Category: General Page 35 of 116

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.

Friday was my last day of work at Centice.  It was one of my best work experiences ever.  The people there are absolutely stellar people in every way.  Their technology portfolio is formidable.  I am looking forward to what I am confident will be life-long relationships with our tight-knit crew there.  All the best to all of you.  Your future is bright.

In the mean time, I have taken a new position at a company named Bioptigen.  Bioptigen makes Optical Coherence Tomography retina imaging devices.  I was pretty embarrassed to have to be corrected by my friend (and boss for three years at Centice) about the name of the new technology that will occupy my waking hours for the foreseeable future.  Thank you Prasant.  I will work on the images accumulated by these devices.  It is bleeding edge technology in a very exciting application arena to which I believe I have something important to offer.  And this all helps the doctors do their jobs better.  We will see.

Kelly and Christian will be both starting their full-time college careers on Monday morning at Wake Tech Community College.  Their first (and only) class together this fall is Differential Calculus.  Kelly should be talking about that in her blog over at Betty Blonde.  Kelly will also take Biology II, American Literature I, and Beginning Volleyball for a total of twelve hours.  Christian’s classes include the Calculus, Biology I, Western Civilization I, and Beginning Golf.  We are all very excited.

As for blogging, I am now ready to fire things back up while I am thinking about new directions for the blog in addition to our new job and educational directions.  Kelly will be doing her blogging over at Betty Blonde now as she and Christian spin up their efforts for the new phase of that comic strip!

Well, I am very proud of Kelly and Christian with all the work they have done in getting Betty Blonde out every day without ever missing a day.  They will both be starting college full time in mid-August, so we have decided to ratchet the strip back to once per week.  Their last daily strip can be found here.  Kelly will tell you more about that in a future post.  Most of all, though, this occasion for much congratulations for such a great two year run with dramatic improvements in art, story, and every element of production.

My boss, Andrew, brought in a book last week titled Getting Things Done.  I wrote about the The Dip a little earlier.  Between the two books and with college starting for Kelly and Christian, we have been on a big “getting organized” kick.  The worst part of all this is the realization that I am way over extended.  If I ever hope to have a life AND get some things done, I am going to half to perform and aggressive triage on my planned activities.  The up side is that it made me realize that I am doing a few things right.  Andrew introduced us to a tool called Basecamp.  You can find the free version here.  We use a paid version of Basecamp at my job at Centice that has a lot more functionality.

We use Basecamp extensively at GaugeCam.  Five people work on multiple aspects of the project and it is an absolutely great way to keep track of where we are.  Ease of use is a big part of the usefulness of this tool.  There are other tools that have more and better functionality, but require more knowledge to use.  This has worked well enough that we have decided to see if we can use Basecamp to help manage school work starting this fall.  I am not sure it translates perfectly, but since the kids are learning how to use it, I think it might be a good way to keep track of what and when things need to be completed.  There are a several other tools we use extensively in the GaugeCam project that we can recommend heartily.  I will describe them all in future posts.  They include DropBox, ProjectLocker, and some other tools.

There is a crazy flood caused by Hurricane Alex occurring in Monterrey, Mexico, Lorena’s home town.  No one goes to work, virtually every sector of the city is flooded, people are stranded–some drowned.

I grew up with David Joyce, the guy that hired one of the Russian spies.  I feel SO famous!!!!  It is the third story in the following video.  Click here.

Night before last, there was a bad car wreck at about 3:00 AM on the main road that runs past our subdivision.  Four people died.  I was able to show the skid marks and crash site to Lorena and the kids on the way home from the airport this morning at 2:00 AM.  The car was traveling at a high rate of speed so that it could not make the turn so it ran off the road and into a tree.  None of the four young men in the Chevy Blazer were wearing a seat belt.  It was very sad.  Still, it is great to have everyone home.  Even the twin cat sisters, Rubix and Kiwi, are happy.

I used the time well last night when I was waiting for everyone to arrive (an hour and a half late) at the airport.  I fixed an on-going, but nagging problem with our GaugeCam project.

Christian surprised us and did well enough on the COMPASS math placement test, he will join Kelly in Calculus I (Differential Calculus) this year.  That should make life very interesting for him.  He will take Biology I with Lorena and Calculus I with Kelly.  Right now, he is at Wake Christian Academy taking the sit-down portion of the driver education class required of all young drivers here in North Carolina.

Christian is scheduled to take the COMPASS test today at Wake Tech community college.  It is a test from the same company that makes the ACT college entrance exam.  The purpose of the test is to evaluate the level of math at which Christian will start this fall.  Kelly did not have to take the test because she took and passed the CLEP Precalculus test so she will take Calculus I (Differential Calculus).  We have entered our desired schedule for next year in the Wake Tech computer.  Everyone but special and dual enrollment students gets to register before new students so we hope everyone gets the classes they want.  If we get the schedule we want, everyone should have Tuesday and Thursday mostly free to take music classes, study for CLEP tests and that sort of thing.

Well, this is our last homeschool update for this year and maybe forever.  As I have written previously, the kids will both start taking classes at the community college this fall.  We will continue with some CLEP testing, reading, volunteer work, and other homeschool activities next year, but my full time participation is now complete.  I will keep writing about our activities, but not as the principal administrator of Kelly’s and Christian’s educational activities.  It has been a great run.