"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

San Pedro Garza Garcia

Category: Work Page 2 of 8

Morning routine with Kiwi

I usually get up very early because I need to coordinate my work with the people in the Boston office, a three hour difference from where we leave. Fortunately (or unfortunately–however one looks at it), Kiwi is an earlier riser, too. The thing is, she only rises long enough to park herself on my lap when I start work. After 10-15 minutes, she gets irritated with me moving around to much for her to sleep, so she moves to the area between the keyboard and the monitor. That is way more manageable because the most I usually have to do is push her head down when I cannot see something on the screen.

JHU-APL Data Scientist

A month or so ago, Kelly’s old boss from her college internship to ask her to return to work for him as a data scientist. It is quite a prestigious institution at the bleeding edge of lots of different technologies. Her job will be to work on a range of problems, improving her skills as she goes. The reality is this would not be a bad place for Christian either, if he can get hired there. She can either continue to work as a data scientist and/or get paid for getting a PhD in Statistics at Johns Hopkins University. She is really grateful for the opportunity, especially because she knows the people and the kind of work she would do.

New Year’s Resolve 2019

New Year’s Eve was good. Lorena and I spent a couple of hours at our friends’, Stan and Diane, house with a small group of older folks from our church. We, of course, ate too much then came home a little early, talked and went to bed. I spent a good chunk of this holiday season in bed or an easy chair with a cold so I had a lot of time to reflect on life and what we are doing with it. When I say we, I mean Lorena and I. That reflection led to more questions than answers. Do we live in a house that is too big? How soon should I retire? Do stay here or go somewhere else when that happens? Or sooner? I guess my New Year’s Resolution is to seek some guidance from God on those questions. I am surely thankful to be married to Lorena as my she wants precisely the same things–the right, or at least good answers.

Six month and still thriving

After six months, I still love my new job, even with every other week being in Boston. Yesterday morning, my boss came around the office in Boston and gave everyone a really nice bottle of wine but be because I travel. So instead, he got me a gift certificate to take Lorena out to dinner and gave me a really nice card. I am working with really good people on a really hard project. The company listens to me–we have brought in two of my ex-colleagues to speed up the process. If it remains like this, it would be great to stay here until I retire in a few more years.

Back to work

After one of the nicest Thanksgivings in recent memory (by accident really), we are all back to work. Lorena dropped Christian and off at the airport–Christian is headed back to Arizona and I am writing this post on the plane en route to Boston. Lorena then ran Kelly up to work, did her workout and is back home to take her last Astronomy class test of the semester. Actually, I got a lot done on the GaugeCam/PhD project during vacation last week and in transition back to my day job. It really is nice to have a break, but it is also nice to go back to work, too.

Thoughts on how to get ahead

This picture of Kiwi being miffed that Lorena was trying to sit on her chair does not have a whole lot to do with what I want to write about today, but it was pretty fun. Every time Lorena sat down, Kiwi pushed her away and then sat back with a look of irritation. I needed a picture for the post, this was available, and I wanted to have an excuse to put it up.

The whole family has been inspired to talk about some of the things we do to contribute and to get ahead. A lot of it has to do with the whole concept of life-long learning that Charles Murray talked about fairly frequently. In that context, I have almost always had a project on which I actively worked that contributed to something. I earned money on some of them, but a lot of the time I just worked because the project helped in some way and I was able to learn new stuff. The reality is that I did a lot of this work with now expectation of learning anything, but it happened anyway. Examples of these projects include work on the water level measurement camera (GaugeCam), sickle cell disease diagnostics, labor and delivery management, cataract surgery, water particle measurement in flowing water, and several others.

