May 2011

Hey there mathbaby,

You are no longer a baby. You are moving out of toddler to big girl. Still coming to terms with that. I'm writing this for you, speaking to where you are now and not to where you are going to be in 10 or 20 years. Here is hoping that you get through both well. Excellently. I want to be there for you, but the future is not something that comes with a guarantee - or at least not many.

All success in life requires having a team. The family is the first team. Mom, dad, sibs .. assuming you get all of those - they can be a good team or a bad one. You don't get to pick the team you are on except that you get to pick what kind of team-member you are. Later in life you get to pick your team, your goals, .. some. Not all but better than no selection. Read "Outliers" by Gladwell for some examples of team successes, and failures. I wish someone would have told me that - its good to know as an adult.

When I was a kid there was an amazing and noble friend for our family - Doc Dye. He was (and is) a good man. His greatest gift to me was to show me that it was possible to not live in the environment of economic, spiritual, and moral poverty that was around me for most of my childhood. The way out of the darkness is to choose the light - choose it with your mind, your heart, and your actions - every day. Every day. It took a while for the lessons to sink in, but that was the substance. As a grandfather he took in 12 (!) of his grandkids. He and his wife Suzy (I told you about her some) though they never had children of their own body - they were father and mother in many ways to a very large number of people. I admire him and aspire to be like him in a number of ways. As a troubled (half-crazy) 16-18 year old kid I was likely much more cost to him than benefit, but both he and his wife were very gracious. Though it is many years away, and we are all in a places in life that makes proximity impossible - they are still a team to me because they are in my heart and are defining parts of my self. As long as I exist, some part of them exists through me - not a child of the body, but a child of the consequence of their choices and actions. They are a good team to me still.

I wonder sometimes if you will ever read this. It goes back to the unknown future - I can know what I intend by the blog, by these letters, but not what I accomplish. I hope you do.

God gets me through. I'm like a blind man walking - i don't know the road either 1 foot, or 100 miles from me but he picks me up and helps me walk the line he wants me to walk. He has done me amazingly well - he brought you into my life as well as your mommy - so as scary as walking blind is I have some reasons to trust His intentions. God has been very good to me. I hope you find him good to you. He gives challenges, sometimes ones so big only he can think it possible they could be surmounted, but he gets us through them.

We are growing tomatoes (and eating them) and you like that. You pollinate flowers with mommy - crazy biologists doing what butterflies and other pollinators should do.

I am reading reports that the price of food could double in the next 20 years. That would be a big challenge. The biggest part of that is likely about big-oil. Land isn't disappearing, neither are seeds. Tractors, fertilizers, transports, processing equipment - they each get more expensive as oil prices rise, and they pay their bills using food prices. I have some very immature energy ideas, but they are going to take 5-10 years of work to get them going well. I don't think the folks here at ASU are interested in me, or the ideas. I have been fighting for as long as you have been alive and am not very far along. I wish I could do something about the upcoming challenges. In some significant ways I do not have the team required to make these things become a reality. I hope you do not know hunger. I starved at times as a kid - like my belly swelled up like the USA for Africa infomercial kids. This results in me being afraid of hunger, and being fat. It is part of a set of inputs .. letting my discipline to keep in shape go, indulging desire for rest, letting my fears define me. Don't give up on what you know is good. Do not let your fears define you. Let the excellent things that you hold on to - let them define you.

I gotta go kiddo. I hope to write you again.

Love,
mathdad.

May Already - 2011

Hello Mathbaby,

You are becoming such a big girl. You jump, and articulate your words. Almost 3 now.

We had a good evening. We have bible study at our friend Mr. Allen's house. We went there tonight. We brought first-fruits. You have these tomato plants that you and mommy care for. They are growing baby tomato's. The picture isn't our cherry tomato (we don't have picture of those) but it looks a lot like what ours look like. Mommy is learning how to grow plants, so though tomato is not a big part of our diet - its an easy start. Most home depot's have the plants already planted and growing for a few dollars, so you don't have to make seeds grow, you just have to not kill plants. It is a good plan for starting out.

