at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). Like many American universities, they are experiencing moral and spiritual decay in many of their departments, but it seems like Nebraska, as a state, is ahead of the curve in combating that degradation. The experience of my graduation reset my view of the institution in a very good way. A way that prepared me to want to contribute transactionally, but as a volunteer. My experience of the people there was amazing. They were invariable of great, good will. I planned all along to continue working with my adviser, Troy, but this inspired me to think more globally–to contribute to the institution of UNL generally, and to the School of Natural Resources in particular. To that end, I asked Troy if he could make me an Adjunct Professor (unpaid). He started the lobbying and paperwork to do that several months ago. Some excellent people wrote me some excellent reference letters and now we are at the final decision point. If all goes well, I will be an Adjunct Professor at UNL before the end of May.

High water in TX and NE

By Dad

On Sunday, May 5, 2024

In Post-doctoral research

An insane amount of rain has been coming down in the middle of the country. Here in Texas, we have had consistent rain, day after day, for weeks, to the point that if feels like we are in the Pacific Northwest. With all this stuff coming down, my buddy John, sent me a WhatsApp message asking whether I checked the property we are buying to see if it is inundated. Thankfully, it is not, but about everywhere else in our part of Texas is flooded. Even crazier is the research site at the Kearney Outdoor Learning Area (KOLA) which is one of our main research areas. The water is almost always very far below the blue octagons (which you can partially see in the image above). I would really like to see this in real life someday. Amazing how much water is falling in Nebraska.

Things are moving fast..

By Dad

On Sunday, May 5, 2024

…but they will slow down dramatically after we buy the property. We do not think our house will sell immediately so there will be an impatient wait there. After that, there will be a frenetic move of all our stuff from our house into short-term storage and a move to Mexico followed by what could be a year long wait while the house is built. Hopefully, the two month (or so) design phase will coincide with the time it takes to build the house AND the time it takes to get our house on the hill in San Pedro to the point where we can live in it. There are LOTS of moving parts, but this, to me, is going to be another chance to do one more big thing. Actually, it is pretty small in the whole scheme of things, but big in terms of the amount of planning and effort it will take to implement the whole thing, God willing.

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