I think the things they all had in common were that they were hard projects (in the technical sense), they required a longitudinal effort of more than a year, a bunch of non-compensated (monetarily) work was required at the front end, and I had the ability to uniquely contribute because of my technical skills. Virtually every one of those kinds of projects turned into a significant amount of money–maybe not significant for some people, but surely significant for me. In addition, every one of them opened new opportunities. The work I am doing right now would not have been possible had I not learned a bunch of new stuff about embedded programming, web programming, machine learning, etc., etc. that I never would have gotten in my day job. More important than the money is the fact that I am doing invention daily. I know it is critical to have dedicated people to perform the mechanical tasks of daily life like farming, medicine, manufacturing, etc., but it is a gift to have spent a career at the bleeding edge of invention. There is always something new and interesting to learn and use that requires all the mental faculties to even understand, let alone exploit. I know that is not for everyone, but I am certainly grateful and humbled to have had this kind of work.

Christian has been thinking about what he wants to do next. His PhD adviser is a luminary in Christian’s research area and one of the best PhD advisers I have ever seen–he takes great care of his students, is inspirational, pushes them to do hard stuff, and demands quality in every aspect of their research. He gets the very best students because of that, so Christian rubs shoulders with a great group of fellow students every day. The get great jobs in a variety of places and one of them has an idea to start a business. That is a perfect setting to find the exact kind of projects that can lead to life-long learning. One buddy even wants them to start a business together–a highly technical business that requires the kind of preparation one can only receive in a math intensive PhD program. I say go for it!

New raincoat for the coming Boston weather

I ordered a bright red raincoat and had it shipped to the Boston office. Bright red because it gets dark early in the winter and I do not want to get hit by a truck. It is not really a winter coat, but something more than just a windbreaker. The plan is to wear sweaters underneath and get some weatherproof shoes when the snow hits. My decision to take Uber from the airport to the hotel and back seems to still be a fine decision because it forces me to walk the mile and a half to the Whole Foods (not a fan, but it is the only grocery store within shooting distance) and driving in Boston in the winter is, I think, a sport for younger men with faster reactions. The raincoat will join my Boston scale and a large container of skin moisturizer that I keep in the file cabinet at my desk. I am sure that repository will grow.

Birthday 63

Yesterday was my 63rd birthday. It is a strange and interesting time in life and the world. The New Year whether counted from one’s birthday, January 1, or some other important annual even like the start of school or a church convention is a time for reflection. For some reason, this year more than many in the past, I feel a need to reassess what we (Lorena and I) do. We have a few short term goals we want to accomplish like Lorena’s degree and some remodel projects, but in the whole scheme of things, they are not so consequential.

I have professional and financial responsibilities to meet over the next couple of years, but they are not so onerous. I also have some side projects I want to complete. The main one is the coffee bean project, but I also really would like to do some work with my new friend Stan on his Raspberry Pi. All those things considered, I am seeing how it might be good to figure out what to do when I retire in 3-4 years. Do we stay where we are? We like it here, but we are the kind of people who believe there is a place we are “supposed” to be. We need to give it some time to figure out. It is nice to have events like birthdays so this kind of thing comes onto one’s radar.

Beside all that, I had a great, but very quiet birthday. Both the kids called, I talked to Grandma Conchita on Skype, Lorena cooked me a really nice, too big, New York steak and a carrot cake, and Kiwi sat on my lap more than she should have given that it diminishes my work output fairly dramatically.

Wildlife from the office window


I hope I never get tired of seeing this out my office window. As I write this, I am looking at a doe and her fawn eating plums and apples a little bit further out in the yard.

New office location

Before the big party the other day, I moved my office from one of the top floors of house to the basement. This was my view on the first day I worked there. I think this was a good move. There is a good view of the mountain and I am close to things on the ground. The deer come to the back yard to clean up the fruit on the ground. There are a good number of fawns included in their number. I have been trying to get a picture of the neighbor’s cat who comes and visits at the door on a fairly regular basis. All this is really quite peaceful and I am looking forward to the time when I can be down here working on my bean project at a leisurely pace if I ever get to retire.

