The Follow-Up

Hit the courts yesterday to ball with a bunch of guys from my previously mentioned flag football team. And for the first time in a while, I played ball. And I played pretty well. Good defense, decent rebounding, decent point skills and passing. The only thing that I sucked at? Shooting, oddly enough. It was funny - I had gotten used to being either a spot-up shooter or a post player for the past year and a half. And I was playing ball that was sort of loose, so I was running a lot of point. So, I didn't get any kick-out passes for jumpers. I was the one finding shooters. And if I wanted to score, it was going to be beating people off the dribble. So, I'd set up the little crossover dribble into a pull-up jumper. Only I hadn't shot a pull-up in a long time, so I looked like a special ed kid in gym class (and not the autistic kid that won an ESPY). That's alright. I moved well - the pull-up jumper will come back soon enough. But what was nice was that I was able to play some defense. I was actually tipping passes, making steals, and starting breaks. I guarded some big guys, and pretty much neutralized them.

Today, the legs are a little sore again. The knees are, too. But not in a crippling way that I've been used to. They're sore in a way that I'm used to them being the day after I play ball. This is good. I'll probably try to make it back to the courts some time in the middle of the week for another run.

Goals for next run? Improve defense. Get shooting under control. Dribble penetrate.

Should be obtainable.

Anyway, back to work... sort of.

-Chairman

Who's Marginal? This Guy!

So, I passed my summer paper. But how I passed it was fun. We're judged on 4 criteria. The first three are things like, can you do a good review of the existing literature, do you understand the theoretical issues in the domain, and have you demonstrated creativity in your paper. I passed those with pretty good comments. Now, the last criterion is whether we can effectively communicate our ideas in writing. My result? "Marginal Pass." The best part was the first comment - "Folksy writing style sometimes got in the way." How awesome is that? I'm folksy. I represent the people... if by people, you mean dim-witted mouth-breathers that enjoy Larry the Cable Guy. Git'er Done! That's how I roll. Actually, the critique is an interesting one. I write how I talk. Which is nice here, nice in presentations, but not as hot for journal submissions. I suppose that I'll have to clean up the writing when I start doing it for real. But I passed.

I'm ready to get moving on the dissertation now. This is going to be an interesting year. I'm working for two professors that I really like, my advisor, and a professor that I worked with during my first year. It should be an interesting experience, as I get to sort of see some more of the nuts and bolts that professors go through. I'm seeing how you run a conference from a behind the scenes perspective by communicating with article reviewers, authors, and session chairs. I'm also reviewing some articles for a conference, too. Scary though, isn't it? I'm going to critique the work of other people, and actually have it mean something. But I'm also doing a little web work for my professors' classes, and I'll be an administrator for a little research group of undergrads. It's interesting, and it'll be useful for when I grow up and get a job.

It feels good to have a new school start up. It's the start of number 11 for me out here. It's amazing. The incoming freshmen were in 2nd grade when I first started out here, many years ago. The fun part is that I was playing some volleyball with them last week. And I was actually playing well. I was moving well, passing great, setting alright, and actually hitting the ball well. Bombing it, as a matter of fact. The legs were sore afterwards, but the knees felt alright. Hopefully, they'll stay that way from here on out.

Recently, I've been feeling really good. I've been hitting the gym pretty good, doing some bike work and lifting. I'm actually dominating some of the ab machines in the gym. If I could lose 20 pounds, I bet that you'd actually find some nice looking muscles underneath. But, I've trimmed a couple pounds, too. The diet has been better - I'm getting more fruits and veggies mixed in there. And the big thing has been this mountain bike that I got. I got it fixed up pretty good (well, good enough so that the brakes work, and I won't die). And now, I'm riding around campus, instead of taking the bus or driving. It feels good, even though it's not a real cardio workout. Where it's more important for me is that it's an attitude about how I approach life. It's like I just tell myself that I'm going to be more active, and my body believes it. It's pretty cool.

