Chapman Kids Blog

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

On the brighter side of pastel

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On Wednesday, July 3, 2024

In Granbury, House and home

Lorena thinks she wants a the new house to be yellow. She likes something a little bit on the brighter side of pastel. We have to pick the exterior colors for the house by Monday so our new friend, Larry the house designer, can present them to the Granbury Historic Preservation Commission. God willing, the process has started. My understanding of the way it works is that, as soon as the plans are approved, the construction drawings can start. When the construction drawings are complete, two processes that both take about a month will kick off in parallel. Engineering drawings for the foundation and all adjustments needed for that will start. In addition, a very rigorous costing of the house will be formulated so we will know how much money is needed. There will be a big meeting at the end of that process with spreadsheet in hand to determine what kind of trade-offs are needed to meet budget constraints and/or add some “nice-to-haves” if the money is available. When all this is done and all goes well, the house starts getting built in earnest.

Packing to move in progress

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On Monday, July 1, 2024

In Granbury, House and home

Lorena rented climate-controlled storage space for all our worldly goods today. I worked through the insurance for the things in storage and for Christian’s car which should arrive here, hopefully before the end of the month. He has little use for a car in New York City, so we will keep it here in Texas so we can use it when we come back to check out what is going on with the house as it gets built. I also figured out how to earn some interest on the money we get from the sale of our current house to help us pay for the new house. There are a lot of moving parts in all of this and while we do not feel like we are in control of it all, it seems less harried than in previous moves. Maybe it is because we have been through it so many times before. We will see what happens when it is time to actually start moving things. Lorena has gotten a big jump on packing things, so when the hired packers come, maybe there will be a little less to do.

A new backpack

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On Sunday, June 30, 2024

In Technology, Travel

I bought the black backpack on the right about fifteen years ago at some place like Marshall’s, T.J.Maxx, or one of those outlet malls. I lucked into a very, very good backpack that was rugged, functional (pockets in all the right places), not too big, not too small, and easy to carry. After a lot of hard use, it was time to make a change, but it truly seems like I am saying goodbye to an old and faithful friend. Lorena helped me find a new backpack at Marshall’s based on what I learned from the old one. I think a lot of the features of the new one are the same, quite a few are better or did not exist in the old one, and one or two are not as good. I really like that there is an external jack to connect to a USB power brick and there are some pockets that will really help me get through airports more easily. In addition, I will be able to easily carry two laptops which I will need when we move to Mexico. All in all, I think it was a good purchase.

Moving into the apartments

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On Saturday, June 29, 2024

In Mexico houses

We made the hard decision to move into one of the units in the apartment building rather than the first floor of the house up on the hill. We would just get in the way up on the hill and the apartments are completed and ready for move in. We need a place to live in Mexico until this time next year and there is some chance the house on the hill will be ready for occupation before we live, but we thing there is an over 50% chance we will not get to move into that house until a year from this fall. Even then, it might not be complete. We can hardly believe it but, God willing, we will be living in Mexico by this time in six weeks.

Books and bookshelves

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On Thursday, June 27, 2024

In Book, Christianity

I ordered a used book I have been wanting to get for quite a while by C.S. Lewis that has four of his works. I really bought it because it had a work in it I wanted to read (Surprised by Joy), but also because it looked cool and I though it would look great on the bookshelves we have always wanted but never had that are now planned for our new house, if it is ever built, God willing. There is an inscription from someone who gave the book to another person named Amada. It was a very nice inscription that has inspired me consider gifting this kind of a gift the next time I get the chance. The house is still up in the air, but I think that is mostly because our real estate agent is on vacation in Costa Rica and out of contact.

I am still reading through the fourth volume of Michael Brown’s five volume set titled “Jewish Objections to Christianity so I am pretty sure I will not get the chance to take this book up for at least another couple of months. I am not sure how many books I need to fill up my bookshelves but it is assuredly quite a few more than what I currently have on hand. I am in a reading frame of mind these days and am looking forward to finding more books on History, Science, and Theology as well as some fiction works to read for fun.

