8.12.25
We took a short trip last week prior to Will starting up school again, but before we did that, Julie and I went to see the Flaming Lips up at the Roxy in the Battery where the Braves stadium is. I probably would have gone just for the Flaming Lips (and will definitely do so in the future now that I've had the experience), but it was a triple bill where every band was one I wanted to see.

The opener was Friko, an up and coming band from Chicago who I saw at the Earl last year, and the middle band was Modest Mouse, one of my favorite groups of all time who I've now seen live 8 times, third on my most-frequently-seen artists behind Robyn Hitchcock and the Decemberists (and just ahead of Waxahatchee, Wilco, and Belle and Sebastian).

Julie's not a huge Flaming Lips fan, but I convinced her she's really like the stagecraft and light show (which I had no experience with either, but I'm well aware of the reputation and have seen clips of online). She usually likes to get seats in the balcony for that venue, but they were crazy expensive, so we just got GA floor tickets. For Friko and Modest Mouse, I didn't really care where we were standing, since I was there mostly for the music, but when Modest Mouse wrapped up, we found a nice spot in the middle of the floor where we could get the full impact of the lights, bubbles, streamers, and all the other stuff that happens during a Flaming Lips set.

I kind of knew what to expect, but this show still blew me away. Aside from a couple of annoying people who were intent on taking up way too much space given how tightly packed the crowd was, it was a show you could really get lost in, immersing yourself in the lights and the sound and all the spectacle. Even if you've seen clips online, it in no way compares to the experience of actually being there, and it's a show that I bet even people who don't care that much for their music could enjoy.

But I do happen to love a lot of their music, and the playlist was definitely tailored to fan favorite song, drawing heavily from their two most successful albums, The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, with a few covers and highlights from a couple of other albums rounding things out. Julie said it was one of her favorite concerts ever, and they have now become a band that we might actually travel to see.

8.13.25
We didn't really take a vacation this summer, so before Will started back at school, we took a few days to go up to Ellijay, which is pretty close by and has a lot of fun stuff to do. We did a lot of our typical stuff—eating at favorite restaurants in town, doing hikes in places like Fort Mountain State Park and Amicalola Falls, visiting a gemstone mining place, and perusing a few of the antique shops—but we also tried a few new things.

First, we capped off our day of hiking up to the top of Amicalola Falls (and back down to our car) by driving to the lodge at the very top of the mountain to have dinner. We ate on a deck outside, and got to see a young bear wander down near the treeline. The weather was very unsettled that day, and as the sun was setting, we got to see clouds/fog roll across the valley and up the mountain, to the point where, when it was at its thickest, we couldn't see more than 50 yards or so.

On the way back, I noticed that one of our tires was low, so we stopped at a gas station to refill it and then visited Walmart to pick up an air compressor to make sure we could make it back to the cabin for the night and then bring it into town first thing in the morning. We found a like father and son tire repair place that got good reviews, and they patched it up in a few minutes for only $10. We stayed to chat with them for a while after it was fixed though—both father and son (along with the son's son) are dirt track racers, and they took us into an adjacent garage to show us the cars they were prepping for their next race.

The other new thing we tried was tubing on the Cartecay River. I know I've done tubing at some point in my life, but it's been a long time, and I don't think Julie or Will had ever done it on a real river. We started off at a pizza place outside of town to the east, and then let the river carry us all the way back into town, where a small bus was waiting to take us and our tubes back to the parking lot where we started.

The river runs right next to a local highway, so there was some traffic noise. But since it was so late in the season, there wasn't anyone else tubing on the river that day, and it was a pretty serene experience that lasted at least an hour, and even if we go back during the busy tourist season, I'd definitely want to do this again.

It was a nice little trip overall, although we're hoping that next year we can do a proper summer vacation. But we still like visiting Ellijay, and even if we don't do a big trip up there, I'm sure we'll do a couple of long weekends.

8.14.25
Although Julie and I have reservations about the long-term viability of Will's current high school, we've already paid a significant portion of the tuition for the upcoming school year, and since the next payment isn't due for a few weeks, it made sense for him to give it a go to see if it's still a good fit for him, all the while preparing for a switch to the local public high school in case it's not what we or he needs it to be this year.

Well, his first day back was last week, and as much as he loved the experience last year, he came home and told us he knew pretty instantly that this was not likely to be a good fit for him now. It was already a small school, but many of his friends from last year have left for various reasons, and he now has some classes that only have one or two other people in them, which isn't a great learning environment in general and certainly isn't the kind of learning environment Will thrives in.

In the past week after that first day, things haven't gotten much better, so it seems likely at this point that we'll switch him to the local public high school (which is walkable from our house) after Labor Day. It's a shame that we'll lose a lot of money that we've already invested in the private school for this school year and that they weren't able to build on the very good first year he had there, but we've all been thinking about this and preparing for this possibility for the past few months, so hopefully that will help make the transition a little smoother.

8.19.25
I recently finished Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour, an oral history of the Lollapalooza festival through its early years, from its inaugural dates in 1991 to its final appearance as a traveling roadshow in 1997 (it has since been reincarnated as an annual festival in Chicago, and now has spinoff sister festivals in various cities in South America and Europe).

It's an okay read, but it's probably only worth it if you either attended multiple years of the festival and/or are a fan of a significant portion of the bands who played the festival in the early years, since much of the content is about the experience from the musicians' point of view, often supplemented by stories from the Lollapalooza crew and the entourages of the artists.

