Life, Hope and Vittles

Picking a Supreme Court Justice

2009-06-19T00:01:00.002-04:00

I imagine a President picking a Supreme Court justice feels the same way that the head of admissions at Harvard feels picking the last admit for the year.

"I want someone smart"
"They are all smart"
"I want someone freaking brilliant"
"We've still got a ton of those"
"I want someone with a proven track record of working hard"
"Yeah, still too many left"
"I want someone firm in their convictions"
"Have you met a (teenager/judge) who isn't?"

So, you are left with the challenge of picking someone who has the ability to influence the (student/judicial) body in a meaningful and enriching way.

Fortunately, Obama didn't consult the former Harvard president working for him.

Don't underestimate a nerd

2009-06-13T20:13:00.002-04:00

Here I am back on my laptop sitting in happy yuppie-ville next to my wife on her laptop. It took most of the afternoon, but I now have a new hard drive and Windows XP on my machine. I still have the task of restoring all my documents from the backup drive and re-installing the software I want. (Already have Firefox, of course.) The only thing that I am worried about is that the hard drive makes a low-pitched chirp (like the Barry White of crickets) every time it accesses something. I will email the company I bought it from to see if I should return it for a new one.

But it is nice to be booting up in a few minutes and able to surf the web with alacrity. Hopefully it will still be decent once I reinstall Office and the other necessities of modern life.

It was amusing to watch all of the Microsoft propaganda pop up on the screen as it installed. "Windows XP is the best version of Windows ever!" "Think of all the security, convenience and performance options" Given the bad reputation of Vista, that may still be true.

I should write more, but there are internets to read!

Technological Issues

2009-06-10T22:56:00.002-04:00

My apologies to both people who occasionally read my blog. Besides the usual mumble-mumble about working hard, no time and such... my computer has become the technological equivalent of a toaster. Actually, the toaster not only heats bread much better than the computer, but might actually connect to the internet better. I would have to type in Morse code on the handle, but I'm willing to learn.

(Tip: You can use Google Reader or the Blogger subscription service to keep tabs on rarely updated pages like this.)

The computer has long been a little slow, as any student who watched me tap-dance for ten minutes in class as it rebooted could tell you. But it has firmly launched itself on the far side of slow. ("It's gone plaid!")

It is very depressing as a self-styled uber-geek to be faced with a device that I can't make work. No amount of virus scanning, spyware checking, defragging, registry cleaning, editing of startup processes or prayers to St. Babbage have decreased the boot time below 25 minutes or the web speed below 2 minutes a page. My final solution has been to purchase a new hard drive and I will be wiping the drive and starting over. ("Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure") If that doesn't work, I may have to hand over my nerd certificate to the authorities.

Until then, I am forced to beg for scraps on the SHW's computer. She is very nice about letting me borrow it, but schoolwork comes first.

It is frustrating how hard it is to fix things these days, even for the uber-geeky. The flash on our camera gave out after making popping noises for six months; it is impossible to replace. Time to buy a new camera. The fixture for mounting my light to my bicycle broke. It is now impossible to attach my perfectly working light to the bike. I emailed the company to see if I could get a replacement. "We are sorry, sir. We don't offer that." Rather than sell me a 5 cent part for $1.99, I may have to buy a new light. Guess what brand it won't be.

Computers are the worst, though. If I had gotten a new battery and extra RAM to go with the new hard drive, I would have been most of the way toward a new computer already. No wonder they get thrown away so quickly. I need to figure out how to disable the "Bill Gates Forced Obsolescence" chip that makes the computer run slower doing the exact same things it did quickly before.

Enough griping. I will try to keep up with this a little better.

2009-05-05T23:16:00.002-04:00

I spent a whole post describing how I am not creative, and now Gwen demands that I be "Kreativ". Either she is an author/librarian with poor reading comprehension skills, or mutilating the spelling of a word drastically changes its meaning. Either way:

"List 7 things that you love, and then pass the award on to 7 bloggers that you love! Be sure to tag them and let them know that they have won. You can copy the picture of the award and paste it on your sideboard letting the whole world know...you are Kreativ."

Apparently I have won! I once won the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes, but the bank wouldn't cash the check. I'll resist making this a paean to my wife in an effort to be something homophonically similar to Kreativ.

1. Cheese
2. ~~Cheese~~ Figuring out a puzzle... crosswords, math problems, how to do strikethrough text in HTML... you name it.
3. ~~Cheese~~ The instant after the ball is clutched in my hands in soccer. It is the only five seconds in the game where nothing can go wrong.
4. ~~Cheese~~ Locating Polaris. Life is better when you know which way is north.
5. ~~Cheese~~ Sitting and reading a book for hours on end... particularly if it is such a good book that when I am forced to put it down I still can't stop thinking about it.
6. ~~Cheese~~ Being tall. Being the tallest person in the room is extra nice.
7. ~~Cheese~~ Sitting on my front porch, especially during a thunderstorm.

I won't play chain-letter mayhem... especially since I don't know enough bloggers to whom to pass it on. "Hah, blogworld, you didn't win! In your face!"

Quantity has a quality all its own

2009-04-16T23:58:00.002-04:00

I just got back from my first real trip to Dayton since moving a year ago. (A whirlwind Memorial Day last year doesn't count as it was dominated by a low-ball offer on our house.) For any readers who I didn't connect with, I will try to catch you next time.

I had a lot of thoughts run through my head over the weekend, and I will try to distill them here.

The most important thought is that there is no substitute for quantity time. I love the way my family can sit around the living room and let conversation swing from trivial to deep to silent. The silence is one of the most important parts. One part of the conversation might run its course, and there is no pressure to say something and keep it going. One person will do a crossword puzzle, another read a book and one get a cup of tea. Some time later, the conversation will open up again and wander wither it will.

