Extravagant Dining

If you know me, you know that when something impresses me I gush about it. I had a gushing time last night.

IIE had their holiday dinner at the best restaurant in Corvallis and one of the professors brought her three children. I had a blast with them.

When I first went up to TT and talked to him, he sort of yelled and ran away. But I happened to be sitting by him, so we soon got to be big buds. Him and his sister are crazy, just like children (hiding under tables at this ritzy restaurant room). They're only 4th graders or so, but they're really smart and play these games and have soaring imaginations ("This is the Cascade Range" as he rakes his mashed potatoes into a ridge).

So I can't really communicate this well.

I think part of the reason I enjoyed them so much is because I was comfortable with them. This was an interesting event, one that I enjoyed even not counting the children. But still, social grace is not intuitive with me, and small talk is sort of a necessary evil at times. But talking with professors and children was easier to me than talking with my fellow-students at this gathering.

But it was good, the professors, the students, the children--it was all good.

Curves Redux

Awhile back, I had a discussion with a friend about the validity of using curves when grading students. You know, what ever happened to the idea of an objective standard?

I was thinking of this again in relation to my big ol' Material Science class. There's probably 140 people in there. The odds that there would be an extraordinarily above-average class with that many people are pretty long.

Now, there's this class that I'm going to take next term that probably will have less than 10 students in it. I don't know if a curve is fair in that instance.

But then there's the fact of the difficulty of writing completely fair tests. In the case of a non-standardized situation, there's always the danger that the prof will write an unusually difficult one. It seems if the class is big enough, you can let the class show you how hard the test is, but if the class is tiny, it could be possible that you could have an exceptional or mediocre class. Maybe I'll talk to my professor about it next quarter.

Equality

When the IAC started back in the 80's, it was focused solely on improving energy efficiency. Since then, it has expanded its scope to include productivity recommendations. Before it only recommended things like, "Reduce discharge pressure for refrigeration system", but now it could be "Reduce downtime in sorter."

When we go out to a company, we come back with ideas and data to support them. If a particular idea seems to pencil out--meaning it will save some money and doesn't cost too much to implement--it becomes an "AR" or recommendation.

The thing about productivity ARs is that they have the potential to save a whole lot more money or add a lot more profits than energy ARs. Think about it, a company might have $20 million in annual sales. But they might only spend $200,000 on energy. If you can increase production by 1% vs. saving 1% of energy costs. Which is greater? Do the math.

But productivity ARs get smiled at sometime because most of the information that supports them is through estimates by people who are familiar with the process. In other words, there's often no "hard" data, just reliance on educated guesses by personnel at the plant. So when someone comes up with a recommendation that is supposed to save hundreds of thousands of dollars, energy people can react in a leery manner.

But here's the thing. Energy ARs have the advantage, many times, of "data loggers" that track important parameters of the system of interest day and night for multiple days. The analyst can then get to what is actually and truly happening in the system, without having to rely solely on educated guesses (though some of that is alway involved). Without that capability, they would be reduced to asking for estimates, just like productivity people!

So, the analytical tools for energy areas (like boilers, motors, and air compressor systems) are much more advanced than those for productivity. Thus, the results are likely more precise. But what if productivity had the same level of sophistication in data collecting techniques?

Give productivity equal rights! I demand equality! All we ask for is a level playing field.

Smile.

Being at Work

One thing I've never been able to get used to is when my co-workers here at OSU refer themselves, when talking to someone who is not a co-worker, as "being at work."

For instance.

Co-worker: "Oh hi, Doug..."
(Silence)
Co-worker: "I just got to work..."
(Silence)
Co-worker: "Work."

Since I don't really go anywhere, and since I come up here to do schoolwork and surf the web, it doesn't seem like "being at work." Being at work is when you go to a place away from ... your non-work life.

Stochastic Background

The optimization course that I'm taking is not as rigorous as it could be. It's geared toward application, and O.R. (Operations Research) is a huge field to be dissected in a single, undergraduate course. So you hit the high points and pay no attention to the theory propping these methods up.

