November 28, 2011. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in March. My "new job" ended in September. Took a trip to Oregon immediately afterward. Started another new job right after I returned from Oregon.
January 14, 2010. I just returned from a visit to Oregon to see some relatives. Had
a busy but good time. I'm starting a new job next week, so figured that I'd better travel
now because I won't have time for such matters for many months.
I'm presenting at the Bay Area Trading
Systems Interest Group (BATSIG) in February.
November 29, 2009. In May of this year I began attending the SF Bay Area ACM Data Mining SIG. Out of these meetings several of us teamed up to organize the first Silicon Valley Data Mining Camp, an event that drew over 220 attendees. There may be more such events in the near future.
May 7, 2009. We just planted another fruit tree. Since there's no more space for fruit trees in the "designated" locations, our second Lapin Cherry tree went smack dab in the middle of our lawn. We moved our Bacon Avocado to a planter, and put a Nagami Kumquat in its place. So now, the very same woman who thought I was crazy 9 years ago to plant so many fruit trees in our yard, has figured out just where the next batch of fruit trees should be placed on the lawn. She has no interest in lawn space, only in fruit that she can eat, can, bake with, dry, etc. I continue to work on my artificial neural networks as they can be applied to stock market timing. I've made lots of progress over the last 4 months, but it still doesn't "run". I compare it to a car that's in the shop. It's just missing a few parts, and it needs some gasoline in the tank, and once it starts running we can figure out how to improve it from there.
March 26, 2009. I recently returned from a visit to Oregon and Washington where I visitied friends and family, and did some job hunting as well. It was a very successful trip, except that I wasn't able to visit all of the potential employers that I had planned.
February 20, 2009. Last month we celebrated my mother-in-law's 90th birthday. This meant having relatives at our house for an entire week. It was fun, but we're glad it's over.
August 26, 2008. Earlier this month we had children and grandchildren over for
six days. Imagine going from a household of 2 quiet individuals to 8, including
4 kids age 2-11. We played tennis, and chess, wrote poems, went kayaking, went
for a hike, explored some caves, went to the beach, and went hunting. Hunting
for Marty, that is. I hadn't seen Marty for about 3 weeks before the kids arrived,
and even though we had 4 kids and one grandpa looking for Marty we just couldn't
find him. One of the kids even suggested that we sneak outside at night and see
if we could sneak up on him, but I did my best to discourage that idea. So the
kids went home never knowing exactly what Marty looks like, and I figured that
I'd never see him again. Until today when I was watering the garden. I'm sure
I got him all wet, but he posed for a photo anyway, which I'll post one of these
days. So for all of you who love Marty, he's back!
May 4, 2008. The more events that are current, the further out of date "Current Events" becomes. So let's forget most of what is no longer current, such as my 25th class reunion at Westmont College in October, and proceed with what is actually current. We just finished a little bit of backyard improvement as we put mini-retaining walls around the fruit trees on the slope. That slope has been an eyesore for years, and now it looks much better, and we should be able to finish it off with some nice touches. Photos of the yard improvements should show up within a few weeks elsewhere on this site. This time of year is always fun as I inspect the fruit trees daily to see how they are faring. The mantids finally hatched last week, and they've been growing rapidly. After 6-7 consecutive weeks of buying ladybugs to control aphids and other pests in my yard I ceased purchasing any more. Then about a week or ten days ago I found lots of ladybugs on nearly all of my trees, probably a result of ladybug eggs hatching. These ladybugs seem to stay around day after day, instead of wandering off as most of the "purchased" ladybugs did. I just hope that I don't find a mantis munching on a ladybug one of these days! Besids the entertainment in my back yard, work and this website have been keeping me quite busy.
