Month: March 2022

In ninth grade, I won first place in the statewide West Virginia State Math Field Day. What does that mean? Let’s rewind a few decades…

DIFFERENT ERA
There were differences when I was growing up decades ago (in West Virginia) compared to modern life (in California).

Back then, there was less sensitivity in measuring children’s intelligence (against each other), and then sharing those results. For example, it was common at my West Virginia school to arrange seats in the classroom by overall grade: smarter kids sat together at the front of the room. I believe that the school thought that doing this would make kids try harder academically so they could sit up front and be acknowledged as smart.

Also, it was common to post (on the wall) standardized test scores, etc (usually, the names were masked). Even if the names were hidden, you could see all scores, find yours, and know whether you were dumb or smart compared to your classmates.

Maybe West Virginia was extra backward, or more likely it was the era – but the schools doing all this didn’t see how being labeled ‘dumb’ might impact a person for life (hey dummy, sit in the back of the classroom). Plus, sitting in the back of the classroom gives you more opportunity to misbehave…

The overall point being: in the era I grew up in, there were lots of academic competitions at various levels – with the results widely shared – because no one saw the downside to low performers learning they weren’t that smart.

Also, just to counter a thought that you may be forming about how bad the West Virginia school system was – I have two arguments refuting this:

• First, when I was young, an academic group from Japan visited my school system in West Virginia to understand and adopt our best practices – because my WV school system must have had a reputation for being quite good.
• Second, when I moved from West Virginia to Illinois (10th grade to 11th grade) my grades significantly improved. In 10th grade in West Virginia, I got maybe 75% A’s, plus B’s and C’s. In high school in Illinois, I got straight A’s quite easily. Maybe I matured some, but it seemed much easier to get good grades in Illinois.

So I think it was the era, and not West Virginia or its school system.

MATH SKILLS – WEST VIRGINIA
I’ve always been naturally good at math. Not that I’m necessarily bad at other things, but it took me longer to get my non-math skills in order. Some evidence:

• I found some grade school report cards, plus some notices sent home from my school to my parents, that show that I was behaviorally/academically challenged (or they thought I was). Some of the notices called out my behavior, plus my poor record of showing up without completed homework.
• My old report cards were interesting because I got high scores (90%+) in most everything – except spelling, which was in the 60% range. 😞
• My spelling continued (continues?) to be challenged. I’ve noticed this as I digitize some old writings (even some from college) which have multiple misspellings. (This was pre spell check.)

One other piece evidence of my academic unevenness: I got sent (along with other solid students) to a test location to take a West Virginia history test – where you echo facts about WV history, get a passing grade, and are then labeled a ‘Knight of the Golden Horseshoe’ (a term from WV history). I didn’t pass.

MATH SKILLS – ILLINOIS
In high school in Illinois, I was a (large) notch above everyone in math. There was an annual standardized state math test that we would all take, and the school would post the scores on the wall. At the top would be my score, then a big gap, then everyone else’s scores. The related high school weirdness (and I think my wife still chuckles at this) is that I ‘lettered in math’. I have a physical cloth letter with the word ‘math’ on it. Sports students normally sew their letters onto their high school jackets (I didn’t).

Also, in late high school in Illinois, I took a standardized test to qualify as a ‘merit scholar’ which indicates you are smart overall, and puts you on the path to financial help and scholarships for college. My brothers Dan and Rick made the cut – I didn’t, but was very close. 🙁

BUT, back to the Math Field Day…

WEST VIRGINIA MATH FIELD DAY
This was a tiered competition, where you had to win each competition level to advance to the next. Meaning: you had to be in the top three in your school to compete at the county level. Then you had to be in the top three in the county to compete at the region level (a ‘region’ was a group of neighboring counties). Then you had to be in the top three in your region, to compete at the state level. I was in the top three at all these levels – actually first in all levels, except one – I was third in region (I think). Being third at one competition level ‘woke me up’, and made me realize I needed to get focused and try harder to do well.

The state-level competition was many hours away at a college campus, so we participants overnighted. This might have been the first time I traveled alone without my family – my math teacher drove me there. I hung out with a bunch of similar math-headed dorks like me. It was fun. One of the guys had the alphabetical list of all 55 West Virginia counties memorized: Barbour, Berkeley, Boone, Braxton, Brooke, Cabell, Calhoun, Clay, Doddridge,… I still have this list in my head.

The competition itself was a wide variety of math-related items – anything from written math problems, to physical math challenges: See that long piece of string randomly dropped on the ground? Don’t touch it, but estimate how long it is. Essentially, it wasn’t just a measure of who is best at paper math calculations (for example), it was more – who has the best overall ‘math head’?

