One of my goals in life is for everyone in my family to appreciate my engineering verbal shorthand. My daughter just about groks reworking an essay because it could be “epsilon better”, and my son not only gets “open loop” but can demonstrate with the appropriate Boss guitar effects.
Tonight’s contribution came in [...]
Archive of entries posted on October 2004
In Praise of Moo and Lambda
Revenge of the Nerds: Hurrah for the Red Sox
As a pre-teen, I only wanted to be an astronomer as an adult. While most of my friends wanted to play for the Mets (the Yankees were not in dynasty form at that time), or be policemen, I wanted to study the skies. Fittingly, the last – and most lasting – [...]
Being a fan
I’ve received at least a dozen e-mails asking me if I’m donning the sackcloth and ashes now that the Yankees’ season is over. I’m not. Sure, I’m disappointed that the pinstripes looked like pinheads dropping four straight, but it was good baseball and rounded out an exciting season. [...]
Great Expectations
Youth sports parents have received significant quantities of bad press in the last few years. Much of it is deserved: parents attacking coaches or each other don’t set a good example for their kids. I have zero scientific evidence divining the root cause of this escalation in bad behavior, but I’m sure [...]
The Future of Bureaucracy is….not
In addition to retracing the paths of my salad days I also had a speaking part at the Princeton University Career Options for Engineers panel. Most of the evening was spent fielding questions from undergrads. My favorite question was directed to Connie Cromwell, who is the Chief Engineer of [...]
Intermediating the circles of one
I like to shop on eBay. While others may peruse catalogs or go to department stores to find the latest in fashion and culture, I am happiest searching and swimming in the clickstream of ebay.com. Part of my obsession is that I’m an avid collector of Hard Rock Cafe pins, [...]
Not So Mirror Worlds
Life has a way of presenting itself in patterns, often with beautiful but not quite perfect symmetry. Tonight I found myself back on the Princeton University campus to speak on a panel entitled Career Options For Engineers. The organizers and I have different first interpretations of “options” but I promised to (mostly) behave [...]
Best French Toast
I spend approximately 70 nights a year away from home. Part of my travel koan is to eat a good breakfast, because lunch often reduces to Altoids mints and a Starbucks coffee. I have become a self-proclaimed connoisseur of french toast, a veritable gourmand du pain frite, which is appropriate no matter how [...]