It has been a time of wonder for you. For many days in a row you come up to me every day and say come see! come see! look at the baby tomato. They are magical/wonderful to you. We picked our "first fruits" the first of the plant. They are cherry tomato plants. There were only about 6 ripe, but they were all ripe. We picked them all - they were all in great shape. We brought them to the study. We showed up early.

I told Mr. Allen - this is a holy and special thing. I want your help. We love God and need to teach mathbaby that we give the first and best of all we have. In the old-testament (time of Moses) the first-fruits were brought before the priest to be dedicated to God. The priest took a part, and offered the rest. The rest was holy and dedicated to God. I told Mr. Allen that, as bible teacher and study-leader - also as authority recognized by mathbaby - I would like him to help us show her about giving to God. He did. It was a good thing. I hope we model this consistently for you.

I work nights. Twelve hour work-days. From 6pm to 6am. Wed, Thur, Fri and every other Saturday right now. I have to keep the schedule all week in order to be awake/functioning for my shift. I miss a lot of day-time interactions and events. I miss time with my family.

So I was watching "A bug's life". There is a scene where a housefly says "I have 24 hours to live and I am not wasting it here". I am emotionally connecting to the statement because I feel like I am putting the hours of my day into the unimportant at the expense of the most important things. We get to have play-days maybe once every two weeks to once per month now. That isn't good. I think we need to have it once per week. I think that is what the levitical idea of Sabbath is about. If you aren't working, and you are around the people you love - you can't help but interact and spend ... quantity if not quality time.

I love your amazing little smile. It looks like you have too much joy for your little face, your whole little self, to contain. I love that happiness, and enthusiasm you have to live. You remind me that I also have an enthusiasm to live, and I need to let it out a little more often.

I want to spend quality and quantity time for my family. I want to live to live, not live to work.

My youngest sister is a mess. It is tragic because she was a wonderful child, and she had so much (now destroyed) potential. The one thing, and greatest thing that I can think of that made her the sad thing that she is now ... is the lack of quality time with people who are healthy, who love her and invest in her at a young age. I want better for you. Please don't grow up to be anything like her. Please. It is a mix of choices that makes us what we are .. our own and those of people around us. I guess I am saying that I am committed to your being all you can be, and I need you to be just as committed. A lot to ask of a 2 year old.

My project in Solar Thermal Engineering this semester was Sky cooling. I was building an op-amp circuit to convert a voltage signal to an amperage signal so that my amperage based data-logger could capture the temperature induced change in resistance of a thermistor (transconductance amplifier). When I woke up and came into they study I found this (at left).

You made the first angel-borg. It seems to be plugged into the matrix. It is an angel piggy-bank thing your grandma mimi sent. You plugged it into my digital multi-meter and the circuit I was building in the 300-in-1 one kit. Those things are useful for hobby-stuff. The kit, not the angel. Maybe you have a future in robotics.

I love how when I was building my emitter with Sherwin Williams painted aluminum foil tape you would come and want to play with the tape and say "Let's build a sky refridgedator". You like stickers and tape. I'm always in the market for a new tape or a new glue. Maybe it's genetic.


We were able to get half-price tickets to the Renaissance festival this spring. For $20 we were able to go as a family. It was fun. We had a very (very very) long day. You got your face painted, and rode in butterfly carousels. We ate turkey legs and pretended it was "roast meat off the bone" or "dragons legs". You and mommy rode a giant rocking horse. We saw falconry and some very big birds.

You found hammocks and decided you like them. If I were rich I would get you one as a new big-girl bed. You have a great bed - it was a crib, but we took off one sides rails, and it is now a bed with 3 sides you can't roll off of. Maybe you would look at graph theory, topology, or knots, if you had a hammock - or perhaps I am kidding myself. I know of a young lady who learned about mobius strips and was so thrilled that she went home and played for a long time with scissors and tape - got herself a bachelors in math, and some good publications from that enthusiasm. What could you do with some wonder, hard work, discipline and a fine little mind? Something wonderful - but only if you actually do it.


I love you mathbaby.

-mathdad.

2011 - I gotta catchup

Hey there mathbaby,

You are asleep in the next room. It is 11:17 pm, and I don't get to sleep until 6am. It has been crazy/busy end of year (often is) and I have not posted. Now I'm going to working nights. Hope to pay off some debts, be able to have more time with you, be able to get some mileage in grad school. Will see how it goes. I miss you and your math-mommy already.