It is so hard to capture that kind of feeling in a phone call or even a video chat. The comfort of silence is part of that. Even with the ease of technological connections, I still feel constrained by the device and pressured to not let the conversation dwindle. The "I call you when I want to talk, though you might be in the middle of something else" dynamic of a phone call is also a hindrance; with the time difference making that far more likely.

I feel so sad when I think that a comforting and stimulating experience was once so common and will now be so rare.

In many other ways, Dayton felt like a distant strange place. It didn't help that the weather was custom made for film noir. It was so obvious the economic and social pounding the city has taken over the last few decades. The starkest aspect was the number of empty and dilapidated buildings that have been husks for decades and will be for decades to come. As a patriotic Dayton resident, those fixtures blended into the background and I focused on the changes that happened little by little. As a visitor, though, the sheer mass of industrial, commercial and residential detritus are overwhelming.

One of the things that the high cost of housing in California provides is the benefit of high density living. (An economist will say that high density leads to high cost, but stick with me here.) In Ohio, if someone has an urge to build housing or a mall, the easiest thing to do is go pave over a farm. This leads to a Sherman's March of suburbia out from the city center trailing a path of plundered property. The city is a victim of the quantity of land available.

Here in Silicon Valley they paved paradise in favor of a parking lot a long time ago. Supposedly, this is the best ground in the world for growing citrus but the last commercial orchards stand like the 101st Airborne in Bastogne. The lack of elbow room and scarce greenery can get to me sometimes, but the trip back to Ohio made me appreciate that it is full. There are occasional office suites or store fronts that are empty, but they have the look of recent recusals. If they stay empty too long, someone with an idea will knock it down and build something else, because all the suburbs have smashed into each other and there is no place left to go.

I am not saying that full is better. It is just a dynamic that was really noticeable. There are plenty of eyesores here, from strip malls to dodgy neighborhoods. And the high housing costs have real consequences on the lives of people, particularly ones who don't work at nice high tech jobs. (My brain is petering out here. I will elaborate on this more later.)

Crabby Birthday to Me!

2009-03-23T23:22:00.002-04:00

"Thirty Seven?!?!"

As seems to be the usual way, my birthday morphed into a week long celebration. The distance from family and the vagaries of Amazon's shipping speeds meant that the gifts trickled in all week. Kelly had a final on Monday, so we just went out for Thai food (TRADITION!).

Saturday was the best though. Outro Michael (shown above) and his girlfriend, Candice, served an outstanding crab feast... replete with crab bisque, corn fritters, home-made sauces and half of a dungeness crab. We followed that up with a fantabulous Guinness cake baked by my wife. From there we went and saw Paula Poundstone perform her standup act.

It was fascinating to watch the live crab be dropped into the boiling water. On one hand, I felt a twinge of remorse. I think that feeling is a bizarre byproduct of our urbanized and gentrified lifestyles. Food is not something grown, raised or caught. It is something that magically appears in shrink-wrapped packaging on our shelves next to the Soylent Green. Heck, Kelly and I were amazed last year at watching eggplants grow. I figure, if I can't handle the reality of the process, I shouldn't be eating the food. And on the other hand, it was really freaking tasty.

I had a really hard time with my last California birthday (#29), and I was worried that this one would be similar. Thanks to some real support from my wife and friends (and the help of an income higher than a grad student), it was a very special and energizing experience. I miss all of you who are far away, but you will just have to work your way out here soon.

Book Recommendation Time

2009-03-12T22:56:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading "On Being Certain. Believing You Are Right Even When You Are Not." by Robert Burton. Absolutely fascinating.

Why are so many people certain of things even when all the facts are contravening? Are they stupid or willfully ignorant? Why is one of those people occasionally staring back at me from the mirror?

The premise of the book is that logical reasoning and assessment of certainty take place in two separate parts of the brain. The "feeling of knowing" is more of a subconscious assessment than a deliberate weighing of facts and probabilities.

An example from the book. On the day after the Challenger explosion, a professor had freshman students write down what they thought and what they felt. Then when the students were seniors, he asked them to write down how they remembered feeling on the day after the Challenger explosion. In many cases, the two accounts were notably different. The interesting thing is that even when presented with their own recollections, many students disagreed that that was what they were feeling at the time. On student even says, "That's my handwriting, but that's not what happened."

The feeling of knowing can be present even without knowledge... "I know that guy's name, I just can't remember it right now." The feeling of knowing can be absent in the presence of knowledge... I know that I live 2500 miles away from my family but at some level it still doesn't seem real.

The author wanders around explaining how the brain works to produce this sensation and this part is a little tough to read... partly because he is telling me things that I "know" to be false. "My conscious thoughts are not some tip of the iceberg floating on vast body of shrouded cogitation hidden from view even to myself."

I plan on reading this book a second time to try and make some more sense of sections, but it has been very thought provoking. I also recommend Descarte's Error in this milieu, which I read many years ago.

Strange Days...

2009-02-19T18:52:00.001-05:00

You know we are living in odd times when your financial planner says that your investments have returned -10% for the last calendar year and your response is "AWESOME!"

The definition of humanity...

2009-02-05T23:48:00.000-05:00

The definition of humanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting different results.

With apologies to Albert Einstein, who claimed that the above is the definition of insanity, I think my definition is more appropriate. Who among us has not had our "Bart Simpson and the Cupcake Moment"... BZZZT-OW! BZZZT-OW!

