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

Tag: Arizona State University

Lazy days in Tempe along with quasiconvex optimization

Lazy days with Kiwi in TempeLorena spent the whole day cleaning and cooking. She had the time of her life. It is counterintuitive to me how those first two sentences hang together. Part of it had to do with the fact that she bought him a new mop. Looking back at that last sentence, I concede that, still, none of this makes a whole lot of sense to me. Lorena picked up Christian after school, just like the old days at NCSU and they went down to Target to buy “stuff.” Both of them had a ball. I am losing hope that I will figure out all the joy associated with these events. On the other hand, I hung around in the apartment all day, did nothing and felt really good about it for the first tie in years.

Christian was at school today for his bi-weekly meeting with his sponsor from MIT. The difference about today’s meeting was the quasiconvex optimization proof Christian did for his research. He has been working on it for the last several months and he finally got it figured out since after we arrived. It was a big relief for him, but I have no clue what any of it means. Still, like Conoscopic Holography, even though you have no idea what it means, you know it must be great because it sounds so cool.

Betty Blonde #495 – 07/09/2010
Betty Blonde #495
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

A visit to Christian in Arizona

Lorena hits Anytime Fitness in ArizonaWe are taking a brief hiatus in Tempe to visit Christian in our road trip to Texas. Lorena needs to get her workouts in. She explained it is not so much that she is fanatical about doing it, she just hates the pain of starting all over again when she has missed a week or two. She is actually up to two 35 minute sessions per week on the elliptical and three 60 minute sessions per week on the Concept II rowing machine with some weight lifting thrown in the mix, too. It pains me just thinking about it.

In the meantime, we get to see Christian mostly just in the evenings because he has to work even though it is spring break for the undergraduates. He remains dedicated to his research. I think the classes are just a pain in the neck for him now even though he says he learns some stuff.

We plan to continue on to Texas right after Sunday morning meeting.

Betty Blonde #494 – 07/08/2010
Betty Blonde #494
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Flying to Tempe for a drive to Asilomar

Christian is scheduled to deliver a conference paper on his research at the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers on Monday. I do not know what is the title of his paper, but it is heavy on Information Theory (see here, here and here) and has to do with radio communication, but applies to everything under the sun, probably especially the whole Internet of Things meme. I took a half day off today so I can fly down to Arizona and drive with Christian up to Pacific Grove, California, the home of the Asilomar Conference grounds. We could have flown, but he is not yet old enough to rent a car to get around and he also wants to stop in LA to visit a buddy from North Carolina State who is there to get a PhD at UCLA in Math.

We are looking forward to the trip, but it is going to be a marathon practice session with me driving and him delivering his paper a gazillion times until he has it down cold. I want to at least an inkling of understanding about his work, but I do not hold out much hope because it is pretty dense. His paper will go into the conference proceedings, but he wants to add some new insights into it and turn it into his first refereed, first-author journal article. I need to remember to take some pictures on the way there.

Betty Blonde #418 – 02/22/2010
Betty Blonde #418
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Christian has oral PhD quals today

Christian PhD Quals imageWikipedia says that PhD Preliminary exams (Prelims) and PhD Qualifying exams (Quals) are the same thing:

The use of the term Prelim (short for preliminary examination) varies and is synonymous with qualifying exam, but it generally refers to an examination (usually one from a sequence) that qualifies a student to continue studies at a higher level, and/or allow the student to comprehend his/her studies and see how prepared they are for the looming examinations. It is almost a gauge on how knowledgeable one is within the chosen subject. These exams are also referred to as Quals at some institutions.

He has been preparing for the quals for over a year and will present the research he has performed since he arrived at Arizona State and be questioned by his committee on both the research and his classes. It is a big deal to have this behind him. Everything has been on hold while he prepared for the last couple of months and he is chomping at the bit to move on. Many say this is the hardest part of the PhD, even harder than the doctoral dissertation and thesis defense at the end. It starts at 2:30 PM today and we are excited to see how he does.

Betty Blonde #407 – 02/05/2010
Betty Blonde #407
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Visiting Christian in Phoenix

Arizona State entrance
We drove twenty hours straight to be able to spend a day with Christian in Tempe. What an absolutely gorgeous place this time of year. It is 75 degrees here and we get to go to Bible study with him tonight and see a bunch of the people who have been so good to him.

Betty Blonde #251 – 07/06/2009
Betty Blonde #251
Click 
here or on the image to see full size strip.

