Recently heard on campus...

"I'm addicted to feeding the squirrels."

More on Federal Spending

I recently found an interesting report outlining how the income and expenditures of the federal government broken out by state. In partcular, the report highlighted the fact that there are some states in the union that historically consume more tax dollars than they generate; they are subsidized by the country as a whole. Conversely, there are states that generate more in taxes than they receive from the government.

Take a look at the report here and see where your favorite state (or maybe the states you love to hate) stack up. The most important columns are the last two showing the received-to-spending ratio (values over $1.00 mean the state was subsidized, values less than $1.00 mean the state did the subsidizing) and the ranking of the state in terms of dollars received.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether citizens should be proud or not of their states' abilities to attract federal spending. Some call it "bringing home the bacon" and they vote based on who they think can bring the most money to the state. When it comes to tax dollars, though, its a zero-sum game; federal dollars flowing into the state have to come from somewhere and it will largley be taxes collected from another state. This is another way to look at federal taxes as wealth redistribution: money moving from "rich" states to "poor" states (or something like that).

First Day

My first lecture has come and gone as a instructor at Wichita State University. It went well. Despite the late hour of the class (5:35pm to 6:50pm) the students seemed awake and participating. We got through the introductory material and started into the content; I was even able to put up the first homework assignment (though it won't officially be due for over a week). I made one blunder in assigning an in-class problem which turned out to be much more difficult than I realized when I opened my mouth. I caught it after a minute or so and was able to call it off before I did too much educational damage. At least that's what I'm telling myself right now. Moral of the story: stick to the notes I've prepared for myself, particularly when it comes to examples and practice problems.

Oh, and I accidentally left my travel mug of water in the lecture hall overnight. It was still there when I came by early the next morning.

I still haven't received the official contract for teaching this class, though. Its the only thing holding me back from being 100% officially hired.

Windows

Two days out of the week I have long days at school, about twelve hours on campus. While I was waiting for my last class of the day I noticed the following. I've speeded up the video to make the effect the wind was having on these windows more obvious.

The last part of the clip is slowed down to normal speed so that I could provide some context to the problem. The windows are probably five feet tall and each pane is probably three or four feet wide. The hallway is a hundred feet or so. This is a lot of glass that doesn't seem to be solidly attached to the rest of the building. I have the distinct impression that the plate screwed into the window frame shown in this clip was added after installation.

Its almost 100% official...

Yesterday I got a few more keys to add to the growing ring, today I was given another and received training on how to use the projector system in the room I will be using for lecture.

Then there's this little excerpt from the course catalog listing for this semester:

Now all I need is for the last bit of paperwork to go through giving me access to the part of the computer system where I enter grades and I'll be set.

Defense, Social Security, Health Care

I was in a discussion with a friend recently about the national debt, a topic that we are both concerned about. I was trying to point out that most of the federal budget is being spent on just a few things but didn't have the numbers in front of me to confirm this. Now I do.

The chart comes from Wikipedia; they used publicly available data.

There are three general areas of federal spending that make up a significant portion of the federal budget: defense, Social Security, and health care (Medicare and Medicaid). (Since this is 2008 data, there is no mention of the new health insurance reform and it will several years before we have data on how much that is actually costing us). The total of these three is 58% of our budget. If you throw in welfare and other "non-discretionary" spending the total comes in at 67%.

If we are serious about being fiscally responsible we need to look at cutting spending and when cutting costs, you don't look at the small things first. Completely eliminating, say, the funding for the Department of Justice will not make much of a difference in terms of limiting spending. Killing NASA won't help out much either. The federal government is involved in many, many, programs but when you get look at the data, most of these spend very little in the scope of the entire federal budget.

Here's my point: if you get in a discussion about balancing the federal budget just remember the big three. Make it a mantra. Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Don't let anybody get you off topic with talks of killing NASA or ending the Department of Education. Everybody has a part of the federal government that they love to hate and often political motivations can hide behind the mask of fiscal responsibility. (This is the reason I don't like including the "welfare and other non-discretionary" spending in the total; everybody has an opinion about welfare.) These programs are small fry's and killing them won't really help us out any.