Sell, move, build update

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On Thursday, June 27, 2024

In Granbury, Mexico houses

We got a text from our real estate agent that said the people who want to buy our house have made an offer that is acceptable to all parties. We were supposed to get to get a document to sign last night, but it has not arrived close to a day later. I kind of understand because our agent is on vacation in Costa Rica. At the same time, Lorena and I have a finite amount of time to get everything done: 1) travel for work, 2) handle finances for address changes in the US and Mexico, 3) move out of the house into storage, and 4) make the final design changes for the new house before we leave. We are really hoping this thing is complete before the weekend, but our agent is completely out of contact.

Only one more to go (h-index)

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On Tuesday, June 25, 2024

In Education, Post-doctoral research, Retirement PhD, Science

When I first started back to school at University of Nebraska, people talked about something called an h-index. It was almost universal that I got told two conflicting things about it. The first was that it was not a good measure of the quality of academic output and no one really puts much stock in it. The second was that, if a recently graduated PhD wanted to have a chance at getting a tenure track position, it was good to have an h-index of 10 or above. My future academic goals and age diminishes the importance of a high h-index even more. Still, it has been pretty cool to watch my h-index inch up. I have enough patents in process and technical articles in the pipeline that I have a decent chance of hitting at least 10, maybe even before I die!

Getting ready to move

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On Sunday, June 23, 2024

In Granbury, House and home, Mexico houses

Yesterday we received notice that a couple liked both our house (Lorena is the queen of staging houses for sale) and the price and plan to make us an offer today after figuring out some financing options. It that happens, then the clock starts ticking on a move to the house in the picture in Mexico. Lorena’s brother, Tío Lynn says he will have the first floor of the house turned into an apartment with an operational kitchen, bathroom, and office with broadband internet by the time we get there. We were told we will have 4-6 weeks from the time we accept the offer. In that time, we have to pack up and move everything into storage, fill the car up with the essentials I will need to do my job, set up our new address at the property where the house will be built, God willing, and figure out how to manage finances from our place in Mexico.

Happy Father’s Day

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On Sunday, June 16, 2024

In Family, Friends

Lorena and I are thankful for our fathers. From our view, they had out-sized impacts on the world in which they lived as manifested by how much they are missed now that they are gone. They were flawed like anyone else, but we are especially grateful for their attitudes and understanding of Jesus Christ and our responsibility toward Him and Him alone. We believe those qualities of our fathers equipped us to handle the challenges and disappointments we have encountered of late in our own times and places in a way that does not allow the bad, even evil that plagues our world to rob us of our joy. Thank you Grandpa Lauro and Grandpa Milo.

Early Father’s Day dinner

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On Saturday, June 15, 2024

In Entertainment, Family

Lorena made reservations and took me to Mesero’s in Clearfork, Fort Worth this afternoon for an early Father’s Day celebration. It is our favorite Mexican restaurant in Fort Worth (so far) and kind of our go-to place for special events. It is only a very pleasant thirty minute drive. We have decided we need to start doing this more often. I had the chicken enchiladas with Mole and Lorena had tacos de carne asada. The never get it wrong.

Amazing landscape team

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On Friday, June 14, 2024

In House and home

Gerardo put some extra lawn in an area of our back yard for erosion management today. He had previously put in the sprinkler system to support the new grass. We were totally humbled by how he did his work. He and and two brothers and their high school aged kids are the people that do the work. We were amazed not only with the quality of the work, but the work ethic and profoundly positive attitude of Gerardo and his team. God willing, if we sell our house, we want to work with him to do the landscaping at our property in Granbury. Lorena wants a water feature and I want low maintenance. We have a lot of confidence Gerardo can give us both.

Artificial intelligence

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On Friday, June 14, 2024

In Work

I would like to know who created this, because I would love to give them credit for saying out loud (well, in an image anyway) what many of us really believe, at least on a day-to-day operational level. It seems like many of the imaging AI/ML people who characterize themselves as experts in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence when in reality, they know little about Computer Vision other than how to throw pixels at existing high level tools. Maybe it is because I am old, but it is a challenge to sit and listen to drivel about Computer Vision that is really only informed by the ability to use a tool without really understanding the underlying concepts.

