Category: General Page 33 of 116

We enjoy our work on the GaugeCam volunteer research project at NCSU very much.  Early on, Kelly did not participate as much as Christian and I because she has not been as interested in the nitty-gritty details of the server, cameras, and C++ programming.  That has all changed now.  I have mentioned earlier that she is in an introductory statistics class at college.  Now, when we meet for our GaugeCam work every other Saturday, she spends the entire time working her way through a book on the R programming language.  That is a language used by statisticians to evaluate and present statistical data.  A couple good things have come out of that so far and her effort is just starting.  First, Dr. Birgand sat down with her and walked her through a few concepts to get her started.  Secondly, Andrew found a program an integrated development environment for R called R Studio that we have downloaded.  It should help a lot in both learning R and in the development of programs for GaugeCam.

Kelly and I had a fairly animated talk last night about the great opportunities she has right now.  The problem is there are too many things competing for attention and we have to narrow them down.  If she tries to take on too many things, all of her efforts will get diluted and nothing will get accomplished.  We have already decided she will start putting out one or two Betty Blonde comic strips per week.  In addition to that, she will start writing in her blog every day.  We have registered KellyJeanChapman.com.  It should be up and running in a day or two.  We have already created a blog for her there and she will start adjusting that to her liking so she will be ready when the domain name is active.  It is my opinion that there is time for only one more small project right now if she wants to do well in school and still have a little time for herself to cook cupcakes, knit, play the piano, and stay in touch with her friends.  Maybe that project is French.  We will see.  I will let you know when she has her website up and running.

I went into to work late this morning because I have to stay late enough to go pick Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah up at the airport at 7:00 PM.  Dad (Grandpa Milo) just lost his business partner of over thirty years, Dave Christie.  They met every day for a meal and went on several business trips together for trade shows and that sort of thing.  Even after they sold their business, they met frequently for a meal to just talk.  He was a good friend to our whole family so it was hard to see him go.  I am sure that will be the subject of some interesting talks when they arrive.

We have some fun things planned for the visit.  We hope to have some folks over on Friday night for dinner and we have two museum trips planned.  The kids have to go to one of the local art museums for their Art Appreciation class.  I hope to avoid that one, but will probably fail.  The other one is the Airborne and Special Operations Museum down by Ft. Bragg in Fayetteville.  I have been wanting to go see that one for a long time.

On a final note, Christian just finished up two hard and painful weeks of non-stop exams, speeches, and reports.  He has nothing to do until after spring break but play his guitar and work on his the projects he likes.  Kelly had a pretty heavy load, too (she DID ace her last statistics quiz), but was not hammered with one thing after another at the same level.  All she has today is her volleyball PE class, then she is off for spring break, too. 

We dropped Christian off at the NCSU library of Friday night after dinner at a restaurant in Cameron Village, then made our way over to the Raleigh Little Theater to see The Man Who Came to Dinner.  It was a great play.  Kelly said she loved it, but has a special place in her heart for Charlie’s Aunt which we have seen twice, once here in Raleigh and once at the community theater in Albany, Oregon.  It was a great play and a super good time with the Stepps.  We all decided we have to do it again soon.  Christian, for his part, found that almost no one goes to a university library on a Friday night.  He said it was little bit creepy up on the ninth floor of a totally empty building at 10:30 PM.  He said it was even creepier going down the stairwells on his way out.

Kelly and I went to our bi-weekly GaugeCam meeting on Saturday.  It was great to have Andrew back.  It is not the same without him.  We made some great progress and Kelly got some private tutoring from Dr. Birgand on the R statistical programming language.  In the meantime, Christian headed back to the NCSU library for another long session which he continued when we got home in the afternoon.  He continued after church on Sunday and should be able to finish the thing up tonight.  I am sure his paper on the cipher machine used by the Japanese in World War II called Purple will benefit from his herculean effort.  I did not even know something like Purple existed, but I get to proofread the paper tonight, so I expect to know a lot more shortly.  It sounds very interesting.

We are going to see a play this evening with our great friends, the Stepps.  We hardly ever see them anymore because we have switched to a new Sunday morning meeting.  The venue is the Raleigh Little Theatre.  I will report the results tomorrow.  The last time we went to a play with the Stepps, they took us to the Dos Taquitos restaurant in downtown Raleigh.  We could not recommend it more highly–great Mexican food and we think the owners are from South America.  South Americans are notoriously bad at Mexican food, but this was absolutely fabulous.  Tonight, we are going to go out to eat before the play.  Lester and Esther have been here a long time and know a LOT more about the great places to eat than us Oregonians, so they are going to pick the place.  That should be just as fun as the play.