I think that we'll also be getting some flag football teams together this year. A lot of the folks who played last year are also going to play this year. I think that we'll have a guy's team that's got a shot at doing alright in the playoffs in B. And I think that our co-rec team may be able to make the playoffs. A lot of it is going to be whether or not my legs hold up. If I'm able to get the legs underneath me and throw the ball for real, as well as make some things happen with my feet, then our offense will be solid. Plus, I'll have a better feel for the guys that I'll be throwing to, as well. Last year, we had some issues when we put our fastest guy out wide, only to discover that he didn't know how to catch the deep ball, and was better with plays where the ball was out in front of him (and not above him). Of course, my biggest asset as a QB is that I can throw the 40-40 ball (throw a ball 40 yards, 40 feet up in the air, and just let the receiver run underneath it). So, I'd be throwing good balls to the sideline, he'd be turning in toward the middle, wanting a post-type route. This year, we'll figure out who likes the deep ball, and who likes what routes a little earlier.

One thing that amuses me is that every once in a while, I'll run into some strangers who remember me playing QB against them. And it's always fun. Even the guys that beat us, seem to remember that we were a challenging team to play against because we were organized and had a good offense. And I've even had more than one team try to recruit me to play QB for their co-rec teams (admittedly, I'm a better co-rec QB than a men's QB, since speed isn't as big of an issue for co-rec, since guys can't run across the line of scrimmage, whereas in men's, the QB can just take off and outrun people, if they're fast enough). The other day, I just ran into a guy who played for the team that beat us to go to playoffs last year. It turns out that the two teams that beat us both made the final 8, with one of the teams losing in the finals. We played both squads tough, and were able to move the ball and score on them. They just made some plays that we couldn't match. I think that we'll get them this year.

Reds only 2 games out in the central, and still in the wild card lead, and it's the end of August. If we can survive this West Coast swing, I like our chances.

Anyway, it's time to turn it in.

-Chairman

Bells and Whistles

So, it looks like Blogger is catching up with some of the other sites and making it a little easier to change the look of your blog, add labels for your posts, and do other little fun things w/ the blog. So, naturally, I want to go back and add labels to all of my old posts. Plus, I just remembered that I had a website a little while ago that had some interesting stuff on there that I want to add to the blog archives. So, I think that I'll be playing around w/ some of the stuff before I actually sit down and write anything for real.

The one downer to the new Blogger editing features? You can't edit the raw code, yet, and they don't have an automatic feature that lets you edit the width of each element, so instead of the wide-screen version that I prefer (it lets you focus on developing the writing, whereas a narrow column sort os leads to a briefer version of the story), we've got the standard narrow field of text.

Hopefully, that will be fixed soon.

-Chairman

Hunt for Reds' October

So, I'm off at dinner the other night with the Rook and Scotty. Rook's a Cubs fan, while Scotty is a Cards fan. So, I go to Rook, "Rook - ask me who's going to win the NL Wild Card." He sees my grin, so he plays along. "Alright. Who's going to win the NL Wild Card?" Now they were both expecting me to say, "The Reds!" Of course, my response? Deadpan. "The Cardinals."

I don't know how true that is, but all I know is that we're in the middle of August and the Reds are still up a game for the Wild Card and only 1.5 games out, with the last three games against the Cards coming up these next couple days. If we can somehow pull this off and make the playoffs, it would be incredible. I have to say that if the Reds make the playoffs, I'll find a way to get to Cincy and watch some playoff baseball.

Right now, baseball season is good. In addition to the Reds, the Yanks are in first in the AL East. I would absolutely love to see a Reds-Yanks World Series. Not only would it feature my two favorite teams, it would also be a 30 year anniversary of when the Big Red Machine steamrolled the Yankees.

We've also got football season kicking off soon enough. Exciting times - I always love it when fall rolls around because it means that football will be back soon. And this year? Maybe the Bengals can put it together and make a deep run. And maybe the Illini can put it together and get that 3rd win this year. We'll see.

