I love my job. It is hard to explain the level of gratification I feel when I develop an algorithm that does what it is supposed to do. I did that today. I am grateful to Thrive Bioscience that I get paid to do this every day.
Month: September 2026 Page 1 of 2
I finished my fourteenth read through the whole Bible today. This time, it was the New King James Version (NKJV). It was my 51st reading since I started keeping track in 2006 and easily one of the most rewarding efforts I have taken. I hope to never stop. 37 of those readings were just the New Testament and I have not been counting the reads Lorena and I have been undertaking. Our first read was the Reina Valera 1960 Spanish version of the New Testament. We are now half way through a read of the whole Bible in that same version I have decided to do a whole NKJV Bible read again because I have not really spent too much time in that version up until now. I really liked it a lot–much more than I expected.
I listened to a Charlie Kirk video (the famous, recently assassinated leader of a young people’s political organization) where he explained that he was not a Christian Nationalist, but he was a Christian and a Nationalist. I have appreciated a lot of what Charlie Kirk has said about the direction of the country and much of what he said about Christianity and being a Christian, but this video truly gave me pause because it was so objectively wrong. He was in a discussion with an articulate, biblically literate young Christian man who said Christian Nationalism was not something Christ would have supported. Charlie response was to point out a bunch of Old Testament verses that were specifically for the Jewish people or Jews operating in governments that had taken them into captivity. He then said that in Matthew 16:18 where it says, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it,” the word church was translated from the Greek word ecclesia which is an assembly of people. The fact that, at one time and place, the Greek nation was ruled by an ecclesia does not argue for what was translated to the word “church” to be what Christian’s aim for in setting up national government. Rather, it is arguing that the church is founded on the revelation that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” In this context, whether you describe yourself as a Christian Nationalist or a Christian and a Nationalist is a distinction without a difference. I want to clearly point out that I completely avoided the topic of race in all of this.
It is almost as scary to see this movement as it is the movement at the other end of the political spectrum. We live in turbulent and interesting times.
Lorena took me out for a 12 oz. ribeye steak for my birthday. It was a couple of days late, but well worth the wait. We made the short drive from Granbury to Weatherford and had a wonderful afternoon.
My seventieth year was a spectacular year for me. We spent most of it in Virginia. It was particularly nice to have been able to meet the kids in Washington, D.C. at Kelly’s apartment and for them to easily run down from DC and NYC (Christian) to spend a few days with us. When Kelly moved out of Washington, D.C. we decided to downsize a good bit back in Texas to be a little closer to Grandma Conchita in Monterrey and still be an easy plane flight to connect up with the kids from/to DFW airport.
Lorena and I went on a health kick at the beginning of 2026. Both of us are down a good chunk and are excited to continue down to our target weights, hopefully, God willing, before we move into the new house here in Texas. I personally, have about 30 lbs. to go, need to stay consistent on my weight-lifting, and increase my walking/cardio.
In some ways, I have been going through a late-life crisis trying to figure out what to do with the years I have left. This (new) blog reflects some of that angst. I figured out I did not want really want to do a second PhD, not because it would not have been a rewarding enterprise, but because of the general toxicity and politicization of the higher education around the world. My short term plan (and my long term plans are getting shorter with the years) is to keep working for Thrive Bioscience in the job that I love and continue supporting the GRIME Lab with software over the next few years. Not only can I live with that, I love that I still have a job where I am needed and an avocation that I love.
We are still working on our houses down in San Pedro. That turned into much more of a longitudinal project than we expected, but it is going extremely well. We hope to have a spectacular apartment completed by the end of 2027 that we can visit for a few weeks a time and to which we can invite friends and family to that spectacular city.
Above all, Lorena and are at more peace in our walk with Jesus than ever before. There are so many people who share that with us and we are truly grateful for it.
The concrete people and/or our builder Brad flattened out the back of the lot, dug the basement a couple of feet deeper, and made room to start digging an prepare to lot for the foundation forms. In the process of that, they found (or broke) the old sewer line that was on the property. City sewer workers were there when we drove by. They explained that they were planning to rework the sewer lines anyway, but had hoped to use some of the old line. They will have to dig a channel across the street in front of us and put in a new line to make it right.
I have a birthday coming up and something has change with regard to how I think about that age and what I “ought” to be doing at this time of life. I have had grandiose ideas I have thought I might take on. It has dawned on me, though, that I probably do not have the time and might not have the energy in a few years to see those through to the end. That idea is new enough to me that I know I need to give myself some time to figure out some tractable projects worth of my efforts in the time I have life. That time could be as much as 30 years, but I am sure that only maybe 10-15 could be actually productive time when I am able to work well. Maybe less. So, God willing, I am going to give myself some time, work on the GRIME’s, get our new house build, continue on our Mexico projects, continue my day job for a few more years, and work toward the point where I only work half time or fully retire to do more stuff with Lorena, Kelly, and Christian. But I am going to try to walk and read more while a think about it all for a month or two.
Our family has been in transition for years now. Over a decade. That we were in transition became much more apparent when COVID hit. For a lot of people in our old church, a big transition took place when depravity in the leadership manifested itself, but for us, it started way earlier than that manifestation. I am grateful to have been reading through the Bible daily with maybe a handful of misses over a twenty year period. It became evident that many around us were more devoted to tradition and willing to use their authority to enforce tradition than they were interested in following Jesus. The realization of that truth, while definitely a phenomena on my radar for a long time, became the elephant in the room when I was forced to evaluate what I was doing and with whom I was doing it. Our move away from that was precipitous. Just one Sunday, I realized I could not follow Jesus and remain a part of a group with the fruits manifested by the authoritarian leadership of the group and the exclusivity and gatekeeping of the group elites in policing who they let in and who they disdained.
We find great joy in being out of that, but even greater joy and gratitude for what it has brought us into. The concept of Christ Alone is engraved in us in a way it could never have been had we not gone through this. Still, and I do not think it is just our big transition and literal epiphany, the world is a very different place than it was 15-20 years ago and appears to be getting stranger and more foreboding by the minute.
I failed to post here for several days for what seems like a pretty good reason. I have been working aggressively on the GRIME3 software to support new opportunities in both GRIME Lab research and its usage by some of our collaborators. We have reworked the research and development road map with an end to the main GRIME3 functionality work in sight, followed by new research and development on a completely new package we are currently calling GRIME4.
I spent the entire weekend working on improving the new GRIME 3 water level measurement software so it is usable by a collaborator in Idaho. I think I got it into a workable state, but will have to wait to hear back from Troy at UNL when he gets a chance to test it. It was a good time to reflect on what I want to do next now that I have pretty much kicked the idea of a second PhD to the curb. I am not sure what I will do, but going through the exercise of figuring it out has been healthy for me. I hope to spend the next few weeks avoiding making hard choices and doing more reflecting.