To balance the budget we have to choose to confront the reality that most of our spending is in programs and that most people see as non-negotiable. Even my wife's very conservative mother, a woman who wants a smaller federal government, lower taxes, and a balanced budget, does not want to see significant cuts to the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare. Reality is unforgiving in this regard, though. The big three need be smaller. Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

How are we going to get from there to here? What sacrifices will you make to bring the help bring the country back into financial balance? The federal government has for some time now been balancing its budget by borrowing and we all know that this can't go on forever. The sooner that we get serious about a legitimately balanced budget, the sooner we can start paying down the debt. In 2008, we spent 9% of our federal dollars just on interest for the debt.

Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

We are the federal government. Don't simply blame the politicians for making politically expedient choices and avoiding unpopular ideas like cutting Social Security benefits. These ideas are untenable only because we, the people who elect them, don't want to make the choice for ourselves. If cutting Social Security benefits had our strong support then there is no doubt elected officials would openly advocate for it. We, the electorate, have to be willing to sacrifice if we expect our representatives to make the changes in law that will be required to balance the budget. Don't blame them; we gave them the job.

Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

Watering

My wife just got done watering our maple tree in the backyard. It is a full, mature tree but due to the weeks of high heat (highs at 95'F or greater, lows of 80) and no rain, the tree has started to shed its leaves. The backyard has a pool of green, dry, crinkly leaves around the tree; it looks quite sad.

Teaching

I found out yesterday around lunch time that I will be teaching my first course at WSU this fall, CS 194 Intro to Digital Design. The appointment comes pretty close to the start of the school year (two weeks away) and so I'm going to be scrambling a bit to try to get prepared. Thankfully the professor who teaches it normally has mercifully volunteered her notes and homework so me to use/copy/modify.

The content of the course is not difficult for me to understand and I'm hoping my students will be able to catch on relatively quickly. The bigger struggle for me will be the less direct issues in teaching: pace, proper amounts and difficulty of homework and tests, classroom management, etc. This will be especially true given that this course will consist largely of freshman in their first semester at college.

For now I'm busy trying to re-learn the specifics of the material that I've forgotten and formulate the early lectures, at least in my head. This should be an adventure.

While I've been gone

This month has been extremely busy with trips to Oregon, Colorado and Missouri and I'm just now working on getting life back in order. Until I figure out what (if anything) I'll have to say from these trips, here is a little gem from my time in Missouri. This is a sign at a state park we stayed at; what does it mean?

When I saw it I had just realized the camp ground had no cell phone coverage and so I thought that it was pointing the way to a magic location where cell phones would work. It wasn't.

Puppy Surgery

What you see above is a bit of grass seed that has been aggravating one of our dogs, Basil, for the past few weeks. When we first noticed the problem, the only symptom was Basil licking between his toes on one paw. We investigated and found that a knot of fur and grass seed had formed there and with a quick flick of the scissors, thought we had solved the problem.

A few days later we noticed he was still licking and further investigation revealed a tumor-like enlargement between those same two toes. It didn't look like a blister and early attempts to lance and drain it produced no fluid; it seemed to be more like a callous than an abscess.

But it kept growing, slowly. We called Katie's mother, a small animal vet, and her over-the-phone diagnosis was that it was an abscess where something had gotten embedded in his skin and was festering away, motivating Basil to try to fix the problem through licking. We speculated that probably some grass seed was the culprit. Our problem: the wound didn't act like an abscess that could be drained and the offending particle removed, it was just too solid.

Last night I looked at it again and saw a long dark spot near the surface of the enlargement and the "tumor" did appear to be more fluid than before. I soaked Basil's foot in epson salt while Katie rounded up the alcohol, swabs, and sterilized a sewing needle. We dried off the foot and I poked the blister. Some blood came out but very little (if any) of the expected pus which would have indicated an infection by a foreign body and confirmed Katie's mom's theory.