-Chairman

Nostalgia

So the other night, I was out with some friends, when the bars closed up. Everyone went their separate ways, and I decided to just walk around a bit, since it was a phenomenal night. It was one of those perfect nights, about 60 degrees, light breeze, clear sky, no humidity. And it hit me. I really wanted a gyro or a hot dog. Not just any gyro or hot dog. One of Taki's. It was a strange feeling that I had come over me. It doesn't hit me often, but every once in a while, I'll just have an old memory just come up out of nowhere. And this time, it was Taki.

Taki Iatropoulos was a friend of mine. This guy had lived, before he died. He moved to the U.S. from Greece to make his fortune. And along the way, he had all sorts of ups and downs in places ranging from New York City to Palm Beach to Carbondale to Champaign-Urbana. He wasn't the sort that people made heroes out of. And that was what I liked about him. He was just another guy. He cursed a little too much. He knew that he wasn't the best husband or father. He had been cheated by some people. And in the end, he did what he knew best - made tasty food, and added to his collection of memories.

What I saw was a guy who worked hard. He used to have this hot dog cart that he would set up on Green St. He'd be out there starting at 11am for the lunch crowd, and he'd be there until 3 am to sell to the kids coming out of the bars. And over the summer, he'd be out there 6 nights a week. In the winter, despite the freezing cold, it was the same story. It was during the summer of my junior year of undergrad when I became friends with Taki. That was a strange summer for me. I was down taking classes for the summer, but I didn't really know many people down here. So a lot of evenings, I would head down to Campustown, and just get a beer to do a little people watching, and then maybe grab a cigar and walk around, and do more people watching.

So, it was then that I discovered that there was a little hot dog cart where I could get a decent gyro or hot dog (complete with the grilled, red sauced onions like you get in NY) at 1 am after bars closed (this was back in the day, before the bars stayed open until 2). It was a slow night at the hot dog cart, so I just parked it out there and chatted with the guy who was running the cart. We discovered that we both had some roots back in NY. Myself up in Schenectady, Taki in the city. And we became friends by chatting about things out east.

I would drop by periodically during some of the slow times (like at 2 in the afternoon, between classes). At this point, he had rented the little kiosk on 4th and Green, so he could close up shop for a little bit and take a nap. But it also allowed him to bring some of his memories with him. Whenever I dropped in to chat with him, he'd always offer a soda, a shot of ouzo, or a cigarette. I'd generally accept the Diet Coke, but decline the ouzo and cigarette. And a couple times, he'd show me his album. All sorts of photos with famous people in his NY restaurant. Rockerfellers. Kennedys. I recall John Glenn. There were also menus and flyers of his restaurants in NY, and afterwards when things weren't so hot for Taki. And he told me some stories. His biggest regret was leaving NY. From what I recall, that Taki, at the urging of a friend, sold his place in NY to open up a place in Palm Beach, which pretty much tanked and ate up his life savings. After this, things were a struggle. But Taki persevered. Places opened up, made a little money, and then closed down. And he worked 15 hour days all throughout, trying to make do for his two daughters, Nicole and Eleni. I still remember having a conversation with him about faith, religion, and life. His thoughts were interesting. He hated the Church, was sort of weary of God, but was intent on taking his daughters back to Greece to be baptized. That was Taki. Somehow fate, for better or worse, brought him to Champaign-Urbana.

Eventually, he saved up a little money and was able to get out of the weather, and open up a restaurant, called Mykonos. The menu expanded a little bit. And now there were refills on the sodas. But if Taki was working the grill when I was there, there'd still be an offer of ouzo or a cigarette. And I think that I eventually took him up on the offer of ouzo, but only once. That was enough. Quite a few late nights were spent at Mykonos. I'd always bring friends out there after we had gone out. And every once in a while, I'd stop in during the day to chat. Taki coughed a little more than he used to, seemed more tired than I remembered, and would often be napping in a little closet during the day. I didn't know it at the time, but I should have. I wasn't really seeing life clearly then. I had ran into some tough times in my own life late in 2001. I didn't get out to Mykonos at all that fall. Taki passed away in early 2002. He had cancer, which eventually led to liver failure. I was sad that I never had a chance to say goodbye to my friend.