Poor Christian.  He has a big paper due on Tuesday, so we are going to drop him off at the NCSU library after dinner so he can study.  We will be feeling pretty sorry for him, but at least he will get a great meal if Lester and Esther maintain the string of great restaurant picks.  I will report back next post.

The kids have a Calculus mid-term today.  It is amazing how much more efficient they are now at math test preparation compared to when they started last September.  They stayed up late last night to prepare.  Christian has a big paper due for his history class next Tuesday and a speech and a paper due for his psychology class on Thursday.  Kelly has a statistics mid-term next week.  They also have the normal daily homework, but it surely appears as though they know how to go about it more efficiently and less emotionally.  After the test today, Christian will go back to the NCSU library to finish the research for his paper.  He will go again tomorrow night to start the writing.  Spring break is coming mid-week next week.  They only get four days off for spring break with a weekend in the middle for a total of six days.  That is oddly short, but the up side is that they get off in early May.  Grandma and Grandpa will arrive the day before the break, so they will definitely have some down time.  Christian’s plan is to hang out and play his guitar.  Kelly plan is to hang out, draw Betty Blonde and work on her new web site.  She be fun but relaxing.

Kelly and I talk regularly about her “new media” plan.  After her “hard” degree in math and statistics, she wants to go on to a graduate degree in something that engages in the public discourse.  She has investigated things like summer internships at National Review and the World Journalism Institute, but she needs some more formal writing experience to be able to get into a program like that.  She investigates opportunities to get that experience as she has time and will discuss that on her blog as she begins to participate in them.  In the meantime, she wants to practice.  There are two ways she plans to get that practice.

First, she wants to continue with Betty Blonde.  It was difficult to just quit cold turkey after two years of daily strips, but she needed to do that to concentrate on a full load of college classes.  She did a good job last semester as a full time student, but with a light load.  This semester she is doing even better with a sixteen hours that include four credit classes in Statistics and her second semester of Calculus.  She has a good system for both test and daily class preparation so that we have many fewer “hair on fire” days this semester than last even though her work load is significantly heavier.  Kelly feels like she has time now to write one or two daily Betty Blonde strips per week.  She also feels, and I agree, that her comic strip is a core element of her preparation for life after her bachelor degree.

There are several things we have to prepare before she can restart the strip.  My part of this will include a rewrite of the BleAx program so that it is easier to use and does not require my participation.  I also need to work with Kelly (with input from Christian) to design a new Betty Blonde site.  We are not sure whether we want to do this from scratch or use WordPress again.  We will be able to get by with the old BleAx program for awhile, but we cannot even start until the new web site is up and running.  Do not fear, all the old strips will be included in the new site.

Second, Kelly plans to start a new blog just for writing and a few photos.  She has not chosen a name yet and she is still thinking about topics.  The purpose of the blog is to practice and try out new stuff that has to do with where she plans to go with her studies and career.  I do not want to steal any of her thunder on that, but will report on this a little more as we move forward.  When we get the two new web sites up and going, I will prevail on Kelly to write introductory posts here to introduce her new stuff.  We are probably a month or two away from these new beginnings.

I have a great job that I love, but it is a long way from where I live.  When I took the job, it was agreed that I could work from home 2/3 days per week.  Today I am at home and will start work as soon as I finish this post.  There is a real up side to not having to drive for forty minutes to get to work.  On the other hand, I am not really a “work at home” kind of guy.  There is WAY too much food around here.  Still, under the right circumstances, I can get a LOT more done here than at work.  Part of that has to do that I have two extra hours to get it done, but the isolation helps, too.  I am a social guy, so I do not like it as much, but it helps.  I have VNC to get onto the company computers and communicate with the office with email and Skype.  It all works amazingly well.  Best of all, Lorena brings me breakfast at my desk!!!  What a wife.  It is even more amazing today because she is having her annual checkup and the doctor said she had to fast after midnight until they took samples, so she made breakfast for me without having any for herself!

I received a couple of comments about my long hiatus from blogging.  When I complained about it to my kids, they gave me no sympathy and said get back to blogging.  And here I am.  The reality was that, after the kids started at college, I struggled trying to figure out what to write.  There was the added pressure of a new job and it was just more convenient not to think about it.  That is over now.  It is time to get back in the saddle.  Kelly and I are in on-going talks about what she needs to do, in addition to her school, to prepare for a career.  She has narrowed her goals down to something manageable enough that we have the beginnings of a plan–thank goodness it involves Betty Blonde.  I will save the whole plan for another day, but it has us excited.  It has also increased the length of our to-do lists.  As for Christian, we got him a new guitar (with mother-of-pearl in-lays–way cool!) that he plays whenever he can squeeze in a minute or two between studies.  We bought a BeagleBoard so we can build a vision system for a side project.  Christian will help me with some of the development on that.

