Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam died in a traffic accident 5 months before the publication of his landmark book about the US war in Korea. In the days following the author’s death, fell

Lord, give me the strength to fight not only my battles but the battles of my friends and family.

These are the most important things in my life and supercede everything else - family, friends, career and school.

In the last few weeks, a lot has happened. Some good, some bad ... and some that make me just think and think.

Highlights - I am making important breakthroughs at work, but I have not cultivated that primal ability of tooting my own horn. Needless to say, I am working on this. Also, I finally started the PhD thanks to funds from my company. I have also started a rather badly thought out entrepreneurial venture which is currently hemorrhaging money, but like astute (hopefully) businessman, I'm hoping I can start to turn a profit in a couple months! So for me its work, school and business. Perfect.

Last weekend I was in California for the wedding ceremony of my roommate from A&M days. It was interesting. It made me take a step back and think ... but neh, I love this life.

I am often distraught when even a mere acquaintance of mine is experiencing some any kind of pain or anguishl. I wonder why God burdens me with these intense feelings of sympathy and yet He has not given me the ability or strength to help the person in need. I think I have to start to discover what I can do to help. If I knew for a fact that kneeling down and praying like crazy for hours on end will help one sick person, I'll do it for hours upon hours ... but where is the faith ... my faith?

So God, help all my friends and acquaintances ... give them some respite in their moment of need. Amen.

I have a good friend called Pedro - one of my trusted lieutenants really. This one is dedicated to his dreams. Good luck mate, we'll probably not meet up at the educational fortress that is the USA, not that I'll not give it another shot, but someday, somewhere, great minds will meet again and we'll be drinking and laughing at the different paths we took to our exceptional success. Amen.

 

Rush - Mission

Hold your fire
Keep it burning bright
Hold the flame 'til the dream ignites
A spirit with a vision is a dream
With a mission

I hear their passionate music
Read the words that touch my heart
I gaze at their feverish pictures
The secrets that set them apart

When I feel the powerful visions
Their fire has made alive
I wish I had that instinct
I wish I had that drive

Spirits fly on dangerous missions
Imaginations on fire
Focused high on soaring ambitions
Consumed in a single desire

In the grip of a nameless possession
A slave to the drive of obsession
A spirit with a vision is a dream
With a mission

I watch their images flicker
Bringing light to a lifeless screen
I walk through their beautiful buildings
And I wish I had their dreams
But dreams don't need to have motion
To keep their spark alive
Obsession has to have action
Pride turns on the drive

It's cold comfort
To the ones without it
To know how they struggled
How they suffered about it
If their lives were exotic and strange
They would likely have gladly exchanged them
For something a little more plain
Maybe something a little more sane

We each pay a fabulous price
For our visions of paradise
But a spirit with a vision is a dream
With a mission 

Well Jesus Christ, I'm alone again

So what did you do those three days you were dead?

Cause this problem's gonna last more than the weekend.

In my version of christianity and catholicism, it is okay to ask the hard questions. Granted, we might not always know the answers, or be satisfied with these answers, but questioning our faith on a daily basis gives us reasons to urgently seek more and more answers as we grow closer and closer in understanding with the creator.

A few weeks ago, around the third week of March precisely, in my faith-related discussions with other catholics, we agreed that to have better insight to God, it was important to understand why He does the things He does. Might I note here that the heretics that were part of the conversation continued without ceasing to scream and make an impression on everyone on how we must take everything by faith. Faith without work is death. Back to the main discuss, one of the questions that came up was why God allow great calamities to befall His children. Everyone had an interesting answer. Someone alluded to it being the fault of the government of those nations where children suffer and die from starvation, implying that while those children will make it to heaven, the government officials have certainly booked their places in the hottest part of hell. Interesting arguement, and I laughed without respite.

I got my answer. God answered the question for me. This is not the first time I've felt God talking directly to me, but this one filled me the most with goosebumps than any of my other divine experiences. Our Daily Bread (ODB) is one of those daily bible verse/prayer type things I grew up with. I'm definitely not an everyday ODBer, maybe once in a long while I'll pop in there, read from the good book, hear the passages and try to meditate on them. So sometime either in late March or very early April, after been affected by a chain of unfortunate events and questioning my faith again, I went on ODB and the one of the passage headings that immediately caught my eye was "Does God Care?"

