Category: General Page 25 of 116

Day 222 of 1000

I got a call from Lorena and the kids late last night at my hotel by the Charlotte airport.  They said they had the best seats in the house for the Pink Martini concert at the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC).  They all agreed that I had missed out on something great and they got credit for their Jazz class at the community college.  What a deal.  DPAC is amazing.  The only other time we were there was for Kelly’s birthday a couple of years ago.  That time, we got the nose-bleed seats for the farewell performance of Fiddler on the Roof by Chaim Topol, the original guy that had the part of Tevye and who also played it in the movie.  That was also awesome, even though we had to see most of the play through our opera glasses.

Day 221 of 1000

I learned a lesson today.  I was looking forward to getting up early in the morning to catch a flight from Raleigh to Vancouver, B.C.  Now I am looking forward to driving 3½ hours from our house to Charlotte either this afternoon or a little after midnight to catch a flight from there to Vancouver.  The lesson I learned is that, whenever possible, with my current employer, at least, it is best to book ones own tickets.  I hate to leave the family for 4-5 days because I am doing it so much lately and this week, it the lead-in to a three day weekend.  Oh, well.  This is actually kind of an ironic post coming right after the video I put up yesterday.

Day 220 of 1000

My life was somewhat more difficult than what is described in this video.

Day 218 of 1000

I got off from work an hour early so I could get home in time to have birthday cake with Kelly and the family. When I got here, Kelly was just putting the finishing touches on her pink birthday cake, wearing a pink blouse, and talking to her friend Skyler who calls every birthday. It is pretty mind-boggling to think Lorena and I have an eighteen year old daughter, so it was a nice reminder that some things never change.

Day 215 of 1000

Here I am, back at the NCSU Hill Library, working on work stuff while the kids study and Lorena shops.  We got up a little late this morning, so they were no longer serving breakfast at McDonald’s when we got there.  Kelly normally gets an Egg McMuffin for a total of 300 calories, but she had to settle for a Hamburger Happy meal today.  She was quite excited because we found they now put 100 calories worth of french fries in the meal along with the apple slices.  She was well under 500 calories and she got a Rainbow Dash pony to boot.  Low calories, tasty fries, and Rainbow Dash–it doesn’t get much better than that!

Day 209 of 1000

Ever since they were born, I have been trying to convince all my nieces and nephews that I am their favorite uncle.  I am not sure that is working so well, but they are certainly my favorite nieces and nephews.  One of them, seven year old, Valeria is now being featured on a huge billboard in Monterrey.  She is quite a precocious child and we are very excited for her.  Hopefully, her dad and mom will bring her, along with her brothers, to see us this summer.

Day 199 0f 1000

The high mucky-mucky of the Truth Has a Chance blog and my old roommate back when we were both thin and had hair (well, Warren still has hair), is dropping in for a weekend visit this weekend.  Hopefully, a picture or two will follow.  We are going to do some very high level consulting on blogging, football, and other important topics.  Maybe he can get me kicked off center on my blogging habits (or lack thereof).

Day 193 of 1000

Kelly and Christian both went to see their advisers for the very first time.  Both of them found out that they are in good shape to graduate in two more years.  Both the kids worked out their schedules and got buy-in from their advisers along with permission to take a summer class called Foundations of Advanced Math (a proofs class that prepares them for Real Analysis).  It will be a hard slog because many of the classes are so difficult for the both of them, but hey both definitely have a shot to graduate by Spring 2014.

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.

Day 160 of 1000

On Monday and Tuesday last week I drove from Raleigh to Charlotte and back.  On Wednesday I drove from Raleigh to Wilmington, NC to Elizabethtown, NC, and back to Ralieigh.  On Thursday, the biggest day, I drove from Raleigh to Roanoke, VA to Blacksburg, VA, and back to Raliegh.  I drove over 1500 miles, visited five customers, and spent my customary two days in the home office.  The driving got a little tedious, but I really enjoyed it.  I found out that Roanoke, VA is a beautiful city–at least it was beautiful the day I was there.  I think I am only going to have to drive this much for a month or two longer.  Then I will back off to a couple of trips per month.  That will be just about right.

I am not much of a “work at home” guy.  That I can get out of the house two to four days per week is a big deal for me.  When I go to the reduced travel schedule, I might work over at the library of one of our local colleges.  I like to have a little movement and noise around me when I work.  The last time we were in the Holly Springs Community Library, I found they no longer allow the drinking of coffee in the stacks.  Bad news.  We probably won’t go back.  The Cameron Village Library is still good with us coffee drinking readers, so that is still an option.

Day 158 of 1000

Inspired by fellow Oregonian stuck on the east coast, Smitty (his post this morning is stellar, CPAC-in’ Heat) and new-blogger Jon in Chile, Kelly and I have decided to try and up our game a little.  If Kelly keeps making posts (with drawings) like this one, she is going to continue to leave me in the dust.  Hilarious and well written.  I recommend it highly.

Day 156 of 1000

Imitating The Other McCain, I find myself blogging from a McDonalds this morning.  I am on my way to Wilmington for a two hour visit for business.  On the way, there was a radio report about a study that shows that the use of Facebook is an indicator of low self esteem.  I believe it.  It says that people look at all the fun happy stuff people put up on Facebook–parties, dinners, sports events, etc.–and believe their own lives do not measure up.  The reality is that most people only put up the good stuff.  It is pretty easy to see some of the posers who put up their daily pictures of their “beautiful” lives, doing crossfit, going on “girl’s nights out”, talking about what they “deserve” as actualized women,  Still, even the best of us only wants to show the good stuff.

The thing that is great about Facebook is the ability to stay in touch with friends with whom it would be difficult to have frequent contact in any other way.  I love to hear grandparents brag about their grandkids, people who put up significant events like graduations and birthdays, deaths, sicknesses.  I really enjoy people who put up interesting things that like observations on pop culture or their football team.  That being said, narcissim and the me culture are magnified on Facebook.

Day 155 of 1000

Just a couple of notes today.  First and most important, our buddy Jon from Chile has a new blog.  You can find it here:  http://www.jonchile.com.  It is amazingly bilingual Spanish/English, fun to read and has great pictures.  I highly recommend it!

In addtion, I got some text messages today from Lorena and Kelly telling me school was shut down again for a “gun on campus/maniacal police activity” event.  I am glad everyone is moving on to NCSU soon.

Day 153 of 1000

The GaugeCam team met with Tom D. at NCSU yesterday to try to figure out how to commercialize our idea.  We had a pretty good brainstorming session.  All of us left the meeting with something to do so we can report back next week.  It is not like I do not have enough stuff to do already, but actually having something on the market in the next few months is a very fun thing to ponder.  We really do think we have found a niche.  I will post on GaugeCam and here as soon as we have things a little more carefull defined, but the first product will involve the ability to easily place cameras in very remote places where there is no hard wired nor close wireless connectivity nor power available, then receive a reliable stream of images displayed in a variety of user defined ways on a web stie.  Later, we will add some machine vision measurement capabilities to our setup, but for now, all we want to do is capture images for manual review.