After a while, a new place popped up in Taki's old space. Cafe Luna, which I've written about. I'm normally one to try new places pretty quickly. But I held off. It took me almost 3 years to get over it and set foot in there.

It's still hard to get a good hot dog around here, particularly with those grilled onions with the red, sauce. And it's hard to see the old Mykonos, with the success that Cafe Luna has experienced. But every once in a while, it becomes easy to remember Taki. And it would be a shame if I didn't write some of the thoughts down, in case the memories become harder to see in the future.

-Chairman

Project Self: Monkeys Discovering Tools

Yep. It was funny, but the other day, I had one of those "aha!" moments where some insight kicks in. But, not really. Here's the backstory. I'm helping DE move into his new place across town. He had bought a couch and a queen-sized bed from one of the PhD students who was graduating and moving away. So, we got everything packed up and drove over to his place. The couch was a little heavy, but no problem getting it up to the third floor. Ditto for the mattress, since we could bend it around corners in the stairwell. Where I knew that we were going to have problems was with the box-spring. We tried a couple different ways, bending and rotating the box-spring about different orientations. Nothing worked. At one point, we had the thing wedged into the stairwell (which turns back 180 degrees halfway between floors) so well that I was convinced that we wouldn't be able to get it out. So, we joked about just leaving it there for the neighbors.

But, alas, that was not an option. So we kicked, pulled, and otherwise cajoled the box-spring out of the stairwell, and brought it back outside. Now, having felt how sturdy the box-spring was, I figured that we'd have to take it apart. Now, I didn't know how a box-spring was put together. After all, who really knows how this stuff works, until you have a good reason to? So, we got at it. We tore off the fabric on the bottom of the box-spring, seeing if it gave any structure to the box-spring. Nope. So, then we tried tearing off the fabric on top of the box-spring. Still no additional bend (though we did try to see if the springs would give enough in certain spots to let us turn the corner in the stairwell - no go). So, I look at what we had - a wooden frame that had a number of horizontal pieces where the spring attached, and then four cross-supports that ran the length of the bed. I decided that we would need to knock out the cross-supports, so then everything could just bend around the corners. I was hoping that we could get away with just 2 of the supports, the that wasn't happening.

Anyway, I'm outside of the apartment, hammering away at the wooden frame for a good 15 minutes. And of course, the neighbors have to come out to see what the story is, since it was like 7:30 in the evening. Normally, it would be cool to meet the neighbors. Only this time, they were an elderly couple. And, I kid you not, the husband was blind. See you later? Nevermind. Anyway, they were nice after we charmed them a bit. And we finally are able to get the box spring up to the third floor, albeit in one large piece, and 4 separate cross-supports. So, we lay the cross-supports on the bed frame, and then just put the remainder of the box spring on top. Slap on a bedskirt, put on the mattress, and no one is the wiser. Amazing.

The point of the story was to bring up an interesting point. Now, most problem solving researchers would assert that you can't solve a new problem until you have that serendipitous, "aha!" moment that is often called restructuring, where you see the problem in a new way, perhaps by relaxing problem constraints or just hitting a moment of insight. These folks would likely say that you can't ever learn to restructure, and that it just happens. But, for me this time, it was a little different. I've moved big objects around corners of stairwells before. And I had a general idea of how a box-spring worked. But, I had never tried to move a queen-sized box-spring into tight spaces before. So, it would seem to fit the story that I had my restructuring, and had a moment where I relaxed some problem constraints.

My moment was a little different. I didn't know how, but I had my engineering training tell me that if you take it back far enough, you can get to something more manageable. I had no idea what it was going to entail. And, really, it was a bit of a process. I just started taking stuff apart, deciding whether something that came off was needed or not, and repeated the process until it got to the point where we could get everything essential upstairs. Now, I had never done this before. I didn't know what a box-spring was made of. But I had a few things going for me. 1) I was confident that we were going to get this to work. 2) I knew that we could reverse-engineer, if needed, so breaking down to core components was okay. 3) We were only looking for functionality, not aesthetics.