We gently squeezed the sore and tried to explore and coax anything out of it but we got nothing but more blood. I talked with my co-surgeon and we decided we needed to cut it open and go after it while we could. Katie sterilized a razor blade, I cleaned the area with alcohol. She handed me the blade and while distracting Basil with puppy treats, I gently cut across the surface of the sore.

A little more blood but no obvious culprit. Another deeper cut and still no sign of anything wrong other than the obvious damage I was doing myself. Basil is a laid back dog and he normally doesn't object to our ministrations, even when we are doing things he doesn't care for, such as cleaning his ears or trimming his nails. He wasn't fighting us yet and I didn't want to make things worse but I was convinced that cutting just a bit deeper would yield results.

I did; it did. The point of the seed popped up through the blood and I grabbed it out with tweezers. We cleaned the area with alcohol, applied a topical anti-biotic, and bandaged the wound. Basil got more puppy treats and a chance to sleep in our room as both a reward for being a good patient and a half-hearted attempt to make sure he didn't lick the surgery site. This morning we redressed his foot and things appeared to be healing well. With the antagonist gone, Basil seems to be feeling much better and isn't lick his paw any more. As of right now the pocket in his skin is closing up nicely and the "tumor" is receding.

Katie's mom was impressed with our work and I'm glad we were able to get it out so easily. I bet Basil would enjoy a local anesthetic next time, though. Any ideas on how to get something like that?

New Site Design

I had a bit of free time on my hands and accidentally discovered Blogger's easy to use site designer and with a little bit of fiddling, gave the blog a new look. And, because my wife asked, the background picture behind the title is mine, taken in our unimpressive backyard.

How to...

Katie got this little container for holding plastic bags from Wal-Mart yesterday. We hang onto our plastic bags for dog-related purposes and they tend to clutter up in the pantry closet. This cheap container is supposed to hold all those bags and even has a (faux?) stainless steal finish.

Installation is easy and straight-forward and instruction are only necessary if you've never done anything like this before. Two drywall anchors and two screws. Done in less than five minutes.

The instructions do have some comedic value, though. Check out the list of needed tools, shown in universal-style images.

That's right. In addition to a screwdriver, drill, hammer, and pencil you'll also need to be a human male.

Water Dogs

Both our dogs are English Springer Spaniels, a breed whose original purpose was to help in hunting water fowl. Its not surprising then, that they love water and the only things that make baths unpleasant is all that soap and shampoo. Last year we purchased a large inflatable pool for them to play in and that lasted a week or two until they popped it. It also took much more water to fill than I expected.

This year we went with the cheaper, smaller pool and bring it out on hot summer days to help cool them off when outside. Our dogs are very different in temperament and I think the following two movie clips will make this clear.

Anise:

Basil:

Attic Fan

This past spring, in an attempt to save ourselves some money, hassle, and discomfort, we decided to purchase and install an attic fan. Katie had experience with one growing up and insisted that if we were going to do this it had to be quiet so we ended up on one provided by Airscape. As with my home projects, the install took longer than I thought but once it was in and running we were loving it. Instead of messing with multiple box fans that didn't seem to work very well we open a few windows and flip a switch. The fan pulls in the cool air from outside and shoves the hot air in the house and attic outside.

The fan ceases to be useful, though, when things don't really cool down at night very much. We knew that the fan wouldn't be able to be used all summer but based on historical data on the temperatures here in town, it seemed it would still be worth it the rest of the year. The summer heat has seemed to hit a bit early this year and already the night-time lows are 78'F at our house; there's no sense in exchanging one set of hot air with another so the fan is staying off.

Other than this not so small complication, we have been big fans of the fan. For people who live in places where the night-time lows are more reasonable, I can whole-heartedly endorse the product. Where I grew up, we didn't have air-conditioning and this worked out fine most of the year but a fan like this would have made all the difference and saved my father from same box-fan routine we used to do here.

