College Tours: Then vs Now or Here vs There?

I’ve reached the point in my life where we’re now taking tours of colleges and universities for my own kids, and something struck me as we were walking around UChicago this past weekend… aside from the ridiculously expense cost which is potentially a topic for another post.

It was great seeing the beautiful campus, and hearing about all the great things alumni from the university have done. But what hit me was that on the tours we’ve been on, not once have we actually gone into an academic building. We haven’t seen an actual dorm (at UM we saw a “model”… but how realistic is that). And we haven’t seen or eaten at a cafeteria. Sure the guides have told us all about it, but there’s a huge difference between hearing, seeing, and experiencing.

I get it that you can’t really experience a class, and you’re going to get people who complain if you go into the humanities building vs the physics lab (or some such), but the point is something is usually better than nothing.

Now “back in my day” (yes, I’m old) when I gave tours at Kettering all of that was what set things apart IMO. I loved taking the kids/families into the rec center, through the tunnel to the academic building, and even into my own dorm room. I like to think it’s part of the reason I chose Kettering/GMI over some of the other schools I looked at. That openness and lack of pretentiousness. Real people doing real things.

Who knows… maybe they don’t do that anymore at Kettering (my kids have no interest in following in my footsteps), but it would be a shame if they don’t… and it’s a shame they haven’t done it at the places we’ve toured.

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

The Art of Not Sharing

Check out this article: The Art of Not Sharing

“In the pre-digital age, privacy was the default state. Sharing information required effort – writing a letter, making a phone call, or having a face-to-face conversation. Now, privacy requires effort. We have to actively choose not to share, to resist the temptation to post, to keep our thoughts and experiences to ourselves.”

“I think of my journal as my private social media feed, one where I’m the only follower. Like a social media platform, it’s a place for me to share my thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Unlike social media, there’s no pressure for me to perform, no need to curate, no risk of oversharing.”

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

This is an embarrassment and should be a crime

From today’s Morning Brew (which you should subscribe to BTW)

Federal minimum wage
2015: $7.25 per hour
2025: $7.25 per hour

Average cost of a home in the US
2015: $366,000
2025: $503,800

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Drip files one at a time for processing with a Windows batch script

Ever have a collection of files that you need to send off to something else for processing, but need to process the files one at a time waiting for the completion of each (signaled by a file’s existence because you have no hook to the return code of the originating process) before continuing with the next?

No? Just me? 🤣 Anyway, here’s a script that takes an array of files, copies them to a directory for a different app to process, waits for that process to end (by looking for the file with a done extension added) before continuing on with the next.

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

set IMPORTDIR=X:\App\Process\

rem List your files here (one per line)
set FILES[0]=X:\Data\File1.csv
set FILES[1]=X:\Data\File2.csv
set FILES[2]=X:\Data\File3.csv

rem Set the number of files
set NUMFILES=3

set SLEEP_SECONDS=5

for /L %%I in (0,1,%NUMFILES%-1) do (
    call :WAITLOOP "!FILES[%%I]!"
)

echo All files processed.
exit /b

:WAITLOOP
rem Get the base name (without extension) and directory
set "FULLFILE=%~1"
set "BASEDIR=%~dp1"
set "BASENAME=%~n1"

if "%BASENAME%"=="" (
    rem This is important so we actually terminate
    goto :EOF
)

rem Compose the .done filename
set "DONEFILE=%IMPORTDIR%%BASENAME%.csv.done"

if exist "%DONEFILE%" (
    echo Removing previous done file.
    del "%DONEFILE%"
)

copy "%FULLFILE%" "%IMPORTDIR%%BASENAME%.csv"

:LOOP
if exist "%DONEFILE%" (
    echo File found: %DONEFILE%
    goto :EOF
) else (
    echo Waiting for file: %DONEFILE%
    timeout /t %SLEEP_SECONDS% /nobreak >nul
    goto LOOP
)

Just update the details as needed, but the above is tested and works!

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.