"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

Month: August 2024 Page 1 of 2

Brad improves the design

Coker & Co. of Granbury, Texas is close to breaking ground, God willing, on the house we hope to construct. We are working through the final design with Brad, the owner of the company. He is just amazing. We were very pleased with the design made by Larry, our designer, but Brad has added touches that will fundamentally improve the livability of the house. He made the pantry, living room, and laundry room bigger, added a sink to laundry room, added a closet to the office, and did it all without changing the footprint of the house. We are truly enjoying working through this process with him.

Lorena starts pottery class

Lorena has been wanting to take more pottery classes since the time she took them almost twenty years ago at Linn-Benton Community College’s Corvallis campus. She found a place in a very fancy place in San Pedro with lots of other little shops around it and signed up for eight classes. She will be going there for three hours every Thursday she is in town. Today was her first day. There are three pottery wheels in a small workshop along with space for people to do other things. Today, there was a small group of woman doing sculptures at the sculpture table and two college girls working on the other two pottery wheels. Lorena says she loved it and cannot wait to go back.

Looking my age

I was asked to send a headshot for the updated website by the marketing team at Thrive Bioscience where I work. I have thought a lot about the fact that I am approaching 70 years old for a number of reasons, partly Biblical and partly that is when I will, God willing, start receiving social security. If I do not retire from full-time work at that point, just because of the nature of life, it should not be too much after that. The thing I noticed with this picture is that I am not only getting old, I am looking old. I embrace that. Since when I was in my mid-thirties, it slowly dawned on me that it is a gift to enjoy the age you are. And, since then, I have. I love being 68 for a few more weeks. It makes it so much more satisfying because Lorena still looks like a teenager.

Lauro is not yet sixty

Tío Lauro came over to the apartment last night so Conchita, Lorena, Lynn, and I could celebrate his birthday with him. We (again) cooked up a boatload of chuletón, ate way too much, sang La Mañanitas, and ate birthday cake. The apartment is perfect for entertaining small crowds inside and much larger groups out on the azotea. We are very grateful to be here now with people of such good will. We hope to do this as often as we can. Lauro is programmed to come spend the day with us next Saturday. I am hoping to take him up the hill to the remodel so we can see what progress has been made.

Life long learning

My University of Nebraska professor, Troy, just sent out his “first day of school” picture for his 26th year of school. Because of the advent of Artificial Intelligence, he decided he needed some formal education in computer and data science. He started an M.S. in Data Science about a year and a half ago and this is the last class of the first half of the program. He is picking up a ton of skills like Python, R, and a bunch of database and visualization stuff. It would not hurt me to take a few classes like that. I am sure I would enjoy them, but I am leaning toward something, maybe a little less practical and little more esoteric like something in Art, History, or Philosophy.

Shake Shack in Mexico!

Lorena and I ran down to the Galería Mall in Monterrey to eat lunch at the SHAKE SHACK!!! It is just as good (the SAME) as in the U.S.A. There are actually three of them in the Monterrey metropolitan area. We are truly blessed.

San Pedro street fair

Conchita, Lauro, Lorena, and I went into El Centrito de San Pedro Garza García today, had arrachera for lunch followed by coffee and a grocery shopping trip to Soriana. I decided to go home after that, but everyone else stayed to go to an evening street fair. They are still there having a great time, but I am glad I came home. What I though was a three hour even turns out was about a ten hour event (and that is ok!)!

Access to medicine (and other stuff)

We knew we needed to figure out how to get our prescription medications when we moved to Mexico and were pretty sure that was true for a lot of other things, too. The first thing we learned was that my prescription medications are just medications in Mexico, no prescription required. Then, we found out that the 5000 UI capsules of vitamin D3 and the vitamin K2 we could not seem to find anywhere online or in stores, was readily available just by asking the pharmacist where we got our medications to order them. The reality is that we have not find anything, so far, that we cannot get easily here in Monterrey.

The Sandhills in the summer

Troy is out in the Sandhills of Nebraska again. I hope he views this as a major perk of his job. He sent this picture and several videos today. Imagine having to drive out their once every 4-5 months. And sometimes, he even gets to take his kids. I had no appreciation for that part of the world until I started my doctoral research which entailed taking pictures of the Platte River every fifteen minutes or so. The amount of wildlife, both birds and the four-footed kinds, was staggering. And the views, especially when appreciated over all the seasons, were breathtaking. The sad part is that I have never been there. I have only really just seen the pictures. The research we did was significant and I am glad for that, but I really hope I get to go there someday.

Advancements

There is nothing really earthshaking to report today. I had a good day at work, a good day with our (Lorena and my) exercise programs, a good day with advancements in the completion of the apartments, and I did not gain a ton of weight. All is good. Today was just a regular day and I am grateful for it.

A needed coffee mug of the first order

My entire Mexican experience informed me that the only coffee available for general consumption, even at the finest dining establishments was Instant Nescafe. I was wrong and Tío Lauro very graciously showed me the error of my ways. In his trip to Veracruz he drank the spectacular local product that is some of the best coffee in the world. In addition, he filled a sorely needed deficiency in my working life. As is the wont of many programmers, it is difficult for me to work without a mug (read mug, not cup) of coffee at my desk. Lauro arrived in Monterrey with a much needed mug of the Café de la Parroquia from Veracruz. I am forever indebted.

