caltech took the elder boy to pasadena for a tour of caltech. he thinks he wants to go there. despite having met several of its products. things are very different now than they were 30 years ago when i was there. most strikingly the male:female ratio is 60:40. which really changes the dynamics of things. like house selection. and testosterone levels. my mind kinda boggled rejecting the claim. but when i looked around, there really were a huge number of asian chicks running around campus. so maybe. cool! actually. bodes well for science technology engineering math. i'd like to say accolades to caltech. but the credit really goes to the high schools for getting women into stem. other things: pretty much everything was remodeled. the red door cafe was the same but completely different. an eighth house was added. it seems to be twice the size of the north houses. which is weird. why didn't they split the building into two new houses instead of one? avery will have a rather large advantage in intramurals. ah well. sucks to be a flem. speaking of which, i didn't see a single red shirt. which was good. i never really thought "thundering herd". i always thought the house looked like it was menstruating all the time. the giant annual interhouse party is now split up. every month or so one of the houses throws a big party. nobody remembers kkal. campus itself was bigger. many of the residential houses were gone. there were at least a dozen new parking structures. all but one were topped with solar panels. which is good. gotta power the air conditioners sticking out of every dorm room window. the spoiled snowflakes. the exception was the parking structure under the baseball field. course those caltech folks might have figured out a way to make solar panels look and feel like grass. so i'll allow as to how i might be wrong about that. the nice admissions lady went on and on about the honor system. tests are still take home. yay. she handed out 10% coupons for lunch at chandler. which apparently is where everyone eats lunch. lunch is no longer served in the houses. different. the cashier took my coupon but didn't give me the discount. honor code? what honor code? i just didn't worry about the dollar. we bought some swag at the bookstore. which also was the same but completely different. this nice cashier (who didn't know about the other rude cashier) gave us a 15% discount. so i guess caltech didn't care about the two dollars either. apparently my buddy and now world famous awther was there promoting his book the month before. his propaganda material was still not-quite-on-display. campus is officially dry. which is good. there were too many alcoholics (both kinds) when i was there. unofficially, the students have alcohol. like, duh. which is also good. they're adults. they should be able to make their own decisions. even bad ones. overall, lotta changes. most good. some just different. and one bad one: the new athletics building lost my trophy. the thomas w latham award for most outstanding wrestler is not in the trophy case. which made me sad. ah well.  ¶ 8:00 AM