Goats in the Backyard

The goats arrived on Friday. This view is from the deck and yes, that's my favorite tree. There are about 400 goats and they have already decimated the blackberry vines. Their day is spent eating blackberry leaves, walking up the hill to get a drink of water, and walking back for more blackberry leaves. One of the crab apple trees was close enough to the fence for the goats to munch and they really liked that.

The pathway to the grazing area is fenced with electric wire. Only the baby goats go near the fence and jump when they brush against the wire.

Some of the goats wear bells and the occasional gentle clanking--mixed with the bahs and bleets--is actually quite pleasant and relaxing. Maybe even a bit romantic, in a Thomas Hardy sort of way.

The fenced area leads the goats down to a flat clearing filled with blackberry and other various brambles.

As with any large group in close quarters, squabbles break out. The black and white goat had an issue with the old gray goat and jumped in the air, butting heads with the gray goat as she landed.

For the most part, though, the goats are pretty mellow and just chew ... and chew ... and chew.

What fun!

Happy Birthday, Dad

Today would have been my dad's 88th birthday.

Water Woes, or Does This Look Wet To You?

We currently have an excess of water. Not unusual for this house lately. The broken water pipe under Grandma's bathtub has forced us to deal with the other water issues in that room. We had hoped that the redesign of the venting system for the dryer would solve the problem, but that does not appear to be the case. After ripping up the sub-flooring, it is clear that water is leaking somewhere, and has been for some time. Not fun.

PERT: A Detour, Then Home

The boys had planned to make a stop at Gold Bluffs Beach to see the new facilities, but once they started rolling for home they lost interest in anything else. About 100 miles from home, they discovered that I-5 northbound was closed due to grass fires between Eugene and Corvallis. The handy GPS guided them through the backroads of Oregon to Independence, and they jumped back on I-5 at Salem and arrived home about 9 pm on Wednesday.

Observations of a Road Warrior

The boys are heading home and Craig made the following observations:

• Clean restrooms are more likely to be found in restaurants than in gas station convenience stores or rest areas.
• Colleges are casual places. If you fail to wear shorts on a college tour, then people will stare at you and smile politely while thinking, clueless tourist.
• Non-smoking, no-pet hotels do not use perfumed cleaning agents. A good name for a hotel chain would be, Non / No. I would stay there.
• All luggage should have wheels, even the cooler. All luggage should be small enough carry with one arm when going up or down stairs, even the cooler.
• The worst drivers--in the states we traveled through--are not in Oregon or Washington, but in Tennessee.
• People do go outside in the south. Cocoa Beach, which is as hot and humid as any other place in the south, is filled with people walking and cycling. So the problem in the other areas of the south must be that weirdos live there.
• Death Valley National Park is evidence drug use was a problem in the old days too. National land fill would have been a better idea.
• Cell phones are nice to have. But a GPS in a car is truly wonderful thing. Do not do a 19-day road trip without one.

PERT: Stanford

There are a lot of lists in the world of universities, for a couple of examples, lists of the best science and engineering schools and lists of the best computer science departments. When it comes to computer science Stanford is usually at the top, as Peter says, because of their graduate programs. The newest part of the Stanford campus is named after the guys who paid for the buildings, the Moore Materials Research building, the Packard Electrical Engineering building, the Hewlett Teaching Center building, the Allen Center for Integrated Systems building and the Gates Computer Science building. With friends like that, how can you go wrong? Here is the computer science building, which Peter would not pose in front of as he does not want himself associated with Bill Gates. Both Cal Poly and Stanford are big enough campuses that bicycles are the default transportation.

After touring Stanford, the fifth college on the tour, Peter's first choice for undergraduate is Caltech, the coolest place on the planet, and for graduate work, Stanford, the center of the computer science universe.

After leaving Stanford the boys crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and got this postcard-perfect photo:

Ah, San Francisco ....

PERT: Cal Poly

In a number of ways Cal Poly is different than the other colleges the boys have toured. It's the first college not specialized to science and engineering. The tour guide recommended getting to know the agriculture students because they really know how to barbecue. Second, Cal Poly is the first public school they have toured. They were told Cal Poly has the leanest acceptance ratio of any school in the CSU (California State University) system. The other public school they will tour on this trip is Berkeley. And third, Caly Poly has about 5,000 students in their school of engineering (there are half a dozen different colleges on campus), which compares to 720 for Harvey Mudd, 900 for Caltech and 1,400 for Rose-Hulman. Class sizes are bigger too, but the average class size of forty is only about two to three times bigger than the other colleges they have seen so far. So forty is not crazy. For these reasons Peter was initially determined to not be impressed by Cal Poly. Peter intends to major in computer science and software engineering, which are combined into a single degree at many colleges but not at Cal Poly, which offers those plus computer engineering. That sounds impressive. Peter has yet to compare the actual courses offered to see if that is so.

Perhaps the most interesting thing they learned about Cal Poly -- and what turned Peter around -- is that Boeing Aerospace, one of the main contractors at the Cape Air Force Base, has students working on satellites right on campus. In Florida they learned there is a lot more space activity generated by private money and by classified government spending than by NASA. Boeing's involvement is a huge plus for Cal Poly for someone who wants to make a living in the space business. Most of the colleges toured so far have been secretive about the average SAT scores of entering students. But at Caltech it is 1,500; at Cal Poly it is 1,317. So these last two factors make Cal Poly a terrific choice as a safety school for Peter. And although Peter is not influenced by such factors, Craig was impressed by the city of San Luis Obispo and by the campus, which although a public campus draws a lot of private donations, especially the engineering college. I have done high school visits in San Luis Obispo and, when Peter was six months old, attended my cousin's wedding at the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa ... it's a charming city.