Haven't blogged in a while... so this is one of those 'catch-up' streams.
At the end of February, I went to THE Ohio State University to attend a conference in honor of my dissertation advisor. It was wonderful seeing so much of the Illinois gang as well as meeting up with the students from the other schools. On the first day, I felt like an alien anthropologist dropped into a village I had studied 20 years before. I spoke the language, knew many of the customs and stories, and, yet, retained a bit of scientific distance. My 'otherness' reappeared every time I was asked 'So, where are you now?,' which, translated from the native language, means 'What university or college do you teach at these days?' I always had to answer 'None. I am in industry,' which, translated, means, 'I never got a teaching position and had to learn how to do something else.'
My distance faded because of two events. One, NGP asked me to read (at his banquet) a poem I composed in 1993, on his move from Illinois to Yale, entitled 'Ode On A Cattle Prod.' It meant a great deal to me that he has kept it and the working cattle prod that came along with the poem. Two, I was invited to resurrect some of my research and try to submit an article for the book that will come out of this conference. At the moment of this second event, all of my old academic desires and inadequacies came flooding back. We shall see if I can write something acceptable.
Moving on, I tend not to gravitate to New Age-y stuff, but Eckhart Tolle said something (in a PBS program I flipped through last weekend) that makes a little sense. 'All we have is the NOW. The past is a story, and the future hasn't happened yet.' Pretty simple, but it struck a chord. Second quotation (or paraphrase by now), on a History channel documentary about Einstein, one of the professors commented that 'The nature of genius is having the will to make all of the mistakes necessary to get to the success.'
Finally, we had our one of the two annual Disaster Recovery tests at the beginning of this week. At this event, we try to rebuild the company's data center from backup tapes and documentation. That accounts for some of the sleepiness I can't seem to shake.
Now, back to work...
At the end of February, I went to THE Ohio State University to attend a conference in honor of my dissertation advisor. It was wonderful seeing so much of the Illinois gang as well as meeting up with the students from the other schools. On the first day, I felt like an alien anthropologist dropped into a village I had studied 20 years before. I spoke the language, knew many of the customs and stories, and, yet, retained a bit of scientific distance. My 'otherness' reappeared every time I was asked 'So, where are you now?,' which, translated from the native language, means 'What university or college do you teach at these days?' I always had to answer 'None. I am in industry,' which, translated, means, 'I never got a teaching position and had to learn how to do something else.'
My distance faded because of two events. One, NGP asked me to read (at his banquet) a poem I composed in 1993, on his move from Illinois to Yale, entitled 'Ode On A Cattle Prod.' It meant a great deal to me that he has kept it and the working cattle prod that came along with the poem. Two, I was invited to resurrect some of my research and try to submit an article for the book that will come out of this conference. At the moment of this second event, all of my old academic desires and inadequacies came flooding back. We shall see if I can write something acceptable.
Moving on, I tend not to gravitate to New Age-y stuff, but Eckhart Tolle said something (in a PBS program I flipped through last weekend) that makes a little sense. 'All we have is the NOW. The past is a story, and the future hasn't happened yet.' Pretty simple, but it struck a chord. Second quotation (or paraphrase by now), on a History channel documentary about Einstein, one of the professors commented that 'The nature of genius is having the will to make all of the mistakes necessary to get to the success.'
Finally, we had our one of the two annual Disaster Recovery tests at the beginning of this week. At this event, we try to rebuild the company's data center from backup tapes and documentation. That accounts for some of the sleepiness I can't seem to shake.
Now, back to work...