For the non-Simpson fluent, Lisa has a science fair project "Is My Brother Smarter Than a Hamster?". She electrifies a hamster treat. After one shocking effort, the hamster gives up on the treat. Then she electrifies a cupcake. Bart repeatedly grabs it and is repeatedly shocked.

This may sound like a downer of a viewpoint from someone who is normally an optimist. I admit that I thought of it in a down moment, but it has stuck with me longer as something a bit more complex.

Tying in to my previous posts on the relationship of humans to animals, one big cognitive difference is the propensity for abstract thought. We have the ability to envision the world as it could be and then attempt to achieve it. This can be tragic in some cases, like the inveterate gambler who thinks that this time he really can beat the house. But it is inspirational in others, like the people championing environmental and sustainable practices. Despite years of setbacks, ridicule and frustration, they have charged those windmills over and over again. (Though, I suppose, in a literal sense, they have charged for windmills, not against them.)

Then, of course, sometimes it is mundane. I suspect each of us has many little things that we try to do, over and over, despite a lack of success. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I am not creative.

This is tough to accept, because I have a very good imagination. But creativity and imagination are separate entities. I spent many hours of my youth recreating the Star Wars universe in my head with myself in lead role, but the plot lines were always minor variations on cliched and simplistic stories. The ability to create something genuinely new, like my friends Stephen, Mary or Gwen, seems beyond me.

I think that is also why I struggled at the research aspects of being a professor. A significant part of the challenge is coming up with a problem that nobody has solved, that people want solved and that you can solve... and preferably one that people will pay you to do. I just couldn't invent a problem to solve. That is one way that my current job is a good fit. The goals are laid out clearly, and my challenge is building the bridge from here to there. Since I can imagine what the final goal looks like once someone has planted the seed, I am good at figuring out how to do it.

I have been reading the books about how J.R.R. Tolkien wrote "The Lord of the Rings". His son has painstakingly crawled through his father's old papers and the rough drafts to show the growth of my favorite tale with all the starts and stops. It was fascinating to see the process of true creativity unfold; what started as a simple sequel to The Hobbit pulls in the ideas and themes from his Silmarillion ideas and grows far beyond his anticipation. Aragorn starts out as hobbit called Trotter who wears wooden shoes and grows into Viggo Mortensen. In a way, I feel better knowing how laborious the process is... one burst of inspiration is followed by efforts in synchronizing time lines, calculating distances and honing the text.

And so, even though I know I won't write a novel, I know that I will keep trying to grow my creative side. BZZZT! OW! BZZZT! OW! But, hey, I'm only human.

Feliz Obama

2009-01-25T18:24:00.002-05:00

The day that I have long dreamed of finally arrived, and I find myself woefully short of things to say. For years, I have awaited the time when my country would no longer violate the laws of morality, science, common sense or even the laws of the country itself in the wrongheaded pursuit of political expediency.

I felt so high when Obama defeated "Ready!, Fire!, Aim!" McCain. With a resounding voice the nation declared that they were ready for a President who could think in sophisticated terms and who expects us to do so as well. All Presidents promise the impossible. For the first time in my life, we elected a President who emphasized the hard work needed to create the impossible.

I believe there is a saying "When the time is right, the man comes forth". As much as our country would have been better off without Bush for the last four years, we were not ready to face the truths we needed to face. We seem to be there now, but I worry that the hole we have dug is too deep. Even if Obama is the chronologically and biologically miraculous offspring of Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, which he often appears to be, the tasks seem so daunting.

How do you restore fiscal sanity when the economic wreck requires more spending?
How do you rescue a global climate that already seems past the tipping point?
How do you undo the damage done to our name and in our name in the world?

How long will the public support last? With the events of Tuesday and the acclaim, anything less than unparalleled excellence will be seen as a disappointment. But anything less than twice that level of excellence may not be enough.

I should be flying high as Obama has already made great decisions as President to reverse the previous path. Why do I still feel so scared?

I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas...

2008-12-29T00:35:00.003-05:00

Christmas in California is like reading a book that has been translated into a foreign language by a computer and then translated back. Many of the critical elements are still there, but a lot of the nuance is lost.

My internal clock stopped somewhere in mid-October. The weather here turned to "early Autumn" and lingered there. Christmas Eve felt more like a March afternoon than December. We try and convince ourselves that scraping frost off the car windshield counts as winter weather. It is a tough argument when it hasn't kept me from playing outdoor tennis every Saturday.

On the other hand, there are more houses with ostentatious Christmas displays out here than I saw in Ohio. On our morning walk, we pass multiple houses with animatronic, music-making blinking displays of ghastly tackiness. I should probably go take pictures and video to post here. Static pictures would not capture the full mind-bending incongruity of a traditional nativity scene being serenaded by an inflatable Santa-led jazz band.... or a two story house enshrouded by a galaxy of lights which blink in time (almost, kinda, sorta) to the blared Muzak carols.

I can't tell if such displays are a compensation for the lack of snow or simply reflects that it is easier to do external decorating in balmy conditions. We found ourselves listening to more Christmas music to try and make ourselves more in the holiday spirit... only to re-discover how awful a lot of it is, particularly one effort to sing about "Christmas in San Francisco" that rivals Vogon poetry in its auditory experience.

Kelly and I have been trying to import, re-mix and invent new traditions. We went and cut down a tree (as usual), though it was 67° and on the side of a mountain. There was no Irish Bread party, though bread was made and passed liberally around to broad acclaim. We haven't quite acquired enough extra-curricular friends to make a party not feel like a company event. We sat under the tree and exchanged presents, before making pancakes... followed later by a spectacular holiday feast that Kelly prepared.

I don't have much to add here. I know I have gone "dark" for a while and wanted to let all and sundry that I am alive and well. There are few deeper thoughts percolating in my brain, but work has kept them from steeping into a full post.

