SurlyORama

"No" is "less", but "less" isn't necessarily "no".

FIFY

Followup, we really enjoyed it. MUCH better than an ocean cruise in our opinions. We are mid-late 50's, and were in the younger half of passengers. Although, there were a few younger than us, with the youngest couple in their 30's. That was never an issue at all. We found a few couples that we enjoyed spending time with, eating meals with, etc. Food was great, drinks were good (if not great), and all inclusive. We have booked a Christmas Market cruise (Danube river, Budapest-Munich) with them in December 2024.

My son was a swimmer for Bowman at ASU. Part of Bowman’s second class at ASU. Prior to and even during/after his time at ASU, my son was a huge fan of UT swimming and Eddie Reese in particular. Would have been his first choice destination, but admittedly he wasn’t a big enough recruit for UT, and even getting onto the ASU team (non-scholarship) sort of surprised us. Let’s just say that after our experience, we are not fans of Bowman’s “style” and how he deals with people. When we went on the visit, he told us that my son is now “one of HIS guys, and he will always take care of him and treat him right.” As Bowman recruited at a higher and higher level, my son ended up “cut without being cut” from the team going into his senior year. Not the courage to actually cut him, but just sort of treat him poorly and try and make him quit (I know, not that uncommon, lots of coaches are assholes like that). My son is not a quitter, and kept working his ass off to contribute. He (and we as parents) could handle him being cut as long as it was done in a respectful and honest way; that’s just life sometimes. The way it actually happened made it even worse than what would be a difficult thing no matter what (among other things, accusing my son of not taking care of an injured shoulder summer after junior year when in fact the trainers on the team denied him that treatment when he repeatedly requested it, then just saying “oops, guess I was given wrong information”.) From what my kid tells me based on what he’s learned from friends in the swimming world, pretty much the opposite of Reese in most ways (he does know swimming, and obviously made ASU much better). He’s not sure this style will work as well at a place like UT that isn’t looking for a huge turnaround. I guess time will tell. I can tell you we are not rooting for his success because of our experience.

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A client of my brother (who owns a gym) had a knee replacement called a "Jiffy Knee". Avoids cutting through a lot of the muscles and tendons of a "traditional" replacement (the pic attached is him, you can see the incision is more to the side than the ones I'm used to seeing). He was walking with a cane and almost no apparent pain the day after the surgery. Played golf two weeks later. He was a former CEO for an insurance company you've heard of, so I tend to think this wasn't some fly-by-night experimental surgery. If I ever need a knee replaced, I know I'll at least look into it.

Team chopped up bacon here.

Loved that game.

Here's a shot of the muffins being cooked, didn't take one with the PB. Next time.

I went back to the thing that started this whole thread. Toasted english muffin with peanut butter. Made the english muffins (sourdough) from scratch. Was great.

Oh we have, and continue to do so. I'm not worried his approach will change significantly (his work so far has reflected that it hasn't), but it was crushing to him for a while.

A&M. In my experience as a hiring manager for CS students, not significantly worse. But ratings-wise it’s a decent bit lower (#41 vs #8 in most recent US News rankings). Perhaps didn’t mention on this particular forum because reasons. [emoji12]

Is this thread only for those who couldn't get into UT at all? How about into specific schools or majors? Two years ago, my son was top 1% in a large, competitive school, National Merit Scholarship winner, 1560 SAT, loaded up with extracurriculars (soccer through varsity, DECA (president senior year) and FBLA multiple years including national and international placement) and volunteer/charitable work all through high school. Bottom line, worked his ass off and did everything he could to get into UT CS (his first choice). Didn't have any special tutors, didn't take any SAT prep courses, didn't get any help writing his essays, etc. Just grinded and accomplished stuff on his own talents and efforts. So, while he did get an auto-admit into UT (liberal arts), he was hard rejected from computer science. Got a solid wall of "it's a comprehensive evaluation" responses when talking to anyone at the school about what he might have done to get in. Considered going in and trying to transfer, but from what we've heard the odds of that working into CS are as low or lower as they were for him to get into the school to begin with. They have an "accelerated transfer" program where you can attend for a period and as long as you get the right grades in the right classes you can automatically transfer in. But, it's "invitation only" and he did not get invited. When we contacted people about how he might be considered, we got a circular-referral-runaround where everyone simply said it's not up to them who gets invited and pointed us to someone else (eventually leading back the the first person we contacted). I understand that CS at UT is very competitive. But meanwhile, other students with similar or less impressive credentials got accepted by UT CS as well as places like Stanford, Michigan, etc. (he was also rejected by these). There were "demographic" differences in these cases. So he went elsewhere and will graduate with a near-perfect GPA in 3 years. He could have gotten into this school with far less effort and a far inferior resume, which I'm sure left him wondering why he worked so hard for so long.

I went a different direction with my "Christmas Menu" this year. Visiting family out-of-state, with others coming from Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin. I'm the "designated cocktail guy", so I went more structured this year... Was a big hit, with the "Rum Rum Rudolph" being the most favored (of course it was the first day, so not the best choice by me I guess).

I can tell you that my interest in and love for college football is waning, and I don't see that stopping anytime soon. In 10 years not sure I will even be watching. Don't have much interest in the NFL, and it's heading down the same path for me. In the VERY near future (if not already), it will just be the UAPFL - "University-Affiliated Professional Football League". While I don't begrudge the players trying to maximize their personal financial benefit, I just don't have interest in watching a bunch of mercenaries who are only at the school for that reason, playing for their third school in four years, etc. It's NFL, but worse, in every way that made me love college football.