I will try to spend the rest of the week on our scheduled revamp of Betty Blonde and a couple of projects.  Our original Betty Blonde rework plan did not work out so well, so we went back to the drawing board.  As for the projects, everyone has been so busy, we have not had much time to pursue and “fun” stuff, but we have decided we need to try to get back to that.

After a long and relaxing Christmas holiday, Kelly and Christian start back to school today.  We got maybe ten percent of the stuff we planned done over the holidays.  That is a good thing.  We DID spend a bunch of time cooking, working out (semi-regularly), talking about life, and just hanging out.  I think we all needed that.  Over the last couple of days we spent the last significant chunk of money for school on this semester’s books and a new laptop for Kelly.  Her netbook died on us.  Her only criteria was that her new computer had to be pink.  Amazingly, our SysAdmin (Christian) was able to find a refurbished computer at Dell with all the features she REALLY needs with the added benefit that it is pink.  We bought our books from Amazon and saved a bundle.  Pretty impressive actually.  We got hardcover texts less expensively than it would have cost us to buy the electronic versions.

Both the kids have significantly heavier loads this semester.  Kelly has a 16 credit load with both Calculus II and Statistics.  Christian has 17 credits.  They have one class each on Mondays and Wednesdays, so they are loaded up from dawn ’til dark on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Christian has a three-hour night class on Tuesday evenings.  We drove to Target yesterday afternoon to buy new folders, notebooks, and pens for all their classes.  It is amazing how this remains exciting, even after many years.  I envy them a little.

Lorena lost a part of a fillings in one of her teeth just before the holidays started last month.  She set up an appointment for January 3.  We have a good level of confidence in all three dentists at the dental practice we visit, so when she drew the oldest dentist (and probably the guy who started the practice decades ago) she thought it was great.

He looked in her mouth and said, “Well, you didn’t lose the entire filling.  I can fix this much faster with none of the numbness if we don’t use anesthetic.”

Lorena thought that was fine idea, but about halfway through the repair, after an number of “stop it hurts” events, she decided it hurt pretty bad and asked for some anesthetic.  The dentist told her it was too late know–he was halfway done.  So Lorena toughed it out.  At that point (or a LOT sooner), I would have been screaming bloody murder and demanding something to kill the pain.

The amazing part of the whole deal is the, if she had to do it over again, she would do the same thing.  She hates that numbness on half of her face for the rest of the day.

We had a pretty quite evening on New Year’s eve.  Lorena and Kelly made up a batch of 106 tamales.  We had several, but word has it that we will freeze most of them for future consumption.  We really need to make some green salsa now. Hand made tamales are WAY better with tomatillo salsa.  At midnight (NC time) we called the annual Joyce New Year’s party in Oregon on Skype.  We very much lament the fact we could not be there.  Let me tell you, in our humble opinion, that is the very best New Year’s party in the country.

To make up for it, Christian is going to drive me over to get some gas and then on to McDonald’s for my first Egg McMuffin of the year.  Maybe we will go to McDonald’s first because if we don’t get there quick, breakfast will be over!  If Lorena does not find out, I might even be able to eat a couple of tamales for breakfast, too.  Come to think of it, we ought to stop at Harris Teeter for some tomatillas on the way home.  Here are a couple more holiday pictures:

Christmas Dinner


Leftovers

Eight inches of snow on December 26

Today we have started a regular driving schedule so the kids can get more practice.  I like our driving plan very much.  The main reason I like it is because it involves a lot of driving around looking for a place to by a frozen yogurt.  The kids like driving.  I like sitting and eating frozen yogurt, so it is a win-win for everyone.

We’ve been drawing again! 6B pencils and lots of free time (on my part) resulted in THIS:

Guess who it is!

Now that I see it all scanned, I see all the flaws (My drawing flaws of course. The person in the picture has no flaws.), but it is still my best portrait ever!

Dad and Christian are being lazy, but their portraits will come up soon.

Merry Christmas to all!

I just checked his facebook account.

Employer:  Unemployed
High School:  Did not graduate
College:  Community college (night school)
Activities and interests:  Guitar playing and free stuff

It is all true.

Notice the particularly loving expressions on the faces of Rigo and Christian.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we purchased two books on drawing to begin to work through over the Christmas holiday.  We have decide to start with the book Drawing for Older Children and Teens by Mona Brookes.  Here is the blog post from Renee’s Book of the Day that inspired me to start with this book first.  Beside the stellar recommendation for the book, the blog made a very interesting and inspiring comment about the author’s motivation for learning to draw.