Update:
For your viewing pleasure, here is a picture of the Bethlehem Boogie group.

Once more with music

It's late September and I really should be back at school....

2008-09-21T23:53:00.005-04:00

I don't really feel that way, but when you are married to Kelly it is not uncommon to find Rod Stewart lyrics running through one's head. In this year of milestones and changes, it occurred to me that this is the first autumn since 1974 when I haven't been in school.

I am still adjusting to this. I have set my internal clock to the academic calendar for so long that it is hard to think in terms of "fiscal quarters" instead of semesters... as if one was any less arbitrary than the other.

It is good to have stepped away from the classroom. I had reached a stagnation point in improving as a teacher. What I wanted to do was to help students learn to figure things out for themselves, to see connections and to grasp fundamental concepts in a way that they would retain and apply rather than forget. The challenge of a classroom is that every student responds differently to the same process. By the end, I was staring too much at the students who didn't respond well to my style and was becoming frustrated at my inability to adapt myself.

Now I am trying to learn as frantically as possible. It is interesting to assess how much of my formal knowledge I use. I would say that a majority of the time, I am trained monkey. Do this, push that button, write down the result, fill out this form, blah, blah, blah. A good fraction of the time I am utilizing only the basic concepts of my education, but combining those with problem solving skills and a willingness to dive in and learn the particulars of a given problem. Only a tiny percentage of the time do I feel like a specialized piece of information comes in handy, but when it does it can feel like the key in the lock that makes everything move.

Kelly is taking two online classes right now, and I am intrigued by the concept. I think there is a lot of potential in the format. The learning relies very heavily on her ability to read the material, process it and figure out how to apply it. It is very labor intensive, if a student wasn't as self-motivated as Kelly it would go very poorly. I think with some tweaking, it could be a very effective format. The challenge with the current online framework is that if a topic is confusing to the student, it can be a complete roadblock since the resources to get clarification are not as prevalent.

I learned an interesting thing about teaching while watching a Nature special on PBS. Apparently humans are the only ones of the great apes who teach. Chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans are fully capable of learning by observation; but they don't actively work to instruct others. The show called it the "teaching triangle". If I point my finger at something, your eyes follow to the object. We create the triangle between the teacher, the pupil and the object. If a trainer with a gorilla points at an object, the gorilla stares at the finger of the trainer. (Commenter challenge: be the first to associate this fact with a scene from a movie. I am thinking of one in particular)

This has led to a summer of brushing up my biology. Despite having a fantastic biology teacher in high school (Hi, Mom!), my understanding of the boundary between evolutionary biology and anthropology feels weak. Perhaps the textbooks gloss over such things in a vain effort to not offend the nutjobs, or perhaps the knowledge is more recent than my biology class twenty years ago.

Given that chimpanzees share 99% of our DNA and are capable of learning, language, problem solving, play, cruelty, mathematics and personality, what does it mean to be human. What change was the crucial difference that led us down this path. After reading Jared Diamond's "Third Chimpanzee" and Richard Dawkins' "Selfish Gene", I keep coming back to the idea of teaching as the linchpin concept.

As Diamond points out, if an alien race arrived at the planet 100,000 years ago, humans would have been unremarkable and simply classified as a type of chimpanzee. He goes on to talk about some of the notable differences and similarities between ourselves and our primate cousins, but doesn't really speculate on what caused such notable shifts. Dawkins does a good job of explaining how a small genetic change can have large repercussions by reappropriating existing genes to new purposes.

It seems like the desire to teach is good candidate for the tipping point. Once humans began to teach our young rather than expect them to learn by imitation, evolutionary pressure in favor of richer language and cultural development grows. With language and culture come evolutionary pressures for extended childhood, menopause and the other human oddities.

I have no idea if I am even potentially close to correct, but it is fun to think about things outside of my usual subjects. Is it too late to go back for a PhD in anthro-evolution?

Worst. Shakespeare. Play. EVER.

2008-08-22T00:24:00.002-04:00

I had always thought of this as "the ultimate date". Shakespeare, a picnic dinner, a bottle of wine, a beautiful view and an amazing woman with me. Perhaps it is best that it never came to fruition until I was with my wife. If my companion had been anyone lacking such a steadfast commitment, it might have been the "ultimate date" only in the sense of being "the last date".

The food was delicious, Kelly being a chef par excellence even under the challenges of the food having to survive travel in a cooler for 24 hours. The scenery was excellent. The wine was quite tasty. The woman by my side was amazing and beautiful.

The Shakespeare was awful.

When I had first heard of this many years ago, I imagined professional actors. When I saw the listing on the website, I still thought of semi-pro actors like the Dayton Theater Guild. When we arrived on the site, I was hoping for high school amateur. Even that was above the talent on exposition.

Twas a "Midsummer Night's Dream" turned into auditions for American Idol. Highly abridged by design... further abridged by missed lines. Moderately passable scenery of the mystical wood inhabited by less passable wooden acting.

The only point in its favor was that it was SO bad. Had it been slightly better, it would have been less enjoyable. It was like they expanded the subplot of the rough craftsmen of the town performing "Pyramus and Thisbe" into the whole play. Perhaps that was a mindblowing deliberate artistic recursive metaphor.... or perhaps it was just funny to watch a four year old faerie toddle across the stage wearing a winter coat.

Now the ultimate date will have to be redesigned. Any ideas from blogspace?

If It Is Big and Brown, Flush it Down

2008-08-11T00:23:00.004-04:00

I was all serious in my previous post. I tried to change gears in mid-blog, but my bloggy clutch pedal is broken. I ended up with a wretched stink of burnt oil and confused metaphors.

