I cheer for the city of Dayton

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...

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.