Thoughts of Beth and Craig and Hurricane Dennis

Posted by Stuart at 10:21 PM on July 10, 2005

By the way, just a little small post here to say that my thoughts go out to my sister and her new husband in Florida as they are living through Hurricane Dennis right now. From the looks of the satilite photo to the right (click for a larger version), it looks like the weather is already pretty bad there, even though the eye won't hit for another 6 hours or so.

Twenty Years Ago: Swimming and Jamaica

Posted by Stuart at 02:43 PM on July 23, 2005

I have never participated in blog memes, but I did run across one today that I thought was interesting, in light of my post yesterday about visa runs three years ago. The meme asks, "What were you doing 10 years, 5 years, 1 year, and 1 day ago?" Well, this might be fun, but I think I will start with 20 years ago.

20 Years Ago, July 1985: I just started competitive swimming a year ago. Spurred on my 8th grade Civics teacher, I joined the middle school swim team. I loved it so much, that I soon joined the city-wide team. And let me tell you, this team was hard-core! Three years from now, three of my fellow teammates will compete in the Seoul Olympics, and one of them (if memory serves) will bring home a silver medal. So, to make a long story short, I am spending most of my free summer time swimming with the city team.

Now that I think about it, was the Summer of 85 the year that I made a mission trip with my church group to Jamaica? I think it might have been. I was just thinking about that a couple of days ago when someone mentioned going to Jamaica. There were about 6 of us from my church that made the two-week trip. We spent most of the time in the mountainous jungle in the middle of the island.

It was my first major trip outside of the U.S. and my first experience with a completely different culture than what I was used to. In the small village where we stayed, we found ourselves in a sea of black faces, and for the first time in my life I realized what it was like to be a minority. I remember one little black girl ran up to me with her arms up. When I picked her up, she immediately reached out her little hand and touched my blonde, straight hair. Perhaps she had never seen something so strange and exotic before.

Ten Years Ago: Transition to Graduate School at NC State

Posted by Stuart at 11:49 AM on July 24, 2005

Continuing the theme in yesterday's post, today I have been thinking about what I was doing ten years ago. In some ways I wish I had a blog, or at least a journal or diary so that I would know for sure what I was doing. I guess I could go back and try to find old emails. But other than that, I really don't have a record of what I was doing. Of course all of that will change, for my memories starting in July 2002 are saved for posterity. (Or at least as long as someone keeps registering this domain!)

So, I am not exactly sure what I was doing Ten Years ago, but I think I can make a decent guess. So, without further ado:

10 Years Ago, July 1995: Quite simply, the last few years (1993-1994) have probably the most confusing points of my life. After a less-than-stellar undergraduate career (as far as GPA was concerned, at least) I had started and then quit graduate school for Mechanical Engineering at the University of Florida. I had been taking more undergrad courses at UF trying to figure out what to do with my life. First, it was Electrical Engineering, then Computer Engineering. Neither had quite sparked my fancy as much as I wanted, but it had brought me to want to give Computer Science a try.

In addition to going to school part-time, I was working two jobs. During the day I was a substitute teacher in public high schools. Talk about combat duty! I'm convinced that being a substitute teacher is one of the toughest jobs out there. At night I was a waiter at a Steak restaurant. I knew that I didn't want to be a teacher in American public schools, and I knew that I didn't want to be a waiter for the rest of my life. And as I said above, I knew I didn't want to be an engineer either.

So I realized that I needed to make a big move, a big change. I needed to shake up my life and get back on track. This summer of 1995, I was probably in the middle of transition, preparing for this move. The move took me to North Carolina, where I finally found my groove. Three years later I had a masters degree in Computer Science, my name on several academic papers, and a desire to move to San Francisco to ride the dot-com wave.

Ten years later, this little exercise of taking a look back over decades makes me want to look for patterns and for explanations as to what my life has been. (What a surprise for me to try to ANALYZE this!) I see ups and downs. Periods of amazing success as far as numbers and productivity are concerned. Then there are periods where I was focusing on my social connections and on pushing my boundaries and not worrying so much about productivity. And then there are periods of confusion and doubt where I was wrestling with personal demons and not really focusing on anything.

And perhaps the hardest part of all of it for me is to just accept the limits that being human has bestowed upon me.