If you were reading back in May when I was lamenting how nothing had gone right with the move, I mentioned that I had shipped out most of my clothes with the shipping company associated with big brown trucks that say UPS in gold letters on the side. In this Coke vs. Pepsi style competition, I had always been a UPS guy, though not for any particular reason. Not anymore. If I have to ship something important, I am a FedEx man.

When last we left the story of shipping incompetence, the company was unable to find a 8000 cubic inch box which I had entrusted into their care. Their not being able to find a box containing all of my work clothes and a piece of wedding memorabilia that I thought would be safer with them than with the moving company was only part of my frustration. The biggest frustration was that UPS would not talk to me about it. You see, despite the fact that I boxed it up, it was my stuff and I paid to have it shipped.... I was not the shipper. No, the shipper of record was the manager of the store that I had shipped it from.

And so begins a recurring pattern. I call the store, manager isn't there, I call back, manager isn't there, he calls me, I can't take call, call back, not there. Miracle of quantum mechanics occurs placing manager and me on the same call at the same time. I explain that the tracking data for one of my boxes stopped in Illinois whilst the other box continued to California. Manager says he will call to put a trace on it. Which is exactly what the lady on the phone said should be done, except she couldn't do it for me because I wasn't the shipper. Apparently having a box addressed to California be stuck in Illinois for a week isn't enough to institute a trace either.

Two weeks pass with me compulsively checking the tracking data every day. The only change has been the addition of a line saying "Trace in progress". I call UPS frequently, to hear one of two answers "It takes a while to search all of our warehouses", or "I can't tell you anything because you are not the shipper." Finally, while on the phone asking how they could lose a massive box and would it help if I gave them a list of the contents, I am told that they found it. The story-du-jour is that the label fell off. I am given the helpful advice to put the destination address on a piece of paper inside the box also, so that if the label happens to fall off they can figure out where it is supposed to go by opening it.

A wave of relief passes over me. I had bought extra insurance on the box, but not enough to replace everything. The relief is short lived.

A box arrives. It is a different box that the one I shipped with a different tracking number. I open it up. It is my stuff, but the memorabilia item is damaged. The stuff is packed differently and not as well as I had done. Then I notice something else. A significant portion of my stuff is covered in a dried black crud. My best guess is that it was ink.

You see, the label didn't fall off the original box. The label must have been obscured by a FREAKING GALLON OF INK being poured on it. Seeing how it ruined a bunch of my clothes, I am betting that my hypothetical backup address inside the box would have been obscured as well. I am just fortunate that the topmost item in the box was a cheap beach towel and that took the worst of the hit. UPS apparently has a motto "We think our customers are freaking idiots", because rather than tell me what happened, they repackaged my stuff in a new box and hoped I wouldn't notice black stains the size of my head.

So begins the new cycle. The dance of "pay me some money for the items you ruined". I call UPS. They send me an email. I fill out the email and include digital pictures. They email back to tell me to call the shipper. (Insert wait for quantum synchronization complicated by time zone difference). Manager asks me to send him digital photos so he can submit them to the same place I have already submitted them. Weeks pass. I call UPS, they tell me to contact the manager. I call manager (quantum synch time), he says he doesn't know anything.

Finally, after much delay and many wasted hours trying to persuade either UPS to talk to me or the store manager to act like he cares that the box was marinated in ink during transit and get some answers for me, I finally get a check. In case you missed the meme here, the money to reimburse me for what I lost due to UPS incompetence is actually written to the manager of the store. He, in turn, has to write me a check.

We used the check to open up our new bank account out here.

The End of the Journey

2008-08-10T23:51:00.004-04:00

The four month saga is now over. Kelly and I are officially Californians and only Californians. Our house in Dayton sold on Thursday.

At the moment, I feel okay about that. I think on one hand, it hasn't completely sunk in. Hell, there is a part of me that doesn't really believe my parents moved out of the old homestead. I know they have been living in a new place for six years, but there is a part of my brain that thinks I could swing by the old place and walk in the back door like nothing had changed.

On the other hand, the house had become a source of worry and frustration. The challenge of trying to sell it while at distance has been very frustrating. Getting it ready nearly finished off my wife. And the size of the rent payments out here made selling it imperative.

On the left foot (I ran out of hands), I think I may have had my bad moments. The worst was the day that I signed the lease for our new house. I woke up at 2 AM, and something about the sounds and the light through the doorway made me think I was back in our bedroom in Dayton. When I realized I wasn't and that I never would be again, a wave of immense sadness swept over me.

On the right foot, we are finally getting our feet under us out here. I am glad that we grabbed this house when we had the chance. We were lucky to get it. It is also to good to finally stop feeling so impermanent. As nice as the corporate apartment was, the knowledge that it was temporary kept us from settling in. Now we have a place we know we will be for a while. Our stuff is out of storage and around us. With every passing day it feels a little more like home. It is a place we can start bringing friends into and building new memories with.

PHENOMENAL COSMIC LOCATION.... itty bitty living space

2008-07-04T17:25:00.004-04:00

After writing one more massive check as part of the moving process, Kelly and I now know where we will be living for the foreseeable future. We did some searching for apartments last weekend. We didn't see anything that we were particularly excited by. The combined challenge of space, dog, cost and location made it clear that it would be a tough challenge.

Then, on Tuesday, I saw a house for rent on Craigslist. It was in our price range and only 1.5 miles from work. It has a garage, which I think will be very nice and a big improvement over an apartment. It also has a nice dog-friendly back yard with a peach tree and a cherry tree. Go out and pick your own breakfast! The competition for the place was fierce, but thanks to a good credit rating and writing a cover letter to the application that helped us be more than names on a piece of paper, we won.