I read "Outliers" by Gladwell and they say look for big things. A big thing just happened. You need to know it, mathbaby. This defines the world you get to live in. If you understand it and make the most of it then you can have the opportunities of Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs.

This (link, link) shows the first computer that is better at human-only cognitive tasks than a human.

About 150 years ago we had a revolution called "the industrial revolution". It started small but the development of mechanical engineering made trains, and a very large variety of processing equipment - radically facilitating transport and production of goods, but also removing the employment of humans who had place in the former economy but not its descendant ones. Consequences of that revolution were machines that were stronger than (us) humans empowered us to go to the moon, to the bottom of the ocean, to dig deep in ...mountains, to make "fire" hotter than the sun. It transformed human ability and effort - and initially it was done wrong to high human cost. We nearly destroyed the world (think WWIII (yes that is 3), the cold war, and "75 overkill" - the multiple of number of times that current nuclear inventory could destroy the world of men), but gladly did not.

We are right now going over the edge of having computers (which have been faster than humans) able to consistently outperform humans and human-only intellectual tasks. It is likely that this will be the Gutenberg moment that I have been expecting since computing was born. This is a moment that redefines the way humans handle, not information, but understanding. Before Gutenberg people had to memorize books, afterward they could read them and it radically extended the productivity of all areas of human thought. Watson is an intelligence analyst right out the gate.

In 20 years, with the right kinds of economics and opportunities, it is likely that a pocket calculator will have the compute power of this "Watson" computer. Robots will have this level of performance - at least. Automated business trackers will have this level of performance. Automated accountants will have this level of performance. Automated lawyers will have (at least) this level of technical performance. Automated snipers will have this level of performance.

This means that the only area that humans are best now only at being creative. We built robots to do dirty, dull, or dangerous - but it is likely that we will have, within appropriate contexts, relegated the majority of humanity there.

Someone is going to make an automated lawyer - it is going to start as a tool to help lawyers process information, then move up like mammogram analysis to something that counts as a peer to a human. After some time it is going to start replacing the humans for the low-risk and high volume work, divorces and wills, - because after all a real lawyer is expensive, and the computer is a beneficiary of Moore's law. It will ramp up to as high as it can consistently perform - and right now it is performing at better than Ken Jennings, the best human player of the game in the history of the game.

The problem with all of this is human history. Humans always ALWAYS try to destroy each other. Look at the nations in the cradles of civilization: the nile, the tigris/euphrates, the Indus, and the Yellow river. They show the best of what can be expected of 5000 to 10000 years of human history. Someone is going to make an automated accountant and fire a lot of accountants. Someone is going to make an automated lawyer. Someone is going to make an automated sniper robot.

The places with slower adoption are going to be places of culpability - you don't want to hold a computer culpable for loss of life, or property - but a human being can be liable. Robotic nurses will come much more quickly than robotic doctors. Culpability isn't the same as innovation. Innovation has already been moved in part to automated mechanisms that perform analytical processes at a masters-student level.

The easiest to imagine scary part (thanks Hollywood) is nation versus nation. If some nation makes the right sort of robot army then that army could seriously damage the ability of humans to not be extinct. The more likely and immediate is the days that created the unions - where the rich use robots as slaves and let the poor starve.

You, oh daughter of mine, get to live in the world halfway between this one and whatever they create whether it is utopia, or armageddon (or something in between).

If you live the MTV (slacker) model then you do nothing and get a future that someone else makes for you. Other people will often choose better for themselves and worse for you - don't let them do it. They will vote you off the island. I have seen too many bright (brilliant) young people transform their golden potential like a reverse Midas into a pile of manure and flush their lives irrevocably down the toilet. They never come back. Those opportunities never come twice.

If you live a hard-work and excellence model (I call it the Colin Powell model because it is a phrase from his autobiography) then you will be the one making the future. You can make it a win-win, balancing the madness of the century to come with a heart driven to bless as many people as possible with as much as you are capable of blessing. We are around for only a moment in the grand scheme of things .. our lives are a drop of water in the ocean of time. We have only this brief moment to do such great things, and we can - if we will but stretch forth our hand and try. Please be someone who tries.