Tío Lauro comes by

Tío Lauro got back home from his family vacation to Veracruz on Saturday. He picked up Grandma Conchita after meeting and we all went to El Gran Pastor for cabrito. Lauro ordered a half cabrito for the table and we were only able to eat about half of that. After lunch, we went to a very high-end grocery store named CityMarket, then went to our favorite coffee house in San Pedro, Café Punta del Cielo. Can hardly wait to take Uncle Doug there. On the way home, we stopped by a jam-full CostCo to buy a counter-top oven, and finished the night hanging out and talking at the apartment. We hope he comes back a lot.

Meat

Lorena went to Carnicería Ramos with Grandma Conchita and bought 6.919 lbs. of a cut called Chuleton that Lynn says is a super-set of what gringos call ribeye. She paid a little under $38 dollars total for it which comes out to ~$5.38/lb. This is the same as what Lynn grilled up for us last Saturday night. We got a pound more this week than last week and plan to grill it all up tonight to heat up a few times over the week.

First tacos since our arrival

Unbelievably, last night we went to a working man’s outdoor taco place for the first time since we moved down to Mexico. As usual, it was just incredible and we cannot figure out why we did not do this until two weeks after we arrived.

GaugeCam GRIME2 v0.4.0.0

The current incarnation of the GRIME2 (v0.4.0.0) ground-based camera water level measurement program was a port of much earlier code that was updated and pushed to GitHub on September 12, 2020. The earliest date I can find for the code that was ported was v0.1j.0 committed (to SVN) and released on July 30, 2009. My PhD adviser at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and I had a fairly long impromptu meeting this afternoon about the direction we are taking with this software and work. I have decided I am going to disaffiliate from UNL (to a certain extent–never not going to love my experience there) and focus my efforts on research associated with the GaugeCam GRIME Lab. That, in some sense is a difference without a distinction. What is really needed right now that I can contribute is

  • publication of research that has already been performed,
  • extension of the GRIME2 software package to handle much smaller calibration targets,
  • integration of GRIME2 functionality into GRIME-AI (Artificial Intelligence),
  • use of GRIME-AI to answer interesting hydrology, ecology, and agricultural questions,
  • and publications of those results in appropriate journals.

So, that is my current plan moving forward, as part of GaugeCam and the GRIME Lab. Part of the reason for that is so that we can investigate the possibility of developing a user base and commercializing GRIME-AI as an independent entity, unencumbered by the lumbering bureaucracy of an institution of higher learning. That is why I am pleased that we had the foresight to license GRIME2 with and Apache 2 license and solely in my name long before I stared working with ANY academic institution.

Living in México–grateful

Lorena and I are genuinely excited to be living in Mexico. Of course the food is spectacular, but there is so much more. We just happened to pick a time to come down here during one of the mildest summers in memory. The temperatures in August have been between five and ten degrees cooler than where we are building our house Southwest of Fort Worth. We are living in a working class neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else, the music is a little too loud, the streets are not exactly the cleanest in the world, but the people are truly the friendliest people anywhere. The added bonus is the closeness of family. We could not be more grateful.

Inaugurating the grill

Lorena and I took an Uber from the apartment down to the big HEB grocery store near San Pedro Plaza last night. There is a Carnicería Ramos (butcher shop) right by there so Lorena ran over and bought two kilograms of chuleton. Lynn says it is a cut that includes the ribeye and a little bit more. We $30 for 4.5 lbs. of ribeye plus for of those super plump, redder than the gringo version, extremely tasty hot dogs. We also got some potatoes, makings for salsa and a bunch of other stuff. It took about two hours from the time the carbon was lit until we ate, but that was just part of the deal. It was phenomenal and the four of us (Grandma Conchita, Lynn, Lorena, and I ate maybe a pound and a half of the steak and half a hot dog each. We were stuffed.

A true neighborhood

We are amazed at what it is like to live in our new neighborhood. Beside the beautiful vignettes of daily life we see out the front window (we loved seeing this cat relaxing on a shelf above the garage of the neighbor across the street), it seems like everyone here knows, or at least knows of, everyone else in the neighborhood. Last night, Lynn walked up to a deposito (a non-chain, neighborhood convenience store–they call them depositos because everyone buys their beer and returns their empty bottles to stores like this) to return some bottles from other renters in our apartment. The guy working behind the counter asked to whom he should credit the bottles. Lynn told him, “the girls from Veracruz” and he knew exactly who Lynn was talking about even though they had been here only a month.

Weather forecast: Cooler in San Pedro than Granbury

We are kind of amazed about this. My sense is that this is not a common turn of events.

Walking from the apartment to the house on the hill

Lorena and I decided to walk from you apartment up to the house on the hill and found that it is quite a steep walk. I have decided I am going to do that every day for a couple weeks, then gradually work myself up to further walks. If I can get through the pain of not having walked on any serious inclines for years, it will be a great way to get into shape and, hopefully, stay there. The views up there are amazing and only getting better with the work Lynn is doing to make the house more open with more views from more floors. The picture below is of the new picture window in the first floor living room/office.

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