House showings

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On Thursday, June 13, 2024

In House and home

I think we are getting about three house showings per week on our “for sale” house. It seems like everyone likes the house and thinks the price is just fine, but finds some defect that prevents them from making an offer. That would be great if all the cited defects were the same, because then we could do something about it, but all the cited defects are different, so we do not know what to do. At the same time, it has only been about three weeks now since we put the house on the market. We still feel pretty good about our prospects and we are excited to get started on building the new house so we remain optimistic. It is kind of a hassle to have to vacate the house for a showing and random times, but it is also kind of exciting because we ARE getting viewings. Our worst fear is that we will not be able to sell the house for a year. Our second worse fear is that we will sell it tomorrow and have to get everything move to storage and move to Mexico for six months–not a BAD thing, but one that will require a bunch of work.

Ten good but sometimes painful years went by fast

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On Wednesday, June 12, 2024

In Christianity, Family

This post is just a marker to remember that Kelly and Christian have been gone from home, paying their own way and making their own lives, for ten years now. They both left at the same time at ages 18 and 20 with Bachelors degrees in hand, heading off to graduate school. We are wildly proud of them. They are both scientists at elite national university research laboratories, but more importantly, they still love and serve the God of all creation and Jesus, Lord of Lords and King of Kings.

First renters moving in

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On Tuesday, June 11, 2024

In Mexico houses

Lynn rented the first apartment today in our San Pedro renovation building. The tenants are scheduled to move in on June 23. We hope to have the whole thing filled up by mid-July, but who knows. Hopefully, it will not be too long after that before we can sell it and move on to the next project.

Officially an Adjunct Professor

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On Monday, June 10, 2024

In General

I received and signed the offer letter from University of Nebraska-Lincoln to make me an Adjunct Professor. I am very appreciative for the opportunity to continue to participate in Troy’s research. Right now we are working on a project with a public-private business that manages water resources in Brisbane, QLD in Australia. They are really great guys and they are doing a very forward looking project using the GRIME2 water level measurement software that the GRIME Lab has developed over the years.

Happy birthday brother

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On Sunday, June 9, 2024

In Family

I have one brother named Doug. He has been an amazingly good brother. He was the first of five while I was the second. Doug turned 70 today. The shortness of life started to hit me when I was starting to finish my PhD and it is kind of a shock that we are now at a place that seemed such a long way off just not too long ago. I am very grateful for my brother. We have not always agreed on everything, but we have always gotten along fine. It is an unbelievable joy, now that we are old, to reconnect as we both move into retirement and realize that we have so much in common and enjoy talking through it all. We plan to work at getting together much more often. My hope is that I can get together with all my amazing siblings again at our house for my 70th birthday whether that be in Texas or Mexico.

Memories in the Godley house

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On Thursday, June 6, 2024

In culture, Family, House and home

We are trying to sell our current house. We have been here over three years now and I was thinking there were fewer memories and events of note that we lived in this house than previous ones. Now that we will need to move in a short amount of time, we are feeling some nostalgia. We have had Thanksgivings with the kids, Lorena has learned to grow flowers in Texas (see the spectacular one in the image on the left), we have enjoyed watching rabbits, huge hares and Golden Eagles, and birds learning to fly (see the image at the top of baby birds sitting and flying on and off a porch beam, long horns, burrows, many, many cows, fantastically beautiful fields of Indian Paintbrush and Bluebonnets, and much more. We will very much miss this place if we ever sell it.

The Oregon coast

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On Monday, June 3, 2024

In Family, Milo and Sarah

There is nothing quite like the Oregon coast with its rugged terrain and spectacular ocean views. I took this panorama shot while Lorena and I were there, but it was not the best site to do that sort of thing. Still, it makes me nostalgic looking at it. This is what I remember from family trips as a small boy.

Getting to know the animals

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On Monday, June 3, 2024

In Post-doctoral research

Dr. Mary Harner from University of Nebraska-Kearney sent out this image a couple of days ago. It was captured at the KOLA research site. One of the really fun aspects of this work is getting to know individual animals who shop up and get their pictures taken. Mary thinks we have seen this particular deer one time before. This is the first time I have seen an image of a deer at this particular site.

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