Thus began, two days ago, a remarkable exhange which is ongoing still, which has expanded to email conversations with several other professors in the department, including an invitation to me and Dear Wife to go back to Purdue to speak about some of our volunteer work, and most extraordinarily, offers to see if my 25 year old thesis might be resurrected, revivified and completed and resubmitted.

Now about the thesis: I have a draft of it around someplace, I think.  But what I don't have is the raw data that went into it, so there's no way in hell that I could actually complete the degree.  But it was so much fun to think about it!  As I said to the professor who volunteered to help me debug the old gremlin that derailed me:

Without the data, of course, we cannot ressurrect my bug. But just to imagine that we could ressurrect it and fix it!  It would be like one of those love stories where a pair of high-school sweethearts torn from each other by cruel fate improbably find each other again after decades apart and finally consumate their  love!

I cannot write the whole story yet, as there are lots of things happening.  I may not write much more about this for a few months, until after Betty and I have made our triumphal return to Purdue. There's a high probability that this story  will interest nobody but me, but I'll write it up anyway; it just may take a while.

Recently I wrote here about meeting Douglas Hofstadter.  That was a great thrill.  Life-validation wise, this development is of the same significance.