Christian, interior designer

Christian's living room in Tempe
Christian waited a long time to be able to afford to finish furnishing his apartment. The three new tables are the end table on the left side of the sofa, the coffee table where he is doing the typing and the monitor stand in front of him. He paid less than $50 for the lot of them at Ikea. What a deal. In addition, he was able to get the monitor, the desk lamp you can see to his left above the office chair, and a floor lamp that is out of view. I have to say he is quite a fashion designer. I would like to say I enjoyed it as much as he did, but he derived great satisfaction from the whole process and loved the result, so that probably is not true. Lorena will be proud.

Betty Blonde #246 – 06/25/2009
Betty Blonde #246
Click 
here or on the image to see full size strip.

Christian’s new stuff

Christian's new lamp and guitar standI drove down from Prescott to Phoenix last night to spend the weekend with Christian at his apartment in Tempe. We have been out shopping all day. He spent less than $50 to buy a coffee table, a side table for the sofa and a computer monitor table. Then today, we went out and he bought a guitar stand, a desk lamp, a floor lamp and a hand vacuum. We had a great time. He is now heading out to a game not at his friends house while I hold down the fort in is apartment and get some work done. Tomorrow we get to go to meeting and hang out together again.

We went to Jack-in-the-Box today for dinner. We had a teriyaki rice bowl and a taco. What other fast food place in the world serves rice bowls and tacos. And the tacos are not just any tacos. The are the really greasy, tasty ones you can only get at Jack-in-the-Box. Christian was kind of sad I had not introduced him to haute cuisine of fast food earlier. The reality is, we ate it all the time when we were in Albany, he just liked the sourdough burgers back in those days so he never learned. Now he knows.

Betty Blonde #245 – 06/24/2009
Betty Blonde #245
Click 
here or on the image to see full size strip.

Christian heads back to college

Christian heads back to Phoenix after Christmas break 2014-15
It does not seem to get any easier to see him go.

Betty Blonde #237 – 06/12/2009
Betty Blonde #237
Click 
here or on the image to see full size strip.

Be wary of Biology professors at University of Washington if the rest of them are anything like this guy

Commie professor alert!* I just sent Kelly (UW graduate student) a note that said, “http://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2014/09/david-barash-speaking-with-authority-on-what-he-knows-next-to-nothing-about/ — Don’t take Biology at UW. You might get that guy.”

She wrote back and said, and I quote exactly, “ha ha i won’t” with precisely that punctuation and capitalization.

I fear for the reputation of the graduate schools at UW. While there is a certain amount of hipness associated with IM’ing people with little regard for grammatical convention, I do not get why people like the good Biology professor do not realize how foolish they look (and actually are) in making outdated, absurd, discredited philosophical, historical, and theological statements outside their area of expertise. Tom Gilson over at ThinkingChristian explains in painstaking detail (see the linked article) why this is so ridiculous. It seems like it has reached epidemic levels amongst atheists credentialed in one area (Biology, Physics, Zoology) and an abysmal lack of knowledge and training in the areas on which they are opining (Philosophy, History, Theology). Here is a snippet, but I recommend you read the whole thing. And while you are out it check out the blog; there is always something interesting going on there, too.

In his Talk, [David Barash] also says,

Adding to religion’s current intellectual instability is a third consequence of evolutionary insights: a powerful critique of theodicy, the scholarly effort to reconcile belief in an omnipresent, omni-benevolent God with the fact of unmerited suffering…. The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.

He does not say, “I have observed and reflected on animal pain and death as a biologist, so therefore I am qualified theologically to pronounce every explanation for the goodness of God to be inadequate.”

*Just kidding. I WISH that guy was at UW or ASU. I would have a ton more interesting material if he was. On the other hand, Lawrence Krauss of ASU got his hat handed to him in debate with William Lane Craig at NCSU for much the same reason that David Barash has clowned himself, so maybe there is hope for good material at the kids’ new schools.

Charles Arntzen of Arizona State University

A professor at Christian’s school, Arizona State University, has been in the news because his research allowed the development of a drug to combat Ebola. Here and here are a couple of articles about what he did. There is no cure for Ebola, but all indications are that the first human patients given the drug, two Americans in Liberia, are improving. The concept is fascinating.

About the drug, Dr. Arntzen said, “Each antibody has the ability to bond to an Ebola virus and inactivate it. Once you get an antibody stuck to a virus, your body recognizes it and stops the virus from doing any more damage.”

This is just another feather in Arizona State’s cap in its current rise up the ranks of world class research universities.