Helping with the move

Our friends were making a move this last Wednesday and I volunteered to help them out. I have no classes during the summer leaving my schedule very flexible and I was glad to do what I could. Unfortunately, most of the working world does not have weekdays off so when we started in the morning at 9:30am, there was four of us. By lunch there was just three. The morning turned into a long day but by early evening we were starting to see more help show up, thankfully.

As the sun was setting a group of guys was trying to manipulate a sleeper-sofa down a tight squeeze in the stairwell to the basement. We were very close to making it work but just couldn't get it to fit. After tearing up the door jamb, putting a small hole in the wall of the stairwell, and scuffing a big of paint off the other stairwell corner, we gave up and decided the sofa would have to live upstairs. We gathered to eat a quick bite before finishing for the evening and I took stock of the man-power we had present and came to a conclusion: as tired as we were, we needed to move the piano tonight. We probably weren't going to have any more help at a future date and needed to get it down while we could.

I made my case to my friend the home-owner and I could tell that he wasn't thrilled with the idea as he was as tired as I. Using what little skills of persuasion I have, though, I was able to convince him to at least give it a shot. It was the last item to be moved and if we could get the piano moved, we could claim victory for the day. Six guys, one big, heavy, wooden box.

Loading it into the truck was not too difficult, though one of the casters was broken so we lifted it the entire way. Once in the truck we started the short ride back to the new place.

Half a block from the house, at the last turn of the ride, the most unbelievable event occurred. The piano, which we had not tied down, came flying out of the bed of the truck. It came crashing to the ground but, amazingly, stayed more or less in one piece. I was in the vehicle behind the fateful truck and I have never seen anything like this. The piano started to lean to one side, the top of the console got over the edge of the truck, and somehow, the caster wheels ended higher up than any other part of the piano as it seemed to jump and flip towards the street.

We all stopped, got out of the cars, and stared for a minute, still in shock over what happened. I looked back at the road on the corner we had just turned and couldn't see any of Wichita's famous potholes, drainage troughs, or uplifted pavement. It was as smooth as roads get around here. How did this happen?

We loaded the piano back into the truck and, after traveling a few hundred feet, into the house. A quick glance while walking by the piano and you wouldn't think it had fallen to the road but even the most cursory inspection showed not only deep scuff marks and gouges in the wood but also that the keyboard was uneven, elevated, and none of the keys could be moved. The piano was no beauty to begin with but now it couldn't even be played.

Epilogue:

Katie and I rode over to the new house the other day on our way home from a farmer's market to see how the unpacking was going. We found out that, as miraculous as the flying piano incident was, even more miraculous is that our friends were able to easily fix the piano and every key works! The only problem with the keyboard was that the keys had lifted out of their guides and were resting on top of them rather than sliding between them. Simply lifting the keys and resting them back into place solved the problem. The piano needs to be tuned, of course, and all the beauty marks are still there but the instrument functions the way it was designed.

June 5th

June 5th 2009 was the day I was laid off at Cessna. That morning I was told by my supervisor that I was being let go and after that day I never went back to my desk again. It was not a happy day.

June 5th 2010 at 4:30am my first niece was born to my wife's sister in Enid, OK. She had a high-risk pregnancy and was induced so as not to prevent any complications. (I assume that was the logic, anyways.) She checked-in to the hospital on Friday morning but for a variety of reasons did not progress as quickly as was expected. As seems to be the case for every mother I meet, the labor was lengthy and Maylin Brooke wasn't born until nearly twenty-one hours later.

Thankfully, other than the long labor everything went smoothly. The epidural helped that as well.

I hope to be a father some day but for now, I'm an uncle, now three times over. This June 5th was much better than the last.

Escape!

Last night Anise had a brief night on the town. I had left the door between our garage and the backyard open as well as the garage door to help cool off our garage. I forgot to close them, Katie let Anise out into the backyard, and she took advantage of the opportunity to explore the neighborhood. Thankfully somebody managed to grab her long enough to read her collar and give us a call. By the time I headed out on my bike, I could see her up the street, playing with the dogs of some of our friends. As best we can tell, she just kind of took herself for a walk along the route we normally go. She came right away when I called and raced me back home, enjoying her freedom and crazily zig-zagging down the street in front of me. When we got her inside she just kept running around the house; she was completely wired and it took half an hour for her to calm down enough to put her to bed.