How do I encourage you to be someone who will survive, thrive, excel? I wish I knew. Going to think about, and pray about it.

October 2010

Hello there cute.

It is Friday night. Long work week. Tired.

You had fun with pumpkins today ... and baby chicks.

One of your favorite movies is Fly Away Home where the main character learns to fly, and saves two or three gaggles (when walking) of Geese by training them on routes that lead from North Carolina to Quebec .. I think.

You long to fly. I am working on designing you wings.

In this picture you look to be saying in your eyes "I could be Amy". These could be my geese. I love the fierce adventure that you have here

They are baby chicks.. but I don't think that makes much of a difference to you. I think you would walk around saying "hey hey hey" and they would .. maybe follow you. You would like it if they did follow you. I hope that when you are fully grown, the passion, intelligence, and life that I see in you now - that you inherit from your mommy so amazingly well .. I hope it you are every bit the parent you can be. I love you mini-girl. You are growing up so big and aren't the tiny little creature that I held in my hands and your feet didn't even come to my elbows. You are so very big.

So your friends Daughters of Mike L. are having a "Gateway to Godly womanhood" tea party. They asked for "written advice" but i don't know what to say. I have been asking around.

It is such a blessing to have been able to ask for and get such wonderful answers. Thank you Luci for the question to ask. It gives me good hope about my daughter. I am still compiling answers, but here are some of them. The following is my current take on the matter:

My mom says about Godly womanhood:

• it is the best gift you can give the world, and the best gift you can give yourself.
• It must be done daily - isn't an event, its a process
• It must be done wholly. This is a place where there is no shades of gray - only black and white.

My sister Veronica says about Godly womanhood:

• The kind of person you are makes the world you live in. If you are a liar - you think everyone is a liar, and act from the belief that everyone is a liar. If you are honest then you look at people honestly and can evaluate them by their actions. People who look up to you - those you mentor, your siblings, when you are an adult - those that you take under your wing, your friends, your spouse, and even your children and transformed for the better or worse by it. Your perceptions drive your actions and your actions impact the world. So being a godly woman defines .. the color of glasses that you see the world through ... and because you see the world that way .. those glasses become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• The kind of person you are makes can constrain or liberate who you are able to see God as being. If you are a liar .. then everyone is a liar .. and you falsely perceive God to be a liar. If you are honest, and honestly and fairly appraise others, then you can honestly and fairly appraise God. When my daughter is scared she runs to me because she knows I am strong, and she knows that I am trustworthy - I will protect her. Because she runs to me she gives me opportunity to work for her good that I would not otherwise have. If she thought I was horrible, or untrustworthy .. she could not avail herself of my strength, of my love for her, and my fierce passionate desire to bless her. Exact same thing goes for God.
• This is true not only for lying vs. honesty ... but for every component of Godliness. If you are a miser - then God is. If you are generous by nature and live to serve others to the maximum of their ability to receive healthy blessing (some people have a max good after which your generosity becomes a curse to them) .. then God is that to you. If you ever get into game theory ... there is a whole open field of science here relating to tit-for-tat or tit-for-two-tats ... beautiful but nerdly stuff.
• Teenage boys are driven by hormonal pressures that you cannot possibly understand - and can not trust. Do not trust teenage boys, or boys who are motivated by hormones ... they will break your hearts .. and other parts of your self. (Personally I say their brains do not congeal/biochemically exit puberty until after they are 24-ish, some their person stops being as much in transition around then. If they are good you can trust them to stay good, if bad then you can trust them to stay bad.. before that .. notsomuch can you trust who they are.)

A coworker named Alia had these insights into godly womanhood.

• Character is more important than ability.
• Avoid situations where you will be tempted to do things you do not want to do. It is easier to avoid the temptation than to reject it when it is in front of you. Avoiding it is just as godly as saying no to the temptation.
• All beauty fades. Spend your energy on things that will last: character, love, friendship, and godliness.
• What the world sells as love - is not love - it is selfishness. Love is not a feeling, or passion - it is action, doing what is best for the other person. You will know that a man loves you when he treats you with respect.
• God made you to be you. Don't try to be someone else. Embrace the person that God made you.
• Yes, you can change the world - do it with God.