My prediction for moving to California was absolutely true... half the living space and twice the monthly payment. It is also a little earlier than would have been ideal. But I think the quality of life will be much better than it would have been in an apartment. The odds of a place like it opening up in the next month... and winning that competition... were too slim to pass on this chance.

Don't send us any housewarming gifts just yet. We will probably take most of July to move in and set it up like we want. After that we will be open for visitors. Check your email for snail mail address updates.

Meta-posting

2008-06-15T12:48:00.002-04:00

With a little luck, the life updates in this blog should get a little more boring. Kelly joins the dog and I in California today, and should be able to get some well deserved rest and relaxation. The house is still on the market, but that is a worry for another day.

I expect to fill this space more with my philosophical ruminations, which I find more fascinating than most of my daily life. Hopefully, you will too.

I came up with the title for this blog almost two years ago. Samwise Gamgee has always been my favorite fictional character ever since seeing the animated "Return of the King" at a very young age. ("Where there's a whip... there's a way..."). In some ways, it is odd that I grabbed onto him rather than Frodo. It could be that by starting with the RotK (it took me a couple more years to finish the books for the first time), my first impression of Frodo was a whining, tired and indecisive hobbit while Sam did all the real work.

While my appreciation for Frodo has grown with the dozen or two times I have read the books, so has my admiration and identification with Sam. I have always seen myself as the able assistant rather than the leader. I tend to be the practical minded supporter who figures out how to make it happen rather than the idea creator.

Which brings me to the quote... "Where there is life, there is hope, as my gaffer would say. And need for vittles, he'd mostwise add." When I was younger, and EVEN more idealistic than I am today, I think I only focused on the first part. Just having hope in the middle of Mordor surrounded by a million orcs is a significant achievement. But the power comes from the second part. Without a practical mindset, hope is an ephemeral and transient entity.

The challenge comes in finding the balance... how much practicality and how much idealism. Samwise knew when to stop saving food and water for the return journey from Mount Doom and to just concentrate on keeping Frodo going. The challenge is finding the balance that you can live with in your own head.

That was old Hamfast's advice for his son. My dad offered advice from the confusing "You can't have your cake and eat it too" (what else do you do with cake?) to another of my life mantras "There are two things in life worth their money every single time... education and travel." On this Father's Day, anyone reading the blog is encouraged to leave comments with good, bad or humorous tidbits their fathers passed along to them.

Power of positive thinking time....

2008-06-07T11:26:00.002-04:00

I am trying not have this blog be subtitled "Michael bitches and moans about having to work at a really cool job in the spectacular weather of the Bay Area", so I have held off posting until I can temper the challenges of moving with some positive thoughts.

I want to give a big shout out to my wife. As hard as this has been on me, this has been seven times harder on her. She managed to juggle working, school and getting the house on the market and has done it all very well. I went back to Dayton over Memorial Day for a brief fly-by and the house is amazing. We have had some interest and foot traffic, so hopefully that will pay off with a sale before too long. Kelly will be out here in about a week and finally able to take some long deserved relaxation.

Another shout out goes to Carol. She made me a phenomenal scrap-book of Dayton sights, stories and histories. It really is a work of art that captures what makes the place so special. Then to cap it off, when I thanked her she added some great wisdom.

So, in San Jose, . . . you will appreciate the little things that you will find in your new home. ... but you have to earn all the memories. And you can't give up just because there aren't any memories there yet.

That is so true. A place has meaning because of the stories associated with it. Some of those stories are personal experiences and others are curious pieces of history that one has to learn. I need to be open to those experiences here.

I could feel that most strongly when "other" Michael and I went to watch the San Jose Earthquakes play. Standing in the crowd, screaming my lungs out with my great friend by my side reminded me of some of the positive memories of my previous California adventure. And there will be more good memories to come.

I am looking forward to finally going on my ultimate date (with my ultimate woman) to watch Shakespeare under the stars at a winery in Sonoma. I am looking forward to lots of friends coming to visit (hint, hint). I am looking forward to lots of tennis, biking, hiking and other things that are so often weather precluded in Ohio. I look forward to lots of mini-vacations to places that were too far to visit from back east, like Yosemite, San Diego or even Hawaii.

It is hard to stay focused on the future when the present is so turbulent, but calmer waters are ahead.

On a side note... Mazel Tov to Stephen and Hannah who got married in New York last weekend. That was one of the most fun weddings I have ever been to. The circle dancing and partying was like a scene from a TV show or a movie, and the ceremony was a wonderful blend of traditional and personal.

It also gave me the opportunity to utter the immortal words... "A wife is like an adventure person".

Continuing Adventures in California

2008-05-10T19:19:00.002-04:00

If you have seen the movies "Stranger Than Fiction", you know the character spends much of the movie trying to determine if he is in a tragedy or a comedy. I feel the same way after these last few weeks.

The previous post described how the idyllic and picturesque drive devolved into a grueling and occasionally scary push to get to California on time.

Monday morning, we wake up and I get ready to go to work. At about 8:30 AM, with a half an hour before my start time, I pull my shoes out of my suitcase and the sole has been completely ripped asunder. Kelly and I look at each other in shock. "I know where the Target is." I say. She says "Let's go." More high tension driving as we drive to Target, I run inside while Kelly keeps the car running in the fire lane. No business shoes in size 13.... so I grab a pair of 12Ws and hope for the best. I make it to work promptly at 9. (Those shoes worked okay for a couple of weeks, but I gave in and bought new ones today... just one more hidden moving expense).