She appeared to have a lot of fun and if it weren't for the fact that she lacks complete common sense when it comes to cars (and many other things) then I don't think we would have been very worried. Owning pets is like being parents in many small ways and we had a small parenting scare last night.

The Other WSU

I just got back yesterday from a conference at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. Wichita State is part of a university/industry research organization called PSERC. Twice a year the group holds a conference where new research proposals are made, updates and reports on existing projects are presented, and general networking/collaborating takes place in spades. The conferences are not very large, perhaps 50 or so individuals were there this time (though I was told that this was a bit lower than usual).

I felt very fortunate that I got to attend and thoroughly enjoyed the time. Just being a part of the conference made me feel like a "big-boy" researcher even though my part in presenting findings from the project I've been working on this past semester was very small, I had a display in the poster session. This type of presentation is exactly what it sounds like and is very similar to the grade school science fair in format, just without the classic baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano. In the world of academic prestige, being a part of a post session is the lowest form of data presentation but for graduate students in PSERC, its the only option we have available.

There were two great benefits for me in attending. One was the previously mentioned networking value. Though I was slightly sick and had a sore throat which made talking difficult, I was able to meet a fair number of other students and some of the other researchers both in academia and industry. Assuming I am able to attend more of these conferences in the future, I expect these relationships to become increasingly useful in staying connected to the current state of the art. This brings up the second key value in the conference: I now have a much better and more concrete understanding of what topics are of interest to those in the know and where the research effort is being made. This not only makes me feel more connected and a part of the academic community but will be of great value as I go forward and try to define the scope of my PhD dissertation.

Details from the conference are probably not worth getting into here so for now I'll simply leave you with some slightly interesting pictures I took while in Pullman, mostly of sights seen on campus.

I'll leave it to you to judge the validity of the labeling in public places at Washington State.

The area and the campus as a whole is very hilly and covers a lot of space. Just walking around campus would be a great form of exercise.

You know you're in a Northwest college town when the VW buses start showing up.

The community garden near campus. A great idea and use of space.

Right at the edge of campus. I think they've got their demographic nailed.

Why I don't like Quicken

After talking with a good friend the other night I got inspired to look into upgrading our old version (2005) of Quicken to the newly re-designed Quicken Essentials 2010. I talked with my wife about it and we decided that the money would be well spent since we would be able to electronically access all of our financial statements and Quicken had a converter that would transfer over all our old data.

After ten or so hours on the phone with technical support, I can attest that the former is wonderfully true and the later is maddeningly not. A converter is included with the software but in our case, it doesn't seem to work the way it should. I've called Quicken four times, each time addressing a different symptom of the bad conversion and each time the only slightly helpful technical support person has run me through the same steps of trying to re-import my data, come to the conclusion there was a problem with my file, and escalate my issue to some higher ups that may get back to me eventually. This process usually takes about an hour or so on the phone. So far, I've only been contacted once by these mysterious higher ups and, thankfully, they were able to clear up that particular symptom. I've yet to hear from them the for two of the other problems.

This last time I called things ended differently. The technical support person said there was no fix for my problem and that I could either use the software in its broken condition or I could ignore all the historical data from my old version of Quicken and start with a clean slate. I couldn't believe what I was hearing so I asked a few clarifying questions and repeated that the "solution" to my problem was not really a solution at all. He agreed that this was the case.

