It occurred to me this morning that it's hard to find time to eat anything substantial at hockey camp. The ice sessions occur not too long after you might eat breakfast or lunch, and then by dinner, it's kind of late to eat anything heavy. I guess this is a good thing, but it's made me think about eating small things almost continuously throughout the day. Lots of bananas (so sore!).

Today we also have two ice sessions, and things went pretty much as they did Friday. There was more scrimmaging today, but we moved to 4 on 4. With just 2 subs, this gets tiring pretty quick, but we moved to the NHL (narrower, shorter) sheet of ice in the morning. There was another chalk talk in the afternoon, with great ideas about plays that work well when a team can pull them off. Dry land (in a bit of rain) was great again too, and we took those ideas to the ice again in the afternoon.

There was a "banquet" in the evening, which was steak, chicken, salad, corn -- the most food we have eaten really since arriving at camp. It was great, and then there was a kind of awards session. The coaches said a lot of nice things about all of us -- they've been very positive throughout. They told us (and said this was truthful) that they had never seen a group improve to the extent that we did in such a short period of time.

It's been a great experience for me. Sometimes after swimming and bobbing around in the ocean, or riding a bunch of roller coasters, you get the sensation of still doing those things as you go to sleep. I've had that happen the past few nights, and I've been dreaming a lot about hockey.

Tomorrow is our last session, which I may cut short to try to get to the airport a bit earlier to catch an earlier flight. Otherwise I don't get home until close to midnight.

Friday we had 2 ice times, 2 hours each. I got up early and walked around town a bit, and then went for the first ice time. They took our team picture, and we went into power skating, passing shooting, and our first scrimmage. There are only 14 of us, and one guy hurt his shoulder before coming to camp, so he couldn't play. Our team had just 6 people, but we played 3 on 3 which made it easier. We were on "Olympic" ice, which is a larger surface area than most of us are used to, which made it harder. The teams were actually pretty well matched. I felt better at the end of this 2 hour session than I had the previous night.

There was a "chalk talk" session and a "dry land" session in the afternoon. In the chalk talk, the coach went over some ideas on a white board and we got to ask questions about positioning and play. I learned that there are relatively modern ideas about how to line up at a face off, compared to the kind of standard thing we do in our league. The dry land session was something I'd never done, and it was great. The idea (for us) was to level the field a bit by taking skating out of the picture, and working on positioning and offensive and defensive strategies. We just used a small soft ball that we threw to each other. We took the ideas from dry land to the ice in the second ice session.

I don't remember being this tired since hiking up Pikes Peak when I was at camp in Colorado as a kid. Two hours on the ice is about twice what I'm used to, and the pace is pretty intense. I'm having a great time, and getting a lot out of this.

We started last night with a stretching drill in the hallway, followed by a 2 hour ice time. The time was divided into power skating, stick handling, passing, and shooting. I was pretty beat by the time the session was over.

We then met for a happy hour and snack food. It's kind of funny, because the stretching instructor talked to us about the value of eating right, and there we were drinking beer and eating snack food. I guess carbs are carb. I like beer, but my stomach was at DefCon 3 after the 2 hour session, so I stuck with water.

I had a great time, and most of what we were doing was above my head, but I think that's a good thing. There are only 14 of us, but as yet we're not getting much individual help with things we're doing wrong. And I'm doing a lot wrong. But when I ask for help, the instructors are great about trying to fix things.

I spent most of the morning working on "the book", but got a much needed haircut too. I checked in at 2 PM with the CAN/AM people, got my Jersey (very cool), socks, and program. At 2:45 there was an orientation and we got to meet the other people here. There are 3 on-ice coaches, one of whom works with goalies. The other two (Rodger and JF) will work with the rest of us, and they seem great -- experienced and determined to teach us and have some fun.

Surprisingly I am not the oldest person here. There is a guy here who is 66 years old who is returning to hockey after not playing for 5 years or so. To my relief, the other people should not be too far above my level. Most have either started hockey in the past 7 years, or are returning after not playing a while. There is one guy who is probably much better than the rest of us, but I'll just try to learn from him as well.

We have a lecture at 6 PM and then we get on the ice for the first time at 7.

I flew today, from St Louis to Washington Dulles, to Albany, NY. Miraculously, my hockey gear, sticks, and regular luggage arrived just fine. Flying into Albany, we passed over some really beautiful scenery: green, mountainous, NY state at its best.

I rented the car and hit the Thruway toward the Adironadacks. My last time in this area, I was camping with IBM Research people for the Fall Colors annual trip. This was over 20 years ago. Some boots I have still has Adirondack mud on them -- black and irremovable.

It's about a 2 hour drive from the airport to Lake Placid. Once you get off the highway, you pass through some small towns well suited to receiving tourists, but everything looks beautiful all the same.

Lake Placid is about 100 times more amazing than I thought it would be. The lake itself is large and beautiful. The hotel is right on the lake, and I can view it from my balcony. I walked through this part of town, and it has the expected tourists shops, but the views and the cool weather change things completely. It has started to rain, but that's not detracting from things at all.

I check in tomorrow afternoon for camp. I hope I'm not in too far over my head, but I'll find that out tomorrow. Tonight it's a little bit of work (wireless access in the room), a nice dinner, and seeing the rest of my Netflix movie I brought.