My friend, and one of the coolest materials engineering guys I have ever met, Lynn gave me this:

Something I told my own daughter. Eve is defined in the Eden account as being Adam’s “Yetzer Knegdo”, translated by the old English word “Helpmeet” some 500 years ago. I have no idea what helpmeet meant back then, but only one other being is called a Yetzer Knegdo – the Holy Spirit of Jehovah. It is best translated from the Hebrew as “Strong Helper”.

It is the nature of men to engage in the fight. It is the nature of women not to. Unless. Unless their own are threatened. When this happens, the fight is not a game. No quarter may be expected from the mama bear. In the fight against evil in a family, the man is the forward troops, but the woman is the reserve troops. She is to be jealously guarded, and not put in jeopardy trivially. She is to be provisioned generously, and trained meticulously. This is not because she is weak or ineffective, it is because if she is ever called on, the situation is dire, and should she fail, all will be lost.

My friend Gloria W. said this:

• I would tell her to guard her heart, eyes, mind, and tongue against anything that would rob her of her purity…and I don’t mean only virginity.
• I would tell her to meditate on Philippians 4:8-9 daily. I would encourage her to strive always to bring forth the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-26).

My friend Nancy J. said this:

• If you think you are beautiful, then you are. If you think your spouse is wonderful, then they are. If you think life is terrible, then it is. If you think you are highly blessed, then you are.
• Guard your thoughts. God wants us to think positive thoughts, of the wonderful blessings he has provided us. Even when things aren't going so well, God wants us to think about how wonderful our life is. Do not wallow in a pity party.
• You are where you are because of you choices in your life. God does a lot of orchestrating, but he gives us the ability to chose certain paths. So choose carefully and with wisdom.

My friend Jeremy L. said this:

• I’d say that there’s a road/trap that many women fall into or travel down intentionally that looks for love/purpose in the arms of men—mainly because they have not felt godly secure love from their father, who doesn’t talk about their beauty and appreciate it. If you go that route, many men may try to use you to their advantage. When you are truly Christ-centered, seeing your beauty only in Him, then you may be in a position to share your beauty with just one man that He will bring in His time. And you may need to be prepared to wait a bit.

My friend Elizabeth N. said this:

• The only time that you need to make a decision immediately is in a life or death emergency.. these are few and far between (and hormonal issues are never life or death emergencies). Take time to think about decisions, and the consequences of those decisions before you act. Some decisions have far reaching consequences that can change your life- for the better or worse. Also.. any young man that tells you "don't think.. just feel" is not a young man who you should be trusting with your decision making.
• God is always available for conversation. He is an excellent listener- and he is comfortable listening to anything and everything. He also forgives anything and everything and will always love you.. and even though you may not think it at the time- so will your parents.
• Middle school and high school are some of the most difficult years in a young woman's life. No matter how it might seem- they do end and life gets much better. Popularity in school does not in any way predict success later in life- in fact most people who I have met who are both successful and fulfilled by their adult lives remember those years with a small cringe. Just remember that true strength is listening to your conscience and acting in a way that is true to yourself even when others make that difficult. The times in my life that I reflect on with the most shame are those in which I failed to do what I knew was right and instead did what I felt would help me be "accepted".

My friend Tema said:

• I think more of what to say to parents. I think of children just like I think of making sculpture. Each stone has something beautiful inside I take away the stone that is covering the beautiful figure. God has something beautiful in each person and our job as parents is to help bring out what gifts God has inside without damaging the rest of the person.

Neat stuff.
Stuff worth pondering. It gives me a vision now for .. staging, and how to approach things. I feel like it is very (very) valuable.

It is early October so hopefully we can get two blog posts in this month.

September 2010

It is "O" week for you. You know caps and lower case, all sounds, and sign language signs to from "A" to "O".

You don't show me your face much anymore. You don't look at me and smile like you used to. Those eyes full of trust .. no so much. Mom is the adult in your life - she wears the pants, she gets the smiles.

This is how you normally look at dad.

This is how you look when asked to smile.

These are not the same.