PDX rebooted

I have flown in and out of Portland International Airport more than any other airport for my entire professional life. Honestly, PDX had lost its luster over the years as the Portland culture seemed to coarsen in lockstep with the aging of the quite famous PDX carpet. While the city of Portland and the State of Oregon maintain their unparalleled beauty, (well, that is true for the City of Portland, only if you do not look too close) the coarsening of the culture has not abated. That can not be said about PDX anymore. Most of my travel was pre-remodel and now they have the new carpet installed. It is a joy to fly in and out of here now. It is not really up to the level of our beloved RDU airport, but that is really just a regional airport so might not be a fair comparison and PDX is almost that good anyway.

After taking the first few flights since returning to the Pacific Northwest out of SeaTac airport to China, Boston, and Phoenix–a truly horrible airport situated in an impossible place–we have decided we will fly out of Portland whenever possible and only fly out of SeaTac when we need to see Kelly before or after the flight. The drive down to PDX is really beautiful and not even close to the horror of driving through Olympia/Tacoma/Seattle traffic. It is a whole lot easier to get to PDX from the north rather than the south, so we are grateful for that. too.

Working in Boston

I started a new job last week. I flew to Boston to get started with the new company. I had a good number of firsts while I was there–at at Wahlburgers, stayed at a bed and breakfast, flew on JetBlue, and gave a talk at Harvard. I have to admit that the best of all of those was flying on JetBlue. I am a big fan now. The work looks like it is going to be very interesting, but there will be a LOT to do, especially as I get started. The plan is to travel to Boston once per month for a week at a time–maybe a little more than that as I get oriented. This time, I am at a medical device company, but there are really no FDA compliance issues yet, so I will not be hung up in paperwork ninety percent of the time. The problem is a hard one, but it should be fun and interesting, too. I ordered a new computer, a really nice one and everyone has treated me really well. It is a small startup with big ambitions which is exactly the kind of thing I like.

Photo by Derek Thomson on Unsplash

Finishing up the current job

My last day for my current job is Friday. I work with an absolutely great company, one of the best bosses I ever had and an amazing team of engineers at LMI Technologies in Burnaby, BC, Canada. I will miss them a lot. I was actually not too excited to leave, but got an offer I could not refuse doing very interesting work in the area of medical research equipment. I will be traveling a little more, but to only one location.

I worked with a close-knit team of engineers in China, Europe, Canada, and the US. We accomplished amazing things in the 14 months I have been there adding an amazing amount of new functionality that should bring in a ton of new business fore the foreseeable future. Most importantly, I made good friends with whom I expect to stay in touch over the long haul. I cannot thank them enough.

I will write a little about the new job as I move into my new position. While it is exciting to me, it might be a little dry to most so I will keep it short.

Got a new job

Just a placeholder post to say I got a new job in Boston, MA with a medical device company doing VERY interesting work. I will have to travel a little less after the first few months and will not have to leave the country as often. It is VERY interesting work and even though I left on excellent terms with my previous company and loved working there, this was an opportunity I could not refuse. More later…

Changes update

I flew to Boston on Thursday and flew home on Saturday morning. It was an interesting trip–everything about the Boston area was beautiful the entire time I was there. I sat beside a US Marine Corp veteran that served as a state legislator for the State of New Hampshire for 14 years. I love it that they have no general sales tax and no income tax, but are on fairly solid financial grounds. As for what will happen relative to the trip, everything is still up in the air as evaluations take place on both sides.

A return to Boston after more than 20 years

Lorena and I set the alarm for 2:30 AM this morning so that I could get to SeaTac airport in time to catch a 6:45 AM flight to Boston Logan Airport. The flight was fairly uneventful–I sat between a Coast Guard sailor and an older woman who was flying to the East Coast to help her nephew and the nephew’s “husband” drive back from Rhode Island to Washington State. Really pleasant people. I caught an Uber from Logan to the Four Points Sheraton in Wakefield. It was rush hour so the driver took back roads to avoid the traffic on I-95. It was a truly beautiful drive with a very nice, one-armed, Hatian man with three daughters. The architecture and all the deciduous trees and the colonial architecture here are a true marvel and a joy to see. We had a great talk and bonded in the way that you can bond with someone who you will probably never see again in your entire life. It should be an interesting day tomorrow. I will explain what I am able to explain about it all when I exit the events of the day tomorrow afternoon.