Betty Blonde #145 – 02/04/2009
Betty Blonde #145
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Why some of the STEM majors are not so hot either

Over the last several years, I have consistently written that a shortcoming of our higher education system is that many, many students go all the way through a bachelor’s degree without having studied anything difficult such as Calculus, Chemistry, Statistics and Physics. It is my position that the rigor of thinking and hard work required to get through those classes is beneficial in any field of study. That being said, some try to justify sophomoric in areas outside of their area of expertise (e.g. Philosophy, Sociology and Theology) based on their mastery of complex material in totally unrelated hard sciences.

The following is from an article at Scientific American, not often a wildly objective source on subjects like these, but I really liked it. I recommend you read the whole thing. It is a quote from George F. R. Ellis that address the issue of a physicist from Arizona State University known for making buffoonish remarks about Philosophy. Ellis, a “physicist-mathematician-cosmologist” of renown, in responds here to a good question asked by the author of the article, John Horgan.

Horgan: Lawrence Krauss, in A Universe from Nothing, claims that physics has basically solved the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing. Do you agree?

Ellis: Certainly not. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on. He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did. And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism. How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t.

Thus what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true. Well, you can’t get any evidence about what existed before space and time came into being. Above all he believes that these mathematically based speculations solve thousand year old philosophical conundrums, without seriously engaging those philosophical issues. The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality.

And above all Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed (which he must believe if he believes they brought the universe into existence). Who or what dreamt up symmetry principles, Lagrangians, specific symmetry groups, gauge theories, and so on? He does not begin to answer these questions.

It’s very ironic when he says philosophy is bunk and then himself engages in this kind of attempt at philosophy. It seems that science education should include some basic modules on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, and the other great philosophers, as well as writings of more recent philosophers such as Tim Maudlin and David Albert.

Betty Blonde #144 – 02/03/2009
Betty Blonde #144
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Christian’s apartment in Tempe

Christian's apartment close to ASU in Tempe
Christian is moved into his apartment at Arizona State University. He loves it and is making new friends.

Betty Blonde #141 – 01/29/2009
Betty Blonde #141
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Freshman year in college

Kelly and Christian--first day of class their Freshman year of collegeThis is a picture of Kelly and Christian with their new backpacks on their first day of college in August of 2010. I am going to post pictures of them at the start of each year for their for years of college.  Now Kelly and Christian both have apartments in their respective new towns as they start their PhD’s. They have both been able to find good apartments. Kelly is about 30 minutes by bus from her office at University of Washington.  Christian hit the lottery and found an apartment about a block from the light rail that will take him to within a block of his office at Arizona State University.  He should be able to get from his apartment door to his office in about 15 minutes.

They are both in the process of furnishing their apartments and having a great time. I cannot wait to visit both of them in their new digs.

Betty Blonde #135 – 01/21/2009
Betty Blonde #135
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Christian finally pulls the PhD trigger

Day 958 of 1000

Lorena wrote just about all that needs to be said on her facebook wall yesterday:

Congratulations to Christian! It was a hard choice, but he accepted the selective Dean’s Fellowship from the Fulton School of Engineering for a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Arizona State University. The award includes a full scholarship for his degree coupled with a first year research grant. Christian will will receive sponsorship by MIT Lincoln Labs for his research and will work there during the summers while he is getting his degree. Ken and I think it was easily the best choice.

Christian picks Arizona State University

Betty Blonde #98 – 12/01/2008
Betty Blonde #98
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Trying to figure out what school to go attend

Day 941 of 1000

The National Academy of Sciences has a research ranking report for Universities.  You can download the report here. It seems to be pretty rigorous in the way it looks at different schools and provides a ton of information.  It is profoundly better than the almost worthless US News rankings.  Christian is still trying to decide where to go, so we have extracted some information from the report relevant to his decision.  I pasted the stuff we put together below.  The big take-aways are that Duke is WAY overrated as and Electrical Engineering school and we had no idea that Arizona State was so high (above schools like Carnegie Mellon, Brown, Ohio State, Case Western Reserve, Johns Hopkins, Washington and Texas A&M, on par with schools like Penn State, UCSD, UTexas and Michigan).  It was a very interesting exercise

Here are our notes:

I downloaded the official report from which PhD.org rankings are derived.  There are two ways they rank in a VERY rigorous way.  Everyone believes this is the best.  Here are descriptions of the rankings and the rankings themselves.  ASU is VERY high in both rankings:  I put the rankings of some very big name schools along with those for ASU.  ASU is high in the most important rankings, but also high in the peer evaluation rankings (you have to scroll down to see that).  One thing I noticed that the peer evaluations say Duke is right up at the top while the REAL measures say they stink.  ASU kills them.  ASU is also WAY above Texas A&M, NCSU, and Washington in the same range as UT, UCSD, and Penn State on all the measures.  Those are amazing rankings and pretty surprising in how high ASU is ranked.