I'm failing at my new attempt at grad school. This is what is called a lose-lose-lose proposition. I can't pay my bills, spend time with wife and daughter, or get opportunity to do the same. I would cry if I could get away with it.

You don't like flying kites anymore. I think they are too complex. Grass was made to run on, not stand and hold a kite.

You are in these gymnastics-esque classes. Animal motions for toddlers, etc.. You love flapping your wings, jumping, and running around in them. You love hiking and taking hikes with mommy.

You have started having more play-dates with friends. That goes over well.

You are getting meaner and meaner to the cats. You kick them, or hit them. We are working on disciplining you .. associating a cost with the behavior .. but that is not the same as you having your heart set on loving or kindness. If you have a baby brother or sister - the moment you realize that they are going to take half of mommy and daddy's attention - what will your heart do? I hope you are loving....

You walked a mile several days ago. Toward the end you were tired, but you did it. You initiated it, and wanted to walk in the neighborhood. We drove the route and it was just over a mile by car. Not bad.

You have started throwing fits, and caterwauling to get your way. I don't know where you came up with that - but it has to go. Maybe this is the "terrible two's" that they talk about. *sigh*

Time to get back to my lose-lose-lose proposition and see if I can keep doing the same thing over and over - but somehow get different results. Wish me luck baby-girl. Even if I just get the same-old results ... at least you have rent paid, and food in your belly this month.

Aug 2010

I know it's been a while since I posted.

We went up to the mountains this weekend to enjoy the cool air.

I don't know why you have nightmares like you do.

You wake up screaming and scared so bad you are shaking.

The darkness has hunted me all of my life - I really don't want that for you.

I'm trying hard to not get fired. Trying to not die young. Trying to provide a good life for you.

How do I give you a good hope for the future?

How do I give you the best chance to be a successful person, a contributing member of society?

Working 60 hours a week for paycheck of 40 hours per week isn't doing it.

Everyone getting hired is Masters degree or higher .. I only have Bachelors.

Yeah ... I listened to my last manager who wanted to have me move up north - and got screwed.

No longer in any grad program - I reapplied to masters.

You want to fly a kite this evening. I want to help you fly it.

I will be working and then in school until 8pm, so ... not going to happen today.

How many days left until you never ask me again?

The Lord knows that I don't want to find out, I want to make the most of the time.

The Lord knows that I want to be flying kites with you when you are old.

You had fun playing with your best friend T. while we were up north.

You are so curious, so wanting to explore everything.

You know your alphabet up to the letter "K" in pictures, sounds, and sign-language. You are so smart little girl.

The world is all about potential wasted - and it wants to see greatness turned to dirt. Don't let it turn you into nothing. Don't let it destroy you.

God please keep my baby girl. Amen.

July 2010

You are two, Mathbaby.

You were reading before you were two, when you were 1.30 years old really. I am very happy with that.

You make great jokes.

When asked what is your name you say, with that cute grin "you" or "her" along with your other names. You will say "mommy, mommy" then get a big grin and say "wife". You discovered that your mathmommy has other names, like wife.

You had a fun birthday party. It was bug-themed. I tried to do a Mariposa Butterfly Fairie theme, but that didn't happen. We had fake butterfly wings .. I hope to someday give you working ones. You have wanted to fly (or be a bird) since you were 3 months old.

You opened two of your presents and were done. I love that you are not materialistic in that way, although you could likely own 20 more blankies and not have enough.

Your Godmother in NM is sick. She might be dying. We will know in a while. If she is doing better, she can meet you. If not we can go to say our goodbyes. She is a truly amazing woman, and the world is a much richer place for her having lived in it. It would be richer if there were a 10 million more people just like her in it. I spent several hours trying, and can not think of a single person that she has ever done wrong by - isn't that amazing. I can think of dozens that might have legit beef with me in the last 12 years, my friend Dave, my sibs, my mom ... I try really hard to do right by everyone but it just doesn't usually work out. I can not think of a single person that she hasn't done right by. Her name is Suzanne, and her husband is Sam.

I can't aspire to be that kind of person, but I hope you both aspire and succeed.

We now go out to the park to fly a kite. I love you mathbaby. Math-toddler now. *sigh*
You grow big so fast!