A quiet Mother’s Day

We put the deck furniture out after Sunday lunch yesterday because of the crazy good weather. We had spent the weekend with the kids in Arizona last week so that was our early Mother’s Day celebration, but Lorena and I talked with both of them and with Grandma Conchita (and Tio Lauro) last night. Mexico celebrates Mother’s Day on May 10th no matter what is the day of the week, so they had actually had there big carne asada with the whole family down at Tio Jorge’s house last weekend, too. It was a very nice, relaxed day–which we really needed after several weeks of upheaval. We did eat out of the house a couple of times yesterday for our own two-person Mother’s Day celebration. Lorena made me were a tie to meeting on Sunday morning and I have finally lost enough weight so it does not just kill me to do that.

The next few weeks could lead to some pretty big changes for our little household with the re-engagement with our friend Troy at University of Nebraska Lincoln and some work opportunities. It has nothing (or at least very little) to do with where we live, but could mean we have a little more mobility on a less onerous schedule.  So there are on-going talks about which I cannot say much through May. I hope to know something before Memorial Day.

It is an odd time

I really did not have a lot of bandwidth today to be reflecting on life, but due to and serendipitous juxtaposition of events it came to my mind that we live in peculiar times. Overnight, new things turn into institutions and just as quickly, fall into oblivion–Facebook, Barack Obama, Kombucha, and on and on. Everything is not like that. Degrees that have hard math in them will still get you a way better job than degrees with minimal math, Washington still grows the best apples, and Jesus is still the same and always will be. Still, it feels like stuff is moving really, really fast politically, morally, economically, and every other way I can imagine. Some of it is for the better (Obama is gone and Hillary is not president), some of it is for the worse (California in general), and some of is hard to tell (Trump).

All this might be because I am just getting older and time seems to be passing more quickly. In all this, the thing to which my reflection left me is that the need to do meaningful things with what time I have left and to not be absorbed by the Borg seems more urgent to me than ever. I wish I would have had this sense of urgency at a younger age. One thing for which I am very grateful is that I did have a strong sense of urgency with respect to the way we raised our kids. We did not get it all right and we failed at more than a few things, but it was not because we did not give it our best shot.

So, the upshot is that there are some opportunities coming up for me that will force me into some interesting decisions. I want to make sure I do the meaningful thing–something I have been given to do, rather than what is easy or even fun.

A “for personal use” 3D/RGB camera

I bought a RealSense 3d/RGB camera today from Intel. I have wanted to get one for awhile and try it out, but now I have an actual reason. I am working with a friend from an old job on a small project and we are actually using them in my day job. The camera takes aligned 2d and 3d images. It is (relatively) cheap and has an SDK that will allow me to pull the images into some fun environments where I can use OpenCV and the PCL on them. Looking forward to it, but the sad part is they are so popular it is on backorder. I will have to be patient.

Ups and downs all day long

It was a long and busy day today. I expected it to slow down, but work poured in right at quitting time and I am just finishing up what was possible to finish. The good news is that the relays to control the LED’s for the bean sorter project arrived today. They are small, cheap and should be perfect for this project, but not as the strobe control I/O’s we need. They are mechanical relays that can switch at a maximum rate of 10ms to active and 5ms to inactive. That is way to slow for what we want to do. The good news about the bad news though is that I thought I was only getting one board, but I got two and I will be able to use them to do a lot of the development work while I wait for some faster solid state switches AND I will be able to use them in the product to control the indicator lights that show machine status.

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