That's fine. It is what it is.

The last week or two, we've moved to a new area of O.R., which is stochastic (probabalistic) modeling. I'm taking a whole class on this from the Stats department next term, and our prof is trying to squeeze a little bit in at the very end of this quarter. Of course, a prerequisite for the Stats Stochastic course in a class that I'm taking now (Mathematical Statistics) that probability-wise and theory-wise goes way beyond anything most of my classmates have seen. I, on the other hand, am interested by this stuff and have more background in probability. But people don't have the background and they're getting lost.

I was going to try to say something profound about my feelings on this, but nothing's coming. Something about motives and pride, though.

Scavenging for Survival

I'm so fortunate to be living at home.

A graduate student was saying today that when she was an undergrad, she once survived a whole semester (or was it quarter)? scavenging food from different events at her campus because she didn't have enough money to buy food. She said that you get to know where all the "seminars" and such are that have a little food to go with the presentation. That and oatmeal, that's what she survived on.

I got to school early this morning. I park off-campus these days, and when I pulled into a street-side spot I grabbed a sandwich and began eating it. (Why, you wonder, would he be eating a sandwich after arriving early at school? It was sort of like noon to me, I guess, because I got up at 3:30 and took my dear, sick--she was afflicted with gastro-something or other--Aunt Barb to the airport, so by the late hour of 7:43 a.m. I was hungry.) I saw a couple of people as I was eating, and they were scavenging. I'm guessing Tuesday's the day that trash is picked up because there was a lot of it outside houses. These people were walking along, one with a shopping cart, looking at the cartons of trash.

Two different types of poor, students and street people. Street people seem poorer though.

Life Now

So the life issues I'm currently struggling through concern faith and pride.

Faith. What is it? Like, there's faith ("I'm trusting in God to give me strength") and then there's faith ("God, I don't know what's going to happen, and I see no way that this is actually going to work, but I believe you can do it ... so here goes").

But even in a mini-faith exercise I had recently, God has shown Himself big and strong, in a way I just didn't think about. It provides motivation to become more and more completely dependent on Him for impossible things.

Pride. Awww, pride. Sometimes, in some situations, you look at yourself and you see it all entangled in your life, clear down to basic things like why I relate to people like I do and even why I relate to God like I do.

But hey, things are happening, God's working, and that's always an encouraging sign.

Wow, the wonderful things the future holds! I can't wait!

Course the present, it's sweet as well.

Does anyone find it ironic that famous singers that sing about the rapture of love in so many ways can't find a lasting love in their personal lives?

The Ship of My Life

When I graduated from high school, I felt I was entering a new, somewhat stretching phase of life. I couldn't rely any longer upon the gentle comfort of school as the answer to the internal question of "What are you going to do next year?" It was like the ship of my life had reached a destination and now had to decide where to go next.

But it soon set sail, first on short little jaunts but then it embarked upon another long journey--college.

But now, I feel that the ship of my life has nearly reached another destination--graduation--and soon I won't be able to rely any longer upon the gentle comfort of school as the answer to the interal question of "What are you going to do next year?"

I was thinking of this tonight as I was driving home from an evening with my youth group. Though college was an adjustment, it wasn't as much of one as you might think. I still live at home, I still go to my childhood church, I still see my childhood acquaintances.

But soon, when I move away to graduate school wherever that may be, things will all be turned upside down. I think it will be the biggest adjustment of my life. Certainly bigger than going to Bible School for 6 weeks, or going on tour with AHQ for a month. This is serious. This is uprooting myself and going to live far away from the comforts of home.

It's so exciting people, but it's scary too. It's me, Byran, going out to face the world. It's me, far away from home and church and family, all by myself, forging life away from these things.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were speeding home because you really had to go to the bathroom and you got pulled over by a policeman? Surely mercy would be given, no?

Decoration

My sister says that an overdecorated house with too much Christmas stuff in the yard and on the eaves is like an overdecorated woman with too much jewelry and make-up on her face and body. At some point it stops being attractive and is just too much.