If you have noticed a recurring them of bright ideas gone astray with this endeavour, you haven't heard the best part. Rather than try and fit all of my clothes into the already crowded car, I decided to ship them. Two boxes were loaded with about 40 lbs of clothes each. Only one of which has arrived in California. The brown truck company has been searching their facilities for the missing box for over a week now. All of my work pants, work shirts and many other items are in a 20" by 20" by 20" box that apparently has impressive stealth technology.

Combine that with the difficulty of being separated from my wife, knowing that she is overwhelmed with the challenges of school, getting the house ready and still working. As happened in grad school, the time zone difference exacerbates the feeling of distance. By the time I get home from work, it is really late back home.

The new job has been good, though it feels a bit overwhelming at this point. My boss has told me that I have a month to learn as much as I can before I am expected to take over projects myself. The complexity of what I have to learn is daunting. Imagine that I was asked to learn everything about the road system in the United States, from interstates all the way down to surface streets. After my month of learning, my task might be "smooth traffic though such-and-such intersection in western North Carolina". All I can do is try and get a feel for how the types of roads interface and what kind of diagnostic and repair tools we have. Like I said, good, interesting but exhausting.

Safely in California...

2008-05-01T01:01:00.003-04:00

Dog and I are in California and lovely wife is back in Ohio. What was supposed to be an enjoyable, if long, drive across the country turned into a bit more of an adventure than we bargained on.

We left Dayton around 10 AM, because we had bought tickets to see Spamalot for Christmas and we were not going to give them up. (BTW... loved Spamalot... wished we could have seen it on Broadway with Tim Curry and David Hyde Pierce).

Day 1 was relatively innocuous. We had a pleasant stop at the St. Louis Arch. Other than that, it was a lot of farms, farms and more farms. We stopped in Kansas City. This wasn't quite as far as I had hoped we would make it, but given how hard we had been pushing ourselves it made sense.

Day 2 was innocuous for most of the day. Kansas is more visually interesting than it's reputation might suggest, but 450 miles of it leave you stumped for conversation. "It reminds me of Laura Ingalls Wilder" "Imagine crossing this in a covered wagon" "What must it be like to grow up out here?" Such scintillating topics ruled the day for a hundred miles or so and then the landscape offered no new insights.

We approached Denver as the evening approached. A few quick calculations encouraged us to go about 60 miles west of Denver to make the next day a little easier. The quick calculations neglected to consider that the Vail pass 30 miles west of Denver is 11000 feet above sea level and the roads up and down it are steep, windy, poorly lit, inadequately painted and full of drivers willing to go around 80 mph. Had a lawyer called Kelly's cell phone with a cheap offer to fill out divorce papers, he might have gained a client.

But, we safely arrived in Edwards, CO and checked into a lovely hotel along the river. The idea of staying at such a place looked much more appealing on the web, before we stepped out of the car into 30 degree air. Again, not Michael's finest planning job.

Day 3 is where it starts to get interesting. We start by driving through some of the prettiest stretches of interstate in the country. The rest stop describes Glenwood Canyon as the toughest 12 miles of interstate to build. Since I slept through most of it in 2001 when I drove back from California, I was happy to see it.

Around noon, we arrive in Green River, Utah. This is a 7/10ths of a horse town, but it is the last gas, food and post-iron age technology for 110 miles. Gas up. Get food. Ritual ablutions. Car won't start. Oh, shit.

In all my life, I have never been turned down by anyone for a jump start. But this day, I get denied by two different people. The first guy says, "I am French. I am a tourist. Can you ask someone else?" As if anyone else at this gas station wasn't just passing through. The second guy says he has too much delicate electronic equipment. Finally, a man in a pickup truck agrees to help and the car starts.

But now we are nervous. With a 110 mile stretch of nothing in front of us, we don't want to be driving a car on the verge of dying. I am afraid it might be the alternator, since we have been running the car for hours, so the battery should be fully charged. (And the guys at the dealership who did the 27 point inspection on Tuesday would surely have noticed a dying battery.)

A few phone calls connect us with a tow truck driver/mechanic whom I will call Cletus because it makes me feel better. He tests the battery and pronounces it dead. He drives over to the Napa parts store (which is closed due to a car show somewhere nearby, but Cletus' friend who owns it lets him buy the items). A replaced battery, the car starts and Cletus checks the current from the alternator. He tells us the alternator is bad. It is putting out current, but not much and it doesn't increase when you increase the throttle. My heart sinks. He says he can get us alternator by Tuesday. (It is currently Saturday, work starts Monday and I don't even want to drive through any place which I would less enjoy a 3 day vacation than Green River, Utah.)

A few discussions of options reveal that by the time we make it anywhere there is likely to be a mechanic with an alternator said mechanic will be closed for the evening... and likely until Monday. The best option seems to be to buy a second battery and try to make it to Las Vegas (still about 400 miles away). Cletus recommends that we not use any unnecessary electronics and says that driving slow won't make it last any longer. We also want to make it there before dark so we don't have to turn on the headlights.

So, day 3 closes out with a mad sprint across the desert. Driving at about 80 mph (speed limit 75), canceling the previously planned potty breaks for humans or animals, worrying that the car will sputter to a halt, sighing in relief when the car restarts after we have to shut it off to fuel it up, calling ahead to Vegas to try and find a mechanic who is both open on Sunday and able to acquire the appropriate alternator.

With great relief, we arrive at the hotel, check in and collapse. Less than a mile from the Strip, neither of us can be bothered with it.

Day 4 dawns with us trying to figure out any way to get to California. As we wait for car mechanics to open, we are calling truck rental places to price out a truck and trailer combo to tow the car. They have a trailer but no truck. We try to rent an SUV with a trailer hitch from another company.... no can do.