There was one physical estimation problem that I still think about to this day (because I was a dork, and didn’t get it right). There was a pot of water on a table, and you had to stick your hand into it, and estimate its temperature. I stuck my hand in and thought: huh, this feels kind of cold, so it must be NN temperature (colder than room temperature). But it WAS room temperature (water has faster heat conduction than air, so water feels colder). I should have taken a logical, mental step backward and realized that the effort to continuously heat/cool the water to something other than room temperature wasn’t small – so the water almost certainly WAS room temperature. 😞

At the end of the competition, they summed up everyone’s scores across these various math problems to determine who won. And I did.

SUMMARY
So you might think that winning a competition in a relatively-small, backwards state might not be that big a deal, BUT it was multilevel (school, county, region, state) and required broad math thinking – so it was a genuine accomplishment. I essentially had the best math head of everyone my age in the entire state.

The modest trophy that I received for winning first place got broken over the years, so I recently bought a similar trophy to have an intact reminder of my win.

I’m what some call a ‘natural engineer’.

What does that mean? Some people have the ability to look at something and understand how it works, and/or envision a solution for a physical need. That’s me. Even as a child, I could look at a machine and understand it – or, if it wasn’t obvious at first, I would stare at it for a bit, and maybe look from other angles, and get that understanding.

Logically, I probably should have studied mechanical engineering in college – but I couldn’t understand how becoming a mechanical engineer would pay that well, given that it seemed a talent that I already had. I instead straddled electrical engineering and computer science, which to me built better on my ‘engineering head’ and math talents. It also fed well into my career in Silicon Valley.

The problem-solving side of me is interesting. Maybe I’m just full of myself but, when I look at a physical problem that needs a solution, I come up with maybe ten answers – and have to weigh them against each other, and weed each out, to choose the best. I think some people just can’t come up with any path forward (but maybe I’m wrong).

Part of my ability to solve things comes from experience. I’ve tried different solutions in the past (for things around the house, for example), and have identified the best one – and I keep those in mind. Maybe this is where the mechanical engineer path would make sense – where experience (and schooling) would have allowed me to solve bigger and more complex physical problems.

My wife has mixed confidence in my engineering ability. I’ve done lots of good, but she remembers the bad. One example is when I was tweaking the washing machine hoses to explore allowing us to move the machine closer to the wall. I un-did, then re-did, the hoses – but apparently didn’t fully screw them on, and they leaked over time, and got the floor wet. Nowadays, I fix things without letting her know – for example, I recently fixed the patio arbor to stop it from sinking and leaning against the house. I told her about it after I had fixed it – because she was more keen on paying someone to fix it, or having it torn down. We now have less urgency in getting the arbor redone.

Anyway, the net is that I have a natural ‘engineer head’ and can envision how things work, and how to fix things, just by looking at them. It’s a good thing – as long as I don’t screw up (and ruin the floor…)

This is a weird topic, but…
There are songs that make me ‘misty’, and sometimes even shed a tear or two. Why? I’ve been trying to analyze this but, I’ve come to the conclusion that songs with lyrics that describe deep emotional feelings – especially when the singer recounts getting unexpectedly emotional – make me (an empathetic person) emotional. Also, for some songs, the whole song story is moving/emotional. Below are five examples:

Walking in Memphis | Marc Cohn (1990) – This is a very good song musically, which describes a memorable (almost spiritual) trip by the singer to Memphis. The part that ‘gets me’ is when he talks about being encouraged to perform at a local Memphis venue (called The Hollywood, where Muriel plays on Fridays):

And I sang with all my might
She said “Tell me are you a Christian child?”
And I said “Ma’am, I am tonight”

That part about him being so moved emotionally by his performance (and Muriel’s reaction) that he’s OK with being labeled religious (when he may not be) gets me emotional.

City Hall | Vienna Teng (2006) – This is also an amazing song musically. Vienna Teng has a phenomenal voice, and makes great songs (if you haven’t listened to her, you should). This entire song makes me emotional/misty. The concept of people being deprived of everyday rights (getting married) because of something they can’t control (sexual orientation) makes me so sympathetic and sad for them. It’s like real-life stories of black people in the US being harassed (and sometimes killed) just because they’re black.

Many of the City Hall lyrics are emotional (I’m getting misty just reading them):

Made our mamas cry.
Seen a lot of friends, after giving it all they had
Lay down and die.

My baby’s looking so damn pretty with those anxious eyes
Rain-speckled hair
And my ring to wear.

(This part she slows down – which increases the impact)
If they take it away again someday
This beautiful thing won’t change.

All these lovely lyrics combined with her amazing voice just get me.

Beyond | Leon Bridges (2018) – This is also a pretty song. (I’m realizing that there is an overlay that all these songs are slow, pretty, and emotional. If these same lyrics were performed by a heavy metal, head-banger group with the singer growling out the words – it wouldn’t have the same impact.) The part that gets me in Beyond is his fear of deep emotion and commitment:

I’m scared to death that she might be it
That the love is real, that the shoe might fit
She might just be my everything and beyond

Again, as I mentioned in the intro – what’s emotionally moving to me is often the singer getting unexpectedly emotional.