R Ranking (based on the actual quality of the professors at the school — this is the most important one because it is based on actually work performed rather than people’s ideas about what is good)

========
R Rankings (for regression-based rankings) depend on the weights calculated from faculty ratings of a sample of programs in their field. These ratings were related, through a multiple regression and principal components analysis, to the 20 characteristics that the committee had determined to be factors of program quality. The resulting weights were then applied to data corresponding to those characteristics for each of the programs in the field.

5th percentile
==========
University of Texas is ranked 13
UCSD is ranked 14
Arizona State is ranked 15
Penn State is ranked 16
Texas A&M is ranked 22
Washington is ranked 31
CSU is ranked 47
Duke is ranked 4800

95th percentile
===========
University of Texas is ranked 12
UCSD is ranked 14
Penn State is ranked 15
Arizona State is ranked 16
Texas A&M is ranked 20
Washington is ranked 28
NCSU is ranked 42
Duke is ranked 43

STANFORD UNIVERSITY
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA BARBARA
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
PURDUE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-ANN ARBOR
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
PENN STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA COLUMBIA
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
TEXAS A & M UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA-TWIN CITIES
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
YALE UNIVERSITY
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
RICE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
BROWN UNIVERSITY
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS
DUKE UNIVERSITY
NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

S Ranking (based on how professors ranked schools other than their own so it is OK, but not as good, because it is about what people think of a school, not actual measures)
========
S Rankings (for survey-based rankings) are based on how faculty weighted—or assigned importance to—20 characteristics that the study committee determined to be factors contributing to program quality. The weights of characteristics vary by field based on faculty survey responses in each of those fields. Programs in a field rank higher if they demonstrate strength in the characteristics carrying greater weights.

5th percentile
===========
Duke is ranked 17
Arizona State is ranked 20
Penn State is ranked 21
UCSD is ranked 22
University of Texas is ranked 45
Washington is ranked 50
Texas A&M is ranked 57
NCSU is ranked 82

95th percentile
===========
Duke is ranked 17
Penn State is ranked 20
Arizona State is ranked 21
UCSD is ranked 24
Washington is ranked 37
University of Texas is ranked 45
Texas A&M is ranked 51
NCSU is ranked 78

STANFORD UNIVERSITY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA BARBARA
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
YALE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-ANN ARBOR
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
PURDUE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS
DUKE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-RIVERSIDE
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
PENN STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
OREGON HEALTH AND SCIENCE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA-TWIN CITIES
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
BROWN UNIVERSITY
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
RICE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS
RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Betty Blonde #91 – 11/20/2008
Betty Blonde #91
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Christian’s brutal PhD recruiting trip

Day 925 of 1000

Christian’s PhD recruiting trip schedule was tough. Here is what he did:

  • Wednesday morning – Go to class at NCSU
  • Wednesday afternoon – Fly to San Diego (NC time–in bed after 1:00 AM)
  • Thursday morning – Up early to go do day one at UCSD (NC time–in bed after midnight)
  • Friday morning – Normal day, but in bed after midnight
  • Saturday morning – Up at 4:00 AM to fly to Phoenix
  • Saturday morning – Meets dad at airport, goes to interview at 10:30 AM
  • Saturday afternoon – Drive to Prescott. To be early
  • Sunday morning – Up early to go to meeting
  • Sunday afternoon – Drive to Flagstaff for Gospel meeting
  • Sunday evening – Drive to Phoenix
  • Monday morning – Board plane to Raleigh at 1:00 AM
  • Monday morning – Cannot sleep or work due to crying baby (not her fault)
  • Monday morning – Mom picks him up at 8:30 AM with clean clothes (change in car)
  • Monday morning – Go to class from airport

In N Out on Christian's recruiting trip

A lot of the trip was enjoyable, but most of it was just a grind. Christian went to all the recruiting festivities at UCSD. They held similar events at Arizona State, but Christian did not attend because of the timing. Not attending was a good thing. Christian’s sense was that those events, not unlike the freshman orientation he received at NCSU are a bunch of people posturing and acting like they are having fun as to an event where there is a possibility for a semblence of enjoyment. The exceptions to that were the meetings with the professors. That went very well both at UCSD and ASU, but the social aspects of these recruiting events must be extremely painful for the grad students and the professors.

It was great that he took the trip. He found out that professor contact is the important thing while planned University events are worse than just a waste. He stated that those social events were so painful, contrived and phony that they made him profoundly less likely to want to go to the school. The meetings with the professors made it a net positive, but it would have been way better if he could have just met the professors and gone home.

