The value of education

I missed my lunchtime workout today. I had planned to do my bicycle workout in the basement while watching The Greek and Persion Wars on DVD, which I am enjoying, but instead I was pulled into a 1.5 hour long conference call with a group of biomass consultants in Winnepeg, Thunder Bay, and Toronto. Nice guys, and a good meeting, but I'm missing my exercise. Maybe I'll be able to get an extra ride in tomorrow? Unlikely, but possible.

I got out a proposal today that I have been working on for several weeks. This does not mean that this is all I have been doing, but it certainly takes the time. It is a sort of thing that is never really done. I just decided that I have been working on it long enough and today was the day. I am doing this one in collaboration with a group in Oregon and now I have kicked it to them to add their parts and submit to the customer. It is the largest project in the companies history if they buy it as I have put it together, so I hope it goes. the actual project is in very wsouthern Oregon, so it is sort of local. It is in Lakeview, which is on the CA border, just above the point where CA and NV have a common border with OR. It will take something like 10 hours to drive there from home, so "local" is strictly a relative term.

I've been spending some time on the Bank of America site going through the Des and Judy Accounts over the past few months. I am very interested in just where our accounts have been going since the income is going to be very different in the next short while, at least. Some very interesting patterns occur. Have you listed all your expenses by category and then sorted by value, highest to lowest? I had no idea Internt costs at home were so high. Is a Comcast bill of $180 / month normal? Yikes! This one snuck up on me. I had no idea we were paying that much. No wonder some of you kids are opting not to use commercial TV but only internet sources. We are sitting around tonite deciding to play hardball with Comcast tomorrow to get our rates down. And insurance, and who knows what all!

Did you see the Dunesbury cartooon in Sunday's paper? Of course you didn't, because you don't read newspapers. In this particular column a university professor is giving a lecture and when he concludes a particularly difficutlt part he turns around and asks the class if they were able to follow his presentation while they texted and IM'ed each other? He points put that this one class is costing them about $175 each to hear. We all know this is what an education costs, but having it laid out like this is depressing. I emailed my professorial friend Joe and asked his opinion. He told me a story about when he kicked out a guy reading a newspaper in his class, and I guess this is similar. If students are into their phones and computers during class he takes note, and if they have problems with the exams and come to see him, he cuts them NO SLACK! I applaud him for this approach. It makes sense to me.