Vincent | Don McLean (1971) – I like Don McLean a lot. He’s best known for the song American Pie, but this song about Van Gogh has arguably more emotional impact. Similar to City Hall above, Vincent is moving because of the whole underlying concept, and not just a few emotional words. The tragedy of someone so talented and impactful as Vincent Van Gogh being so internally troubled that he committed suicide – is truly moving and sad:

How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free

(McLean slows down the lyrics here, which increases the impact)
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you

The above lyrics capture the internal struggle of Van Gogh, and a sort of farewell message that his choice to end his life was understood and OK.

Morningside | Neil Diamond (1972) – Here is another ‘whole concept’ sad song. The story is: an old man built an amazing wooden table, carved the words ‘For my children’ into it, but none of his children wanted the table after he died – which likely indicates how insignificant he was to them:

The old man died
And no one cried
They simply turned away

And truth is sad
For not a child would claim the gift he had
The words he carved became his epitaph
“For my children”

The sadness is: despite the old man’s substantial, targeted effort – his kids didn’t care.

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So in summary – songs hit me emotionally: either when the overall story behind the song is sad, or there are lyrics where the singer tells of unexpected and deep emotion.

from Storyworth

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TEA
I’m a tea drinker. I drink bag tea (when I’m pressed for time) and loose leaf tea (mostly oolong which I got from a former coworker, when I have enough time). Actually, it’s kind of funny – because, now that I’m working from home, I drink a lot of liquid in the mornings – including tea. I’ve found that drinking a lot of liquid (not surprisingly) makes your need to visit the bathroom more frequently.

Since I drink tea as my last morning drink – after coffee, a protein shake, and some water – I associate my need to dash to the bathroom with drinking tea. It’s interesting, because I don’t know if it’s a ‘working from home’ thing or a ‘getting older’ thing, but my body seems to want a sooner bathroom visit (after recognizing the need) than previously. It makes me mildly worried that, if I ever find myself working in an office environment again, I might find myself ducking out mid-meeting to visit the bathroom.

BEER
I like beer. (It makes me a jolly good fellow…. This is a great song by Tom T Hall.) But seriously, I do like beer. It’s fortunate that recently the number of beer varieties has significantly expanded, and many stores carry a wide variety – which allows fun at-home sampling.

I generally like darkish, flavorful beers – browns, reds, stouts, and porters. It took me a while to get OK with IPAs – I can now drink most hazy IPAs, and other IPAs that aren’t over-hoppy. (Forget those double and triple IPAs.) We are within walking distance of Lagunitas brewery – which to me is only now a good thing because I’ve gotten OK with IPAs – and that’s about all they have.

On the downside, I think my tasty beer preferences are somewhat unique – and it has become common for the beers that I like to no longer be on the store shelves. (Some local examples: Drakes Amber, Fort Point Westfalia.) Also, recently IPAs have pushed aside many other beers on the shelf. To me, it’s crazy to see the beer section of some grocery stores be 80%+ IPAs.

WINE
My wife and I are wine enthusiasts. I think we’re slightly moving in the direction of my next older brother who (per my understanding) for a time felt compelled to join, and/or buy a case of wine from, each winery he visited – to the point where he ensured the house he was (at the time) shopping for had sufficient wine storage. We’re members of only a few wineries.

We are always in search of a good drinkable wine. I would like to have: a favorite cabernet, a favorite merlot, etc. I’ve found though that my concept of finding a tasty (but affordable) cabernet, and a tasty (but affordable) merlot, etc might be unachievable – because certain wine varieties (cabernet is a good example) are either not very tasty, or the tasty ones are incredibly expensive. We are fortunate to be members of Rombauer (an hour from us) who has amazing zinfandels and chardonnays – which covers most bases.

I have a wine website that I’ve created that lists the hundreds of local wineries and ranks them based on visitor ratings and wine quality. It’s very useful. I’m looking to expand the site to provide guidance to wine novices – I need to bring a bottle of wine to an event, what varietal should I buy and how much do I need to spend to get a good one?

OTHER
In general, I find that drinking a certain drink is a habit, and habits can be broken. For example, as a child I used to drink things that weren’t good for me – like soda. I don’t anymore. (BTW, I had lots of cavities as a kid – duh.)

For a time recently I was drinking soy milk, but my wife learned that too much soy can cause health issues – so I’ve transitioned to oat milk. Really not a big difference flavor-wise. I’m interested in moving from half-n-half to oat milk as a coffer creamer – we’ll see how that goes.

I don’t drink a lot of alcoholic mixed drinks. I find that drinking beer (since it’s not very high in alcohol) is a good way to enjoy oneself in moderation.

SUMMARY
Overall, I’m pretty broad in my drink preferences. Every day, I have coffee, tea, and water. Every week, I’ll also have beer and wine. I have tea, beer, and wine preferences, and I’m fine trying new things – but I’m likely to fall back onto the varieties and brands that I’m accustomed to.