All Saints Beverly Hills

Our monthly Good Friends Get Together in December was at All Saints Beverly Hills. We had a delightful time worshipping (in a VERY cold sanctuary), then a great brunch at the Fiddler's Cafe, and an afternoon at the Grove in Hollywood. A great time had by all.

In fact, I think we're going to schedule a few more of these GFGT's on Sunday mornings. We'll all visit Saddleback Community Church, St. Bart's Episcopal, and Conejo CoC. Should be a kick.

The christmas tree in hollywood.

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Holiday Cookies by Madison

I told Madison I'd pay her $20 for some holiday cookies for my party this week. She got a bit carried away with the frosting, but you have to admire her spirit!

The joys of the academic life

This afternoon I posted grades for my last classes of the fall semester. I'm out of the classroom until January 5. That gives me a little less than a month to work on research, complete a few projects around the house, and enjoy some time to read and think. So, what's on my agenda for the next few weeks?

• Move some furnishing around the kids' rooms to make them a bit more spacious. Maybe a closet system for Tiny?
• Build some shelves for the boys' room.
• Finish a couple of research projects.
• Start a couple of research projects.
• Read the new textbook I've chosen for my Tech Ops class.
• Finish The Life of Pi
• Continue to visit the gym a few times a week.
• Go skiing with the family to Mountain High
• Re-establish a rhythm of devotion (any suggested texts? ).
• And most importantly...lots of downtime with the family including at least one movie.

I know...it's a long list. Let me know if you have any suggestions for what I've left out.

Daddy, don't let your babies grow up to be Code Heads...

As I mentioned last week, Matt and I have started learning C++. Here we are working on our "Hello World" program (which is the first program you write when learning a new language).

So far we're having a blast. I guess this is a good time for me to explain to Matt that he should spend this time learning how to calculate derivatives and costs of capital rather than structured loops and object inheritance?

The DPW's Festival of Lights ended its pedestrian-friendly period today. We took it in on opening weekend. It's a good time. If you haven't made your way to Griffith Park to see the lights...it's a fun LA experience.

I guess I spoke too quickly...

Doh!  Michelle is officially down with the nasty stomach virus.  She's been sick a half-dozen times since midnight.  Ouch!

The escalating costs of education...

Today's NYT ran an insightful story about the rising costs of education in America. Over the past 25 years housing, healthcare, and education costs have far outpaced wages. We are currently hearing much about healtcare and housing policies. It's time to give attention to our national policies toward educating our children and creating human capital, not just liquidity.

The Big Three...

Lots of news today about the Big 3 hitting up the US taxpayers for more money.

I have posted elsewhere that I strongly support deficit spending and am clearly not a libertarian.

However, I simply can not fathom how it makes sense for the American Taxpayer to protect the stockholders of GM, Ford, and Cerberus (the Hedge Fund that owns Chrysler). 

First, it is absolutely ridiculous to believe that these companies are somehow a matter of national security.  If these firms go into bankruptcy, they will eventually come out.  America will not lose its ability to design, engineer, manufacture and sell cars simply because they go into bankruptcy.  Bankruptcy is the legal way firms deal with the problems the Big 3 are facing.  I view their current tactics as shameless opportunism.

Second, it defies logic that automobile labor in Michigan deserves to earn $70/hr and life-time benefits while those who perform the same tasks for Nissan, Toyota, and Suburu in Tennessee, Indiana, and Alabama earn approximately half-that.  Why should all the US taxpayers subsidize these overpaid laborers?  To bring a sharper point to it... the Big 3 are asking the working families of those non-union auto-workers in Tennessee to subsidize the inflated values of Detroit unions with their tax dollars.  Is that fair?

Finally, I  doubt anyone gives much credibility to the Big 3's assertion that this "loan" will somehow be a "bridge to a brighter future".  In fact, these companies will continue to create low-quality products with little innovation and outsized energy requirements.  

I am not always so Darwinian...but in this case I say "let them eat cake."  The Big 3 have made this mess and we should let the management and owners who brought them to the brink of bankruptcy pay the price.  Externalizing the costs of their poor judgement on the rest of the country is short-sighted and wrong.

On the mend...

I think (cross-my-fingers) that everyone is through with this stomach virus now. No one has actually been sick in about 30-hours.  Michelle and I seem OK.  Thanks for your prayers and kind words.

Michelle and the kids are at PU's Christmas Concert while I'm at home getting Tater to bed so he can get enough rest to go to school for the first time all week tomorrow.

This weekend should be interesting.  I have a variety of graduation related events Fri & Sat, Michelle is camping with the Girl Scouts from 7am Sat to noon Sun, Madison has three soccer games in the Regional AYSO playoffs about an hour from here, and we have two or three Christmas events at church.  Whew...I'm tired already!

It's going around...

As you know...Tiny was sick on Thanksgiving.  Lame-O.  We thought that was the end of it, but Matt got sick on Sunday night.  This morning Tater came to our bed saying

"Daddy...I think I have some chemicals in my mouth!"

Who knows where he got that? Anyway, he proceeded to be sick seven-times before I left for work at 8:45. Yuck... Poor guy.

So, who's next? Michelle or me?

A Chip off the old block...

Last night Matt wrote his first C++ program. :-)  It was so fun sitting with him while we installed a C++ compiler and IDE on the laptop.  Then read the programming book and began writing code.  It reminded me of my first days in the basement working on some Extended BASIC code on the old Ti 99-4a.

His "Hello World!!!" program worked flawlessly.  But what made me especially proud was his playfulness with the concepts.  Without blinking he started modifying the code and trying out new commands that weren't explained in the book (e.g., rand()) just to see what it would do.  I'm so proud.