I went to the first two Lollapaloozas, seeing the 1991 Jane's Addiction-headlined first year in Raleigh, and the 1992 Red Hot Chili Peppers-headlined second year in Charlotte, both of which had incredible lineups for my musical tastes (those festivals are still the only times I've seen bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Fishbone, Pearl Jam, Lush, and Jesus and Mary Chain live). So those first couple of sections (which take up nearly half the book even though they comprise less than a third of the years covered) were really great for me to experience some nostalgia and get more insights into what was happening backstage during the shows I saw.

Even for an oral history, it can be a little scattershot, and I might have preferred a more journalistic approach that peppered in some of the better band anecdotes. I would have also been interested in the story of the festival's resurrection as a Chicago event (which has survived for 21 years if you count the upcoming 2026 edition, three times longer than the original traveling roadshow version), and an overview of important developments in its Chicago incarnation (but certainly not a blow by blow of each year in Chicago).

But again, it's a worthwhile read if you attended any of those 90s versions and have an interest in the music from that time, as the different versions of Lollapalooza in the 90s featured a wide cross section of key acts from that period.

8.20.25
We've officially decided to move Will to Druid Hills High School after Labor Day. He's nervous, but he knows it's the right thing to do, and he's looking forward to going to a school where he has several friends already, where the door will be open to make lots of new friends, and where he'll have the opportunity to do all sorts of extracurricular stuff that isn't available at a small school like the one he's going to now.

8.21.25
I've been sick the last couple of days, and there must be something going around because one of my other team members has also been out (we work mostly remotely and haven't seen each other in person for a couple of weeks, so I didn't get it from him), along with a few other people from our office. Luckily it's relatively quiet this time of year—we're doing lots of behind-the-scenes stuff to get ready for the next cycle, but there aren't a lot of new requests or emails to respond to.

8.26.25
These days, I usually wait until a streaming series has aired all of its episodes for the current season before I start watching, so I can ingest them as quickly or as leisurely as I'd like. But I was intrigued enough by the premise of Alien: Earth, the new series from FX/Hulu set in Ridley Scott's Alien universe, that I watched the first three episodes about a week after the series premiered.

The series takes place about 15 years after the second of Scott's second Alien prequel films, Alien: Covenant, and shortly before the events of the original Alien film starring Sigourney Weaver. It concerns the crew of a research vessel owned by one of the Earth's major corporate entities, Weyland-Yutani that is returning to Earth after decades away collecting alien species, including the titular xenomorphs, for research and exploitation. But on after a mishap on board (which I won't spoil here), the crew loses control of the ship, and it crash lands inside a major city owned by another corporation, Prodigy, which is owned by a wunderkind Peter Pan-type whose exact age isn't specified but who appears to be in his early to mid 20s.

In addition to the tension between these corporate entities as to who owns the crashed ship and its contents and the fact that several alien species, including a xenomorph, are now on the loose in an Earth city, the series also introduces us to a new type of artificial humans aside from the androids/synths like Ash and Bishop from the first two Alien movies: hybrids, who have synthetic bodies like the androids but whose minds are inhabited by humans who have had their consciousnesses transferred from their human brains into synthetic bodies.

I'm only three episodes in (out of eight that will air this season), but there are a lot of paths they could explore that could open up Alien canon and give us the foundations of other spin off series or movies. It seems like the main conflicts will happen between the corporate entities and their leaders, and also between the various types of intelligent beings (humans, synths, hybrids, and presumably at least the xenomorphs if not other alien species) as they all vie for power and control. There's obvious going to be the horror and action elements that the franchise is known for, but there's room for so much else in the world they've presented to us so far.

8.27.25
I was informed earlier this week that my institution has been included in yet another unfounded (in my opinion, of course) class action lawsuit that includes several other higher ed institutions, which in addition to potentially affecting our membership in a few trade groups, also impacts our current operational procedures and could impact our workflows going forward. And just because it has no merit doesn't mean that it won't move ahead in this current political environment, which combines a general anti-higher-ed sentiment with a Dunning-Kruger-esque lack of actual expertise that masquerades as being fully cognizant of all the nuances of highly selective college enrollment.

The last time this happened, my team and I (mostly me) spent months on weekly calls with lawyers and fulfilling massive document requests from the plaintiffs' legal teams. Even though we genuinely believed that the lawsuit was improperly filed against us (none of the named plaintiffs had ever applied to our institution, and we hadn't been a member of the trade group the class action suit targeted since before any of the plaintiffs had been old enough to apply for college), leadership eventually decided that they didn't want to drag things out for years in litigation and ended up paying out a fairly significant settlement just to make it go away.

It's getting harder and harder to love what I'm asked to do every day, even though I believe in my institution, I believe in the ethics and morals of how my office does its work, and there are still sufficient new opportunities to improve our work by leveraging technology and analytics. But more and more of my time is seems to be spent think of ways to maintain the consistency, equity, and efficiency of our process while we're asked to process an increasing number of applications each year without any additional resources and with various parts of our toolkit being removed or constricted. That's not what has brought me joy in this job, and that's not why I've dedicated myself to this industry for the past quarter century.

8.28.25
Will's going to switch to his new school after the Labor Day break, so we're going to do some fun stuff with him over the next few days. He's still a little nervous about the change, but I think it will be fine, although a transition like this is always a big deal.