Looking Back
While working on our taxes tonight (yeech) I thought of a couple of people I knew from my time in the University of Florida’s Mathematics Graduate program in the late 1990s. So I looked them up. One, a former professor of mine, has apparently dropped off the face of the Earth. This isn’t completely surprising, as he was a complete and total wild man.
The second was another graduate student who went on to get her PhD. She’s doing alright, but not so well that it’s making me wish I had continued on and earned one of my own. The same for several of the other students I knew who got PhDs in mathematics.
Best Advertizing Campaign Ever!
Report: Some Bay Area Communities Could Run Out Of Water Within 4 Months
Matt Bigler reporting for KCBS:
SAN JOSE (KCBS) — As the drought in California continues, 17 communities throughout the state could run out of water within 60 to 120 days, state officials said.
In some districts, the wells are running dry while other reservoirs are nearly empty. The state Health Department compiled a list after surveying the more than 3,000 water agencies in California last week.
Et cetera, and so on.
But it turns out that this is all part of the world’s most clever advertizing campaign.
Adventures in Cell Phone Texting Autocorrect
“She wacko to the apple and called me silly.”
Parental Observation #5
Donna B. left the following comment to an earlier observation.
You are doing well to document these times. You can refer back to this when you are the grandparent of a 3-year-old. It will help you in teaching them to better master the skills that drive their parents nuts. Payback is fun!
The moral of the story: Revenge is a dish best served old.
Parental Observation #4
They’re little angels when they’re asleep.
They’re not little angels nearly often enough.
Parental Observation #3
Every day in which you don’t eat their head must be counted as at least a partial success.
Parental Observation #2
It’s always funnier when it happens to someone else. (This is more widely applicable to the human condition, of course.)
Example: My wife sent me an email earlier this afternoon, which read:
I saw your post on Ambiance. ([Amba] shared it on FB.) I laughed and laughed. Then I realized you wrote it.
We’ve all been there.
Parental Observation #1
The “Terrible Twos” are merely a marketing ploy by three year-olds, designed to throw parents off the track of how bad three year-olds behave. You see, by the time a child hits three they become very capable, in an absolute sense. By this I mean they know how things work: doors, locks, caps on spice bottles, plumbing fixtures, ladders, chain saws, lathes, Machiavellian interpersonal machinations, etc. They can do a lot with those skills, in an absolute sense. And they all have the same kind of outlook on law and order that one would expect of devotees of the Anarchist Cookbook. Do you have any idea of the harm an anarchist can do with spice bottle caps and a lathe? If you answer yes, you have probably been a parent of a three year-old at some point in your life.
I told them so….
Over five years ago I blogged about a high school with a really bad name.
Perhaps calling it “KKK High School” isn’t the best idea….
It took quite a while, but it seems that someone finally got the right idea.
Jacksonville’s ‘KKK high school’ gets a new name
A Jacksonville high school named for Nathan Bedford Forrest — a Confederate commander and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan — will get a new name. The school will be known as Westside Senior High starting with the 2014-15 school year, StateImpact reported.
Well, that settles that.
Incidentally, follow up on old posts is a benchmark of good blogging. An let us assure you that we here at Ambiance are diligently working towards meeting this benchmark! For example, I am certain we are all eagerly awaiting Ron’s Arbor Day post.
Ambiance 