This is a repost, all copyrights belong to ODB.

My uncle passed on. He lived with my family in distant northern Nigeria, so I grew up knowing him. Those afternoons when momma's cooking was late in being ready, I'll go over to his "boys quarters" apartment and he'll give me all these different kinds of snacks (nasco buscuits, bush meat, 7-Ups, peanuts) ... it was another Uncle who gave me beer and let me smoke his cigarette once, but that's another story. By the time I was in Primary 6, I was mature enough to seat in the adult section in church, but those sunday school teachers and church ushers kept on pestering me to go sit with the toddlers in sunday school. Humiliating huh. Till Uncle Emeka told me to always tell them I was in Primary 6 and could sit in the adult section. Uncle Emeka was cool like that. I was in awe of those posters of Rambo and Commando in his apartment that were popular in the late 80s to early 90s in Nigeria. In our relatively sheltered upbringing, those evenings when my parents weren't home and he let us watch war movies like Rambo: First Blood, Inglorious Bastards, Commando, a stark deviation from The Thief of Baghdad and the Sound of Music ... the sort of movies we were permitted to see, those evenings were the high-point of my movie-childhood. I know I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with him, until we moved to the middle-belt. I saw him last in 2004 christmas, still sturdy and smiling with his new wife. That was the last time I'll ever see him. Uncle, rest in peace and God bless you.

Since my MS wasn't in the power field, and I have absolutely no plans of spending six more years in grad school, Prof. KBP advised I take some graduate level power courses. I've been looking at a few Universities with good power courses and the non-degree option. Price is a big factor, but then again, I'm never going to be tight-fisted on educational stuff. Sadly enough, I can ask my company to pay for the courses if they're semiconductor related.

I think that 6-9hrs should be sufficient. I will also hope I can get letters of recommendation from the faculty 

1. Georgia Tech - There's a power systems stability techniques already being offered this spring and a power systems planning and reliability course being offered in the summer. Each 3hr course costs $2500
2. Colorado-Boulder - They have a renewable energy course, also a bunch of power electronics courses. About $2100 for each 3hr course
3. Iowa State - 12 hrs, I like how they've spelled it out. $1300/3hrs ... $6200/6hrs :(
4. Arizona State - Quite a couple classes, well-refined online program, and  at $3254/3hrs more expensive than all the others :(

 

I'm in the process of selecting the four schools I'll be applying to for my PhD. For a brief moment over the weekend I was overwhelmed by ETH Zurich because of their awesome MEST program. Even if the program turns out not to be as great as they make it to be, I sure applaud their marketing skills .. for that "brief moment," wherein I had also completed my application and verified I had every other requirement, I was prepared to leave everything in America and board a plane headed for Zurich. And oh, the school fees is dirt cheap ... like $1200/year ... but its the living expenses that get you!!!

So here are my four school choices, I have picked four schools ... two in the state of Texas

1. Texas A&M University ... because I have to fight my demons, and I am in touch with a few of the Professors in that program ... so I know where it is headed.
2. University of Texas : UT because its the only other school in Texas at par with Texas A&M, and they have two Professors working on renewable-energy type stuff and also they have faculty involved in energy economics.
3. University of Illinois: A world-class institution with faculty actively pursuing alternative/renewable energy research
4. Georgia Tech: GT is right there amongst the best of them in terms of engineering  schools, faculty interested in engineering alternative/renewable energy as well as the presence of NEETRAC there will give me an opportunity to put my experience to use in a different way.

This last three or four months, life has been a literal fucking ball.

But I had my epiphany, today, at work ... two hours after talking with one of the analog designers (a PhD) about more school ... and more school. Earlier in the week, I had advised an old friend to always take the high road and that's what I intend doing.

I'll take the advice of Prof. KB and take a few non-degree classes in power. Then I'll apply to four schools for either MS or PhD next fall. If admitted into any of these schools, I'll leave my well paying job in semiconductor (yes, I wasnt affected by the layoffs ... lucky SOB that I am) which I've gradually grown to be bored with and head back to school.

Fun times!!!

 

This is Rude.