Examining this problem, it seems that we had very few problem constraints, other than DE needed a bed to sleep on. I think that confidence in problem solving has to be beneficial (assuming that you have the ability to solve a problem - confidence w/out ability would seem to have disastrous consequences). And I think that the idea of breaking things down into core components (structural knowledge, is the term) is a powerful one. How much of physics at the macro level is described by a few core laws (i.e. first principles)? I think that if you can see what the first principles of a problem, then you are able to manipulate that problem much more easily.

So what does this have to do with anything? I don't think that society takes a first principles approach nearly enough. I think that a lot of people today live at a very surface level, dealing with immediate surroundings, using conveniently available measures, and otherwise not addressing truly core issues. I had a conversation with a friend last weekend about race. I'm not big on race. She was. Of course, she was white, and she was wanting to better understand the world around her, which is to be applauded. However, it's my position that race is surface knowledge (as opposed to structural knowledge). I don't think that it tells you much about an individual, once you get past the color of someone's skin. I think that it helps you find common ground or topics of conversation. But no more so than any number of things. I try to remind myself of what MLK had to say... not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. If I have to talk about race, I would prefer to have a conversation with someone about what their ethnicity means to them and how it has affected them (i.e. understanding their view of the construct, rather using a construct to define them).

Of course, this posting isn't about race. I think that the same critique applies to those who would simply try to justify a belief with a simply a quote from the Bible with no context (or even less valid grounds). The question of what is at the core of a belief system is a crucial one. Much more so than that is on the surface of that belief system. I have a hard time taking people seriously who have deeply ingrained beliefs on anything that are grounded on surface knowledge. And what's bothersome is that I've seen it from all sorts of people on all sorts of issues, including homosexuality, abortion, the Middle East, social justice, and wealth distribution. And this comes from all sorts of people with different backgrounds, careers, etc. I have a suspicion that many folks have discovered that it's easier (and often safer) to take something that you heard somewhere and just regurgitate it, whether or not it's insightful.

At the core of it, we're all just figuring out what it is that we want to do when we grow up. But I'm more interested about why we want to do what it is that we want to do and how we're going to do it.

-Chairman

In the Hands of the PhD Gods

Done. Paper submitted at 4:36pm on August 1st. Not spectacular, but not bad. The paper should pass, but it's not a slam dunk. We'll see if I have to re-write it. I really hope that I don't. But it's in the hands of the PhD Gods now.

We've had some interesting times here at TFS-2 the last couple weeks. Let's just say that someone's gotta be butter, cause they're on a roll, something fierce. We've also had some interesting philosophical discussions the last few days, between my paper writing sessions. I think that punishment for poor behavior is something that is missing in our society, and as such we allow for too much deviant behavior. Ask Nick the Dinosaur about his social predator-prey model. I'm not saying that we need to physically punish people for being dumb. But sometimes we're too ho-hum about people who are socially retarded. I like the idea.

I'm very much exhausted, and I'm going to sleep well tonight. Get up, hit the gym, pack up, and get up to Chicago. Need to be up there by 3:30 to help with some of the stuff for the reception. I think that Wednesday night may be a minor work night up in Chicago. Thursday, all day at the conference, and then Thursday night is a world of possibilities, as is the weekend.

Current thought - debating between actually going back to SC to see the folks or just chilling out in C-U for the 2 weeks before classes kick off. Wouldn't mind a road trip, but also wouldn't mind just hanging out, hitting the gym hard, getting ahead on some work, and getting rest before the school year kicks off. Besides, if I really want, I can just drive out to SC during the semester, since I've got a lot of flexibility in my schedule now.

Let's see. Reds aren't playing well, but are still only 3.5 back of the Cards in the NL Central, and a full game up on the D'Backs. If we make the playoffs, then I think that the Kearns/Lopez deal is worth it. Plus, the Yanks are percentage points ahead of the BoSox in the AL East, and the White Sox for the wild card. It loooks that I'll have a reasonable chance of watching my two teams in the playoffs.

It's bedtime. Maybe we'll find time to say something interesting in Chicago.

-Chairman