I don't usually get ready for a trip more than a few hours before I have to be at the airport. I've gotten pretty good about provisioning, and it's easy to throw some things in a suitcase.

But I spent a few hours today, two days before my departure, preparing for my upcoming to......camp.

In observance of a significant birthday (I'll disclose the number over a beer if you are interested), I am treating myself to 4 days of ice hockey camp.

While I really, really like ice hockey, I'm not very good at it, and camp is my attempt to get better and prove to myself that getting old doesn't have to be boring.

So I'll fly and then drive to Lake Placid to create my own version of Miracle. I will post about my experiences if and when I return.

I was intrigued by the reasoning in this article, as to why the Catholic Church feels that its priest should be exclusively male. The argument is that since Jesus Christ picked men as his apostles that the Catholic priesthood should be comprised only of men.

Mathematically speaking, is gender the most probably property prevalent among the apostles?

Back in Jesus's time, and still true today, Jesus had two genders from which to choose: male and female. With two choices for each apostle, and assuming uncorrelated selection, we get 12 men with probability 2 to the 12th power, or 1 in 4096.

Back in Jesus' time, there were certainly more than two religious backgrounds from which to constitute apostles. At the very least, we had Jews, Islamists, and pagans; the choices were actually much larger, but this is all I need to make my point.

Thus, the probability of Jesus's apostles being all Jewish would be no greater than 1 in 3 to the 12th power, or 1 in 531,441.

In other words, the fact that the apostles were Jewish is a more selective criterion than was their gender.

And the next step is easy: if Jesus's criteria for choosing apostles is relevant to how the Catholic Church chooses priests, then they should be Jewish as well as male.

John McClamrock played football at my high school in Dallas, in the class a year ahead of mine. I just received this link to a story about him and his mother, who cared for him until John's death this past Spring, and who just herself died this month.

I didn't know John well, but the story of his classmates' support is really inspirational.

I attended commencement today, which held a number of surprises.

First, Chris Matthews, our commencement speaker, gave one of the best commencement addresses I have heard. He was inspirational and had clearly done some research to prepare his remarks. I had not seen his program on TV, but had seen the impersonation of him by Darrell Hammond on Saturday Night Live. The real thing lived up to the imitation.

Another surprise was the reception given to Quincy Jones on receiving his honorary PhD. There was a very well deserved standing ovation given to him by students and faculty. In light of all the publicity about Phyllis Schlafly, I was glad to see that people appreciated Jones's outstanding work.

And the other surprise was the decorum observed when Phyllis Schlafly received her honorary PhD. From the stage, all I could see were backs turned, because those who
objected to this event stood up and turned their backs on the presentation. But there was no booing or hissing, and people really did rise to the occasion.

It is hopeful that the Schlafly affair will cause the university to reaffirm its stance on advocating and realizing gender equality in the institution. Our Chancellor made such a remark, and there have been many conversations about the issue -- conversations that might have taken place sans Schlafly but took place definitely because of her honorary PhD.

I visited my mailbox this morning to pull out the exams that students have turned in. I leafed through the exams, and saw that the students were speaking at length and with passion and expertise about parsing, activation records, semantic analysis, code generation --- all of the courses one expects at a 5-star compiler banquet.

I was taken back to my days at Rice when I studied these topics with Ken Kennedy, of blessed memory. The thought that these students now know what he taught me gave me one of those rare I-Thou moments.

As the Olympic torch makes its way to Beijing, a torch of a different kind passes from generation to generation. It's worth stopping to notice this.

Some years ago, when I worked for IBM, a business trip took me through the United Airlines terminal at Chicago's O'Hare airport.

O'Hare is one of the world's busiest airports, and United is one of their biggest customers. Two of their concourses, B and C, are actually in separate terminals (1 and 2). Because they are so far apart and because connection times between flights can be short, a tunnel was constructed between the two.

As you can see from its photos, this is no ordinary tunnel. There are neon lights that flash in progression, and music suggestive of Rhapsody in Blue, the United Airlines theme piece, accompanied your transit through the tunnel. You could walk through the tunnel or take a moving walkway to make the trip a bit quicker.

On my first trip through the tunnel, I was completely unprepared for what I was about to experience. It's easy to become jaded about air travel, and to acquire a certain numbness when flinging between cities and traversing airports. This tunnel had a profound effect on me, and made me reawaken to the wonders of flight.

On every trip since, through O'Hare on United, I have sought out the tunnel between flights, even if I didn't need to connect between the terminals, just to have the tunnel experience.

I did so yesterday, as I flew through O'Hare from St. Louis to Moline, where I would then drive to Iowa City. I was very disappointed to see that some of the neon lights were not functioning -- these hang overhead and usher your way through the tunnel. Also, there was no music at all -- no eerie tones or fragments of the Rhapsody. All you could hear was the drone voice telling you to look down, as the moving walkway was about to end.

Chicago, United, O'Hare -- your neglect of this previously eye- and ear-opening experience is appalling. This year is the 20th anniversary of the completion of the tunnel. Can't you work on it a bit and restore it to its original magnificence?

See this for a simple experiment that yielded an amazing result: butterflies remember things from when they were caterpillars.