Finally, at 10:00, I find a mechanic who is open and can get the alternator. We install the spare battery to be safe, and I drive the ten miles to the Sears Auto Center in Henderson. An hour later, he tells me there is nothing wrong with the alternator. The whole white knuckle panic of the previous day was for naught. But, at least I have the joy of dealing with this mechanic. I was just passing through town and I was ready... nay, eager... to purchase a $250 alternator. Mike the manager sent me on my way with peace of mind and a bill for $13. If you find yourself in the Vegas area needing car repair, head to Sears Auto Center in Henderson and ask for Mike.

Of course, all of this delays the start for us out of town. We find ourselves smack in the middle of the end of weekend traffic jam as all the Angelinos head home. One of whom may have been in too much of a hurry, since they got into an accident bringing traffic to a crawl. Three hours later we accomplish the 100 mile transit to Barstow, CA. My main solace is that at least we weren't in a U-Haul, towing the car, with a dog on a lap having spent hundreds of dollars for the truck and trailer which we would later find out were unnecessary.

Once again, though, I push on a little further than I should. I think I will just pick the first exit after we get on route 58. When we get on 58, the advertisement for the Burger King specifies that it is 27 miles ahead of us. The wife who really needs to pee and get out of the car considers calling the divorce attorney herself.

To make a long story short (too late!), we arrive in San Jose at 11 PM exhausted and more stressed than when we started the trip.

The apartment is gorgeous. For a one bedroom it is very large and laid out nicely. The furniture is top quality. There is lots of grass around in which to walk the dog.

That is enough for now. In another post, I will tell you a bit of the stories that have happened since (including why I haven't been able to blog until now).

I cheer for the city of Dayton

2008-04-02T10:19:00.004-04:00

In the wake of all the moving hubbub, one of my friends expressed confusion over my affection for the city of Dayton. He could appreciate my desire to not leave family and friends, but didn't understand why leaving the metropolitan edifice itself was saddening.

Had I been a swifter conversationalist, I might have replied "Fellow professor whose first name rhymes with 'blue' but who shall otherwise remain anonymous, why did you cheer for the Boston Red Sox through their 86 years of futility?"

Like the boys of Fenway Park before their recent good fortune, Dayton is a city whose highest glories were nearly a century ago. In latter days, we have been teased by opportunity and reversal, management of all calibers and always the hope that the future will rival the days of yore.

Why is spending a day (and even money) watching one corporation compete against another considered to be normal activity, but supporting an incorporated entity in its struggle against the entropy of modern capitalism is "weird"? Why can't we excuse Ms. McLin's hats as "Just Mayor being Mayor" as Manny Ramirez' eccentricities are dismissed?

Like any true fan, I am also hypersensitive to slights in the media and the public perception. Dayton doesn't get the credit it deserves. For a city of it's size in the middle of the rust belt, it is doing an amazing job. It has more cultural, historical and gastronomical opportunities than many cities far larger and wealthier. In that regard, it is not the Boston Red Sox where anything less than a championship is failure... (switching sports and continents) it is more like the Blackburn Rovers being competitive in the Premier League despite a small population... the situation is a miracle of skill and effort, but still criticized by the cognoscenti as unfashionable.

Alright.... enough of the "hope" and now for the "need for vittles".

Moving plans are proceeding apace. The house has been completely turned upside down to move stuff out of it and to finish off the many postponed projects. By the sweat of our brows, the favors of friends or the writing of checks, we move forward.

At this point, it looks like everything will get done in time to have the house on the market by late April. But the time between now and then is going to be very busy and I probably won't get to say goodbye to the friends that I will miss. I am looking forward to the drive out to California as a chance to relax and let my thoughts settle down before hitting the new job as hard as I can.

New Blog and Big News...

2008-03-22T12:05:00.003-04:00

Welcome to my blog. Once upon a time, I used to write a long letter to all my friends, print out many copies and mail them so that people knew what I was thinking and what I was up to. It turns out, I was just ahead of my time. Connect Michael's Massive Missive to the internet... and, presto, it's a blog.

I held off starting this until I finally had some news on the job front. It was certainly the first thought on my mind and often the first question asked of me. Any brilliant philosophical treatises will have to wait until after the major news.

Kelly and I are moving to San Jose, California!

After a long and drawn out job search, I will be building and testing robots for a living. Many thanks to Michael and Niels for helping make it happen. I am alternately excited and scared by the prospect of how much there is to learn. One of the engineers that I interviewed with put it very well... "In academic engineering , you design something such that under the right circumstances it works properly. In 'real' engineering, you design something such that if one of the million ways the circumstances can be wrong happens, you have decided what the device will do."

The hardest part of all of this will be leaving Dayton. I love this city. I love all of my friends and family here. I love our old, drafty, one-more-things-needs-to-be fixed house. I never thought I would be headed back to the land of $2 per square foot rent. It will be better this time. A fun and challenging job and a beautiful wife will make it much more pleasant than grad school was.

I am bittersweet about leaving academia. I love teaching and (I think) I am good at it. I doubt that I have taught my last class, but when I come back to it I will be a better teacher for the years spent working as an engineer. And all of that is so far down the road as to be "vapor-planning". Ask me or my wife five years ago where we would be today, and we would be miles off the mark.

Operation Move has been in the tentative planning stages for a little while, but now we put it into action. Kelly, dog and I hit the road on April 24th, arrive in California on April 27th, and I go to work on April 28th. Kelly flies back to Dayton to finish classes and sell the house. She will rejoin us in June. If you know anyone who would like to buy a nice, historic home on a beautiful boulevard let us know.

I think that covers the most important stuff. Please keep checking this site for updates on progress and more ramblings on what I am thinking.