Christian applied to six schools. So far, he has been accepted by UCSD, ASU, and Stanford. He has been rejected by Berkeley and has not yet heard from Washington and UCLA. If he had to chose tomorrow, Arizona State would be the winner by a big margin for a variety of reasons that we will wait to discuss another day. He might get something better from the other two schools that have not yet contacted him, but they would have to be pretty amazing for him to change.

One of the very best parts of the whole trip was our stop at In ‘N’ Out, but that kind of goes without saying.

Betty Blonde #84 – 11/11/2008
Betty Blonde #84
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Graduate school update: Wearying of the process

Day 921 of 1000

Christian is at UCSD again today.  He likened the “recruiting event” to the freshman orientation he and Kelly attended when they started at NCSU.  The school plans a series of events that are supposed to be fun–mixers, dinners, hikes, etc.  The problem is that those kinds of things cant get to be pretty forced and phony, especially if it is with a bunch of kids whose only government/private high school followed by the typical undergraduate indoctrination.  That probably gets multiplied if you are an 18 year old teetotaler while everyone else is drinking, posturing, and trying to act grown up.  Today he is scueduled to get some one-on-one time with some professors, so hopefully it will get a lot better.  He made the comment that he is sure the school is a lot better than is being demonstrated by the artifcial circumstances of the recruiting event.

Update:  Life got dramatically better when Christian talked to the professor who is trying to recruit him.  It sounds like there is a very good much and Christian is pretty excited.  Now the decision to go to UCSD or ASU will be harder to make.

Betty Blonde #82 – 11/07/2008
Betty Blonde #82
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

San Diego recruiting event

Day 920 of 1000

UCSD San Diego airport recruiting event

Christian flew to San Diego yesterday for a recruiting event put on by the University of California San Diego.  Our good friends, Al and Michele and their whole family picked him up at the airport and will drop him off at UCSD this afternoon.  They will pick him up again tomorrow night after the recruiting dinner (We owe them big time!).  He will fly to Phoenix early Saturday morning where I will pick him up to take him for a visit with a professor in the Electrical Engineering department at Arizona State University. Then we hang out the rest of the day Sunday and he takes the red-eye home Sunday night.  Good times.

Betty Blonde #81 – 11/06/2008
Betty Blonde #81
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Christian flies tomorrow

Day 918 of 1000

After two hard exams today, Christian flies to San Diego to visit University of California San Diego tomorrow for a recruiting event.  This is the first time he will fly on his own based on something he did himself. We are very excited for him.  He has promised to send us some photos to post of the events he attends.  Our friends, Al and Michele are scheduled to pick him up at the airport tomorrow night and drop him off again Saturday morning to fly to Arizona for a visit with a professor at Arizona State.

More on a possible new blog owner soon…

Betty Blonde #80 – 11/05/2008
Betty Blonde #80
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

PhD interview suits for Christian

Day 908 of 1000

PhD interview suit shopping 1Who knew homeschool would lead to something like this? My Dad bought me two brand new suits when I was about 30.  I needed them when I moved from an engineering function to a sales function in my first “real” job that was something that more than just a way to earn money to get by.  Neither he nor I could afford it at the time, but he did it anyway.  Now, I get to return the favor.

Christian is heading out to two interviews at University of California at San Diego and Arizona State University.  Both schools are considering him for full fellowships (not Teaching nor Research Assistantships, full blown fellowships).  He needs to look his best.  Lorena took him down to the Men’s Warehouse and they bought two suits, a blazer, and two, 100% cotton, white dress shirts.  PhD interview suit shopping 2I am dying to see how he looks, but the suits are currently with the tailor and will not be available until I leave on my next trip to Arizona.

The Men’s Warehouse gave him a $50 gift certificate for the stuff that he bought.  If we spend another $5-10, they will give him a second $50 gift certificate.  I did not like the ties and socks they picked out for him so he and I are going to run down there again tomorrow to spend the extra $100.  We might even add some clips (collar, tie, and money), a belt and some cologne.  I do not want Lorena to have all the fun.  The problem with Lorena is that she leans toward effiminate European style suits and they just will not do for an interview suit in the United States.  Christian needs a man’s suit!

PhD interview suit shopping 3I would love to buy some of this same stuff for myself, but I am still holding on to the illusion that I might lose some weight some day before too long.  Well, that and the fact that I do not have any mone left after making all these big expenditures.  I called my Dad and had a nice talk with him about it.  I do not think he even remembered that he had done it nor how much it meant to me. He just always did whatever he could to help us. I really hope that Christian gets to do this for one or two of his own sons someday.

Betty Blonde #71 – 10/23/2008
Betty Blonde #71
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén