Month: February 2012

Day 188 of 1000

My entire family lives in Portland.  It IS the most beautiful city in the country.  Here is a GREAT, article from someone who knows, about some of the reasons it is such a train wreck:  http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/insufferable-portland_631919.html.

Day 180 of 1000

My admiration for the unsurpassed beauty of the state of Oregon does not diminish my admiration for the beauty of Virginia and the Carolinas.  I have been criss-crossing all three states continually since the beginning of January to the tune of about $1500 of car reimbursement per month at 45¢ per mile.  It looks like I will be running in this mode through April or May.  I hope I slow down after that, but I have been thoroughly enjoying the places I visit and the people I meet.

I gave a talk on my research and development work to a group of engineers and technicians at a large French tire company near Columbia, South Carolina on Thursday.  It made me think of one of my favorite characters in all of literature, the ugly American (a retired American engineer trying to help out in a fictional Southeast Asian country) from the book, the Ugly American.  I met engineers from the U.S., France, Columbian (Medellin–how cool is that.  He even complimented me on my Spanish.), and Puerto Rico (The University of Mayaguez where our friend Carlos B. studied).  There are no cultural barriers when engineers are talking together about technology and solving problems.

I will contnue to write as often as possible.  I am accumulating some good material and I need to get it written down before I forget it.

Day 170 of 1000

We used the tire rotation machine Christian made for me day before yesterday at my work this morning.  The pictures came out great.  We will use the apparatus for a big demo with a large tire manufacturer tomorrow.  Very cool.  Right now I am at a McDonalds in the outskirts of Columbia, South Carolina.  I have an hour to kill until I meet one of the sales guys at a customer site to do some more demonstrations of the software I am writing.  This is all very fun, but so much driving is not my favorite part of this job.

Day 167 of 1000

We have subscribed to World Magazine for over 15 years.  We liked it so much, for awhile, Kelly decided she wanted to be journalist.  That passed, but we are still very big fans of the magazine.  The main reason we are such big fans is because Marvin Olasky is the Editor in Chief and a great writer.  I think the reason we like him so much is because of his humility.  He wrote and article in the latest issue of World about some events where he truly worked for good over a decade ago.  The thing that is strinking about the article is that Olasky realizes he might have been more effective if he had not been so confrontational in what he did and collegial in his efforts to engage with the other people involved.

It really made me want to be a better person through more humility and kindliness.  It is not even about being right.  It is about doing things according to God’s will.  I am very thankful I had parents who would let me slide a little if I was doing things with the right attitude, but hammered me hard, even if I was getting stuff right, but with a bad attitude.  Olasky manages to descirbe that exact concept and how he has succeeded and failed at it in a way that makes one want to improve.  We will be up for renewal in October.  Of course, we will do the max allowed.

Day 166 of 1000

We love North Carolina, but they are WAY out of their depth when it comes to organizing and/or participating in a running event, they need to send the organizers and participants out to Oregon to see how it is done.  That being said, the kids had fun and raised money for a good charity, which was the purpose of the race.  Still, people here really need to lighten up, have a good time, get into the event.  Still, the kids got their doughnuts (I refuse to use the word donut as if it is a real word), t-shirts, and bib.  I was particularly proud of Kelly.  She whistled, hollered, and winked at every cute guy in a gladiator suit that ran by.

Day 164 of 1000

I love my new job.  I am working on a new technology.  When I first started in field of Machine Vision in 1983, that technology was very new and intriguing.  Everyone knew it had a huge future, but because of the immaturity of the technology and the relatively slow speed of computers back then, it was hard to use it for even the easiests of task.  Computers improved, machine vision algorithms got more sophisticated and ran faster on better hardware, and within five years things really opened up.  Now, all the easy tasks have already been done.  That is why I have had such an enjoyable career.  I get to go around and try to make really hard stuff work.

I have enjoyed that a lot, but I forgot how much fun it was when the machine vision market was just starting to move.  This new technology on which I am working makes 3D measurements easy and cheap compared to how it used to be.  There is, again, a lot of low hanging fruit–easy jobs for this new technology–that have been waiting a decade for a solution because 2D machine vision technology just could not bear the burden of such difficulty.

The difference, this time, is that I am on the forefront of the development, not of the technology itself, but of the application of the technology.  It is very invigorating.  I got to work full time developing very interesting code and techniques.  Then I get to take that stuff out to solve problems for which people have been literally begging for a solution.  One engineer, last week, told me he had been trying to figure out a way to solve a hard problem in a very high-technology setting for 6-7 years.  His company had spent a lot of money trying to figure it out and had pretty much given up.  He thinks our technology will do the trick.

I am waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it might, but I will enjoy the ride until it does.