Month: May 2016

Yesterday was a long day with some accomplishments. First, and maybe most important, Kiwi did not die while we were gone. Lorena’s cousin Beto was there to look in on here every now and then, but for the most part, she was on her own. She was and continues to be annoyingly happy to see us.

Toward the end of the day, I had the chance to work on the EKG project. I did not finish as much as I wanted because there were interruptions. I had the signals coming into my program from the EKG by the time I left town for vacation so now I am working on the strip chart that appears on the GUI as it is recorded. I hope to get the charting part complete by the end of the weekend so I can move on to record the data into a database. We will probably need some help from Christian to get the math right on parts of the signal processing of the two different heart rates we want to measure (a pregnant mother and her baby). I hope I have time, but I also am excited that I might get to work with him on something that is so closely associated with the work he does for his school.

Sometime this week, I have to get my Texas drivers license. I am at that awkward stage of life where I am more worried about the eye test part of the exam than the written or driving part. In fact, I do not think there will be a written or driving part. Lorena did not have to take those.

Lorena has all her transcripts from her all the community colleges she has attended so far (Portland, Linn Benton, Johnston, Wake Technical and Clackamas) turned into our new local community colldege in Texas. She has to take an orientation test this evening–we are not sure what that is about.

Beside all that, I am wanting to get back to work on the GaugeCam/Beaglebone Black project because people want to buy more cameras and our cell connectivity system is getting discontinued. I have it started and it has been running at the house for over a month now. My problem is that I just have too many other things going right now to get it done in a timely manner. Maybe I can get someone to volunteer on the project to help us. It is a great little project.

Lorena and I spent the weekend with Christian and our friends, Al and Michele and their family in Casa Grande, Arizona. It was a weekend for reflection. We needed that and came away invigorated. We got up at 2:30 AM in Phoenix to catch a plane so I could get to work in Texas on time this morning. I am not even tired. I am sure I will hit the wall sometime this evening, but it was WAY worth it.

I read a Facebook post from the daughter of a friend this morning that truly captured the zeitgeist of the day. It’s premise was that personal happiness based on one’s own personal preferences is the highest level of human achievement and a worthy way to live one’s life. That seems to be what has gotten this country and the entire world into a state of denial and decay. Self denial and allegiance to a goal higher than one’s own gratification is the single thing that leads to personal happiness and the betterment of society, but only if that higher goal is to follow the commandments of Jesus.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

This says nothing about self gratification.

We have turned off or cellphones and have no computer access during the day. We need to do this more often. It is amazingly refreshing. All we do is sit in done meetings, eat good food, talk with old friends and make new ones, all with no outside interruption.  It is very interesting that it seems I am moving a little off the very edge of the extrovert spectrum. That is no to say I am anywhere close to being am introvert–but maybe just a little bit less of on extrovert.

We made it to Arizona. Christian made it through his finals. We had a relatively leisurely breakfast at ihop. Now Christian is back to work and we are here in the apartment kicking back until he gets a few things done in the lab after which we can start our vacation!

When I got my new $27 EKG running a few days ago, I used a Windows program that came as a binary and that is no longer being supported. I decided I wanted to write my own GUI to read this, at least one more EKG channel (which requires another $27) and maybe accommodates the $99 EEG electronics that is available from the same company. I used the audio button (play/pause/stop) to control the data stream and connection with the EKG electronics. Right now, the only things that happens with this is that the numbers are added to the text box labeled “Data” and the numbers just scroll as they come in for the EKG electronics (fly by actually). The next thing I am going to do, though, is to plot the EKG signal as it comes in the area above the text boxes. I can already tell I am going to need to reformat my GUI to show the data in different ways and to add some configuration capability.

I negotiated the next couple of days off when I was offered my current job so Lorena and I could fly to Phoenix to see Christian and attend a church event. Some of our old friends from San Diego will meet us there. We will have a chance to see old friends, visit and eat good food. Christian finished his last final for the semester yesterday, so he will be free to spend at least a little time with us. He is in the thick of his research right now and expects to remain that way for the next two and a half to three years. He needs to take seven more classes and they really just get in the way of what he is research.

There is a meeting of the board of directors at our company today. We cleaned up the office and made everything look nice, but the higher-ups in the company seem somewhat stressed.

The CEO said, “Why did I start another company” to me in the hallway.

He really did not need to start another company for any other reason than that is what he does. I get that. I love to do what I do. I am kind of a one trick pony, but I love my trick and can make a living doing it. I am glad that I learned my trick before I took a shot at being an entrepreneur. It gave me two advantages. The first is that I had something on which I could fall back after I found I was not such a great entrepreneur. The second was that it gave me the knowledge that one can get a lot of the benefits of entrepreneurship with only half the headaches if you have a good trick and people are willing to pay you a salary and equity for your trick.

Still, entrepreneurs make the business world go round. They provide jobs for lots of people, too. I would not get to do what I do if there were not people who took the risk to start businesses. I think watching new, small businesses and the people that run them is my version of spectator sports. I love to watch all of this, but the thought of a punch in the nose or a 360 pound tackle jumping on my head is not particularly appealing to me.

Maybe it is just confirmation bias, but I keep running into stuff that suggests that IQ is not immutable. The latest article titled Telltale Signs You’re Much Smarter Than Average seems to reinforce that point. It was interesting that there were things over which a person has little control like left handedness and propensity for anxiety, whether they come from nature or nurture, are indicators of intelligence. But more so, that things that parents can do for their kids like give them music lessons and teach them to read at an early age are big indicators of high intelligence. I have always believed that children learn to read when they get interested in reading, but I also believe a parent can have a big influence over when their kids get interested by reading to them a lot, by turning the learning process into a game and by just being enthusiastic about it. Also, it was very interesting that the indicator of high IQ was NOT whether the kid was musically talented or not. Rather, it was whether they received consistent musical training. The kid being a class clown thing–who knows how that plays in and/or whether it is something that can be taught. In our case, it we worked hard to teach our kids NOT to be funny in class. 🙂

I know a lot of people just my age who are dealing with aging parents. Grandma Sarah went to the hospital last night where we found she had an infection that needs treatment. It is hard to see a parent in this condition at this age when they have little reserve to deal with health problems. We are very thankful we had the chance to take Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah to meeting for a couple of years and are very thankful they are in such good hands with our good friends Gary and Drew.

I know a lot of people just my age who are dealing with aging parents. Grandma Sarah went to the hospital last night where we found she had an infection that needs treatment. It is hard to see a parent in this condition at this age when they have little reserve to deal with health problems. We are very thankful we had the chance to take Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah to meeting for a couple of years and are very thankful they are in such good hands with our good friends Gary and Drew.