From a business stand-point this is hard to understand. Intuit, the maker of Quicken, is the only one that knows the format of my old data and it is the only one that can migrate this data to any other format. It has me locked in to their software right now and is in a perfect position to keep me there by supporting the transition to their newest version of software. But they have decided that they don't want to support me in this transition, that they want me to start over with my financial record-keeping. This makes two points abundantly clear to me:

1. Intuit doesn't believe in customer support. I'm having trouble migrating my data from one version of their software to another version and they aren't able to help me make this work. I've invested ten or so hours of my time with them to get the data converted and they aren't able to get the job done.
2. If I'm going to lose all my historical data, then I am free to choose software from any of Quicken's competitors and in light of the above point, I'm more inclined to choose something besides Quicken. Not only are they not able to persuade me to stay but they seem to be encouraging me to take my business elsewhere.

So we did. We have resigned ourselves to losing our historical data (sad but not the end of the world) and have found another program that is better in nearly every way, iBank 3. We haven't used it much yet but so far, it seems to do everything we need including some things Quicken didn't do very well or at all. We'll be getting a refund from Intuit and aren't looking back.

Closing remark: I can't recommend highly enough that you avoid Quicken Essentials 2010.

Tragedy on the 17th St. Bicycle Expressway (or Losing My Life on the Way to School)

Today started out pretty normal for me. Katie was going to bike home after work so I drove her and her bike there this morning before returning home and preparing for my bike commute into school. The morning was a bit cooler (~55'F) with little wind which made for a nice ride. I pulled up to the school gym to park my bike and head into the shower when my stomach sank. It was the same feeling I had when, in the same spot, my bike was stolen several months ago.

My bag, which was attached to the rear rack on my bike when I left home, was no longer there.

This bag had a good chunk of my life in it. My hard drive with both my Master's thesis and research computer files in it. My lab notebook and 3-ring binder with relevant journal articles in it. My wallet and house keys.

I hopped back on my bike and began to retrace my path, my mind racing. The bag was on the left-hand side of the rack meaning when it fell off it would have fallen off into the traffic (rather than the sidewalk) side of the road. This means it would get the way of cars traveling on the road. It also means it would be obvious and out in the open for any passerby to snatch up and claim for his or her own. This was another sinking revelation.

The movie "Signs" has a fantastic and telling bit that I call "the two kinds of people" scene. Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) and Graham (Mel Gibson) are sitting on the couch after the kids have fallen asleep watching the news coverage of the incredible events of the day. Graham, a reverend who had left the faith after the death of his wife is explaining to Merrill that there are two kinds of people and they respond differently to big events in life. One group (and I'm paraphrasing from memory) sees fantastic events and "it may be good, it may be bad but they know deep down that they are going to be all right"; they believe in a higher power that is working in their best interest. The other group knows "that whatever happens, they are on their own." There is no higher power, no God and when tragedy strikes it is up the individuals to define their future.

I don't write about it much on this blog but I am squarely in the first group, a spiritual man. When my personal tragedy struck today, I was quickly calling on God for help and mercy. The situation was entirely out of my control and it was going to take divine intervention to get the life I had in that bag back. I was pedaling and praying, both frantically, as I headed back towards home, eyes on the other side of the road, looking for that small treasure. It would take so little for things to turn out poorly. The bag could be run over and the contents destroyed or somebody could have picked it up. It would take a miracle for somebody to stop, pick up the bag out of the road, and set it aside for me to find. A small but definite miracle.

As I flew back home I began to think more about this. If I really believed in God and believed He was for me and not against me, then I had to accept the possibility that I might not get my bag back and that this would be a good thing for me. I'm reading a fantastic book right now, "How People Grow", that makes this point. Often it takes tragedy for us to grow and mature as people because we tend to slack off when life is easy and pain free. Painful events in life can work out for our best but only if we respond well to them. Cruising down the streets of Wichita I didn't want to accept that this could actually be the case. I didn't want this pain and hassle, I had things to do today. Please, please, just left me have my bag back. I was praying for mercy, for the easy way out of this. I was entirely dependent on God and I wanted Him to give me a break.

He did.

A small miracle occurred. Though it took me most of my ride home, I found my bag. Somebody had taken it and leaned it against the fence by the sidewalk. As best I can tell, it wasn't riffled through or explored, just tucked away out of harms way, waiting to be claimed.

I was thanking God the whole way back to school.