August 17, 2007. So much has been happening of late that I hardly have time to think about it all. Actually, the happenings merit considerable background information, so much so that I will certainly not do it justice. The current events of importance began in April or May when my wife ran into an old friend from Vietnam while shopping at a Vietnamese market. To be fair, this was not the first time that they had encountered each other at this market, but this was the first time that they had arranged a get-together. This friend is the eldest of five children, and my wife became associated with this family when she taught at a Montessori school in Vietnam and became friends with another teacher, who was the youngest of the three daughters in this family. Through an odd sequence of events my wife raised her friend's two daughters from infancy until they were nearly 10 years old. During this time, my wife occasionally babysat the two daughters of her friend's eldest sister (the friend she met in the market).
July 7, 2007. We had a couple of earthquakes over the last week, measuring 4.3 and 3.3. The epicenter was only about 10 miles away, so we felt them very clearly. We spent all day on July 5 just canning peaches. Picking peaches is fun. Eating peaches is fun. Canning is an unfortunate necessity when two trees have so far produced 160 lbs of fruit. And my wife doesn't like worms. Not caterpillars, not earthworms, not any kind of worm. And when she's peeling peaches she's always on the lookout for them, so I occasionally hear screams when she finds that a peach is occupied, or muffled gasps when she finds a peach that just looked like it was occupied. Most of the time she tosses the entire peach when she sees evidence of a worm's presence inside, but there were a few occasions when the worm hadn't finished its trek to the center of the fruit, and in these cases she just cut out the affected portion (actually, much more than that, but who's complaining?). Almost invariably, the portion of the peach that remained was considerably tastier than most other peaches, leading us to believe that somehow the worms have a natural attraction to the very best peaches. So, after eating one piece of what remained of a scrumptious peach after its former occupant had been dispatched I quipped, That worm had good taste! My joke was not well received, as I think that every peach thereafter with the remotest sign that a pest might have once been present was tossed out in its entirety. Today, while we were picking more donut peaches (for yet another canning run) my wife heard a faint buzzing sound. She ignored it for a minute, then looked around and let out a very healthy scream, Snake!!! I ran to where she was picking and saw, tangled in the net that we use to keep the birds away from the peaches, a small, foot-long snake. The head had that familiar Western movie look, the body had the tan and brown markings that are also familiar from the movies, and at the end of the tail was a very small rattle that was buzzing for all it was worth. Either one of us could have been bitten by this snake, as both of us had spent several minutes in the exact location where the snake was. Fortunately for us, the snake tangled itself in the netting while it was trying to evade us, so it was entirely unable to strike, or so I choose to believe. So now I wonder, was she truly frightened of the snake, or was she frightened because the snake bore some resemblance to a large worm?
April 17, 2007. We recently celebrated our 21st anniversary. We visited the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, went on a short cruise around the Bay (Red and White Fleet, of course!), and did some gallery-gawking in Sausalito. We also found Evelyn's Antiques, where there were so many nice things that we had a difficult time keeping our money in our pockets.
November 11, 2006. My wife had a wisdom tooth removed a few months ago, so not to be outdone I decided to have all 4 of mine removed. Ouch. I'm still recovering. We've been drying figs, baking fig cake, drying persimmons, picking limes, etc. Figs are all but gone, what with the first rain of the season that came today.
October 16, 2006. It's fig season at our place, so our fig trees are producing faster than we can pick them. We're eating fresh figs for dessert every day, and yesterday we made fig bread. We're so busy this year that we won't get around to making fig preserves, unfortunately.
August 20, 2006. A co-worker and his wife, both of whom I have known for some 8-10 years, joined us for lunch. We made guinea pigs out of them by preparing a salmon dish that we botched during our first attempt to prepare it a few weeks ago. This time, however, it turned out very well. They treated us to a fine Italian dessert called "crustata". This was the first time that my friend's wife and my wife had gotten a chance to talk in any detail, even though they had met briefly once before. Yes, Franca, the recipe will be up within a few days.
July 28, 2006. My brother and his family came over for a visit earlier this month. This was the first time that his three children had an opportunity to meet their aunt. While they were here we picked peaches and talked as much as we could during their short stay.