…in order to truly appreciate the beauty of something that you see on your travels, you must attempt to draw it. The act of drawing, even if you are a terrible artist, forces you to truly look at, even study, the object of beauty. It obliges you to make decisions about why this thing is beautiful or special, and the attempt itself of capturing what makes it exceptional brings about a greater appreciation of what you see. I loved this idea too.

This will be a much longer program than the two and a half weeks we have available to us over Christmas vacation. I hope we can continue to work for a half an hour or so per day after work/school when spring semester starts on January 5. I am going through a little bit of homeschool withdrawal anyway. Again, we will try to post some of our results here as we go along. We will save Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards for another time.

We have another book on a completely different topic we need to study for our work on the GaugeCam project. It is titled A Beginner’s Guide to R. The R programming language is a tool to do many things, one of which is to prepare graphical output from statistics for presentation, publication, and analysis. I will discuss our efforts with respect to learning R and statistics over on the GaugeCam blog.

Tio Laurin sent us this amazing photo last night.  Kelly and Christian’s oldest cousin on the Mexican side had her Quinceañera (a very big occasion celebrating her 15th birthday) in November. We were unable to attend, partially because of the dangerous situation in Monterrey. Lorena’s brothers, technical wizards all, set up a big screen and a camera so they could see us and we could see the party, all via Skype. The picture is of Dayanita standing by the Skype screen with Lorena and Kelly watching on. It was not as good as being there, but it was not bad.

He also sent a picture of their little Taekwondo champion, Jorgito.  Here is a picture of the arena where they had the tournament and Jorgito with his medals.

We had our normal Saturday morning breakfast at McDonald’s then came home to hit the books.  The kids are preparing for their Calculus and Biology tests.  I will work on the GaugeCam project.  A couple of weeks ago, I was at McDonald’s trying to figure out what I could eat for breakfast that would not kill my calorie count.  I love the calorie count thing.  It fits into the way I do my workouts–with exhaustive data gathering.  It is not for everyone, but it works for me.*

Kelly said, “Why don’t you have an Egg McMuffin?”

I said, “I can’t afford the calories.”

She said, “It only has 300 calories.”

She was right!  I am now a BIG Egg McMuffin fan (again).  It has returned to its proper place on my Saturday morning menu.

We have great discussions on Saturday mornings at McDonald’s.  We are negotiating through career ideas.  Kelly is fairly well set up to get a double degree because she passed so many CLEP tests.  We talked about that some this morning then got on the internet and found a potential second degree that goes well with her current major, Math with a Statistics concentration.  Math and Statistics are required as part of a Political Science BA/BS at University of Idaho.  I need to make a call there to figure out what classes she needs to take at the community college to assure she can graduate on time, but it seems like a particularly good option.  The especially good part about a degree from University of Idaho is that we have friends close by who can give the kids tips both on Math and PE, plus they have really cute kids!!

*Note:  I know, I know, I should have the weight loss death match chart up and running.  I am WAY behind on that and it flies in the face of the exhaustive data gathering thing.  I am especially chagrined when it comes to fellow exhaustive data gatherer, Lyle.  I will put it up SOON!

Christian did a stellar job on his first final, Western Civilization I.  Kelly has her first final this afternoon for her American Literature I class.  There is a weekend and two days left before they finish their first semester.  The grades are not in yet, but their Dad is very, very happy with how well they made the transition from homeschool to college.  The Biology and Calculus classes were hard, but they both did well.  Calculus required a couple of hours per day of study outside of class.  They both wrote significant research papers for their liberal arts classes, participated actively with the other students in and out of class, had a least one very good teacher and one not-so-good teacher, made new friends, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves in spite of some periods of suffering and angst.

Christian said he will probably take another golf PE class when he gets to a four year college.  He did not have a lot of great instruction in the class, but could see that it would be a lot of fun to play with his cousin Lauro or his buddies in Oregon.  Kelly took a volleyball class and learned a LOT.  They played a lot of games, so she got a lot of experience and learned how to play the game correctly.  She would take another volleyball class next semester if it were offered, but will have to wait until she gets to a four year college because Wake Tech does not offer one.  Next semester Kelly will take a fitness class for PE and Christian will take the volleyball class.

Next semester will be a new challenge.  Now that they have shown they can perform at the college level, we will kick up the number of hours next semester from 12 hours to somewhere in the 15-17 hour range.  Kelly and Christian will take Integral Calculus and Art Appreciation together.  Both of them have a public speaking class, but will take it at different times.  We will talk about all that a little later.  The challenge at this point is to transition from taking a light, but full load of classes up to a normal to heavy load of classes.  I think their study skills and time management skills have improved to the point where they can handle it well.  In addition, they know their way around the school, have some friends, and know more about what to expect at the college level.