Category: Work Page 8 of 9

Immigrants on the rental car bus

By Dad

On Monday, October 7, 2013

In Education, Work

I got co-opted into running up to Arvada, Colorado from Prescott, Arizona this afternoon. On the bus ride from the rental car return to the airport, I got to listen to two immigrants with fairly thick accents talk to each other about the way to get ahead in America. It was a very enlightening conversation. Both of them said it is essential to get an education. The reason for the education was not the education itself, but how, in America, it could really open up job opportunities. One of them talked about his sister who was studying to be a nurse. The bus driver talked about his brother who came here with a Bachelors degree from his home country to study for a Masters degree.

He was an engineer and (I love this quote) and as an indicator of his brothers great success, he said, “He drives a brand new Ford Mustang.”

The other guy was in awe. He said, “Wow.”

They talked about various community college options, a six month program that would allow the bus driver to advance in his current job. It was all about the job. I am on board with that. I believe learning for learning’s sake is a good thing, but learning so you can put beans on the table is even better. Actually, they can be the same thing a lot of the time. It was all quite motivating. I left the bus inspired.

Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn

By Dad

On Sunday, October 6, 2013

LinkedIn is a pretty good business tool. I use it quite a lot to communicate with old colleagues and investigate opportunities. As the kids approach college graduation, I have encouraged them to build their LinkedIn profile. Kelly changed her profile picture and the page is really starting to take shape. You can click here to see it.

Work–being willing to do whatever you can

By Dad

On Thursday, October 3, 2013

Day 773 of 1000

We have some challenges at my work that require me to make an unscheduled trip to Denver for a couple of days next week. It needs to be done and I am the best one to do it. One of our vendors has really not met their commitment, so we have to pick up the slack. One of the people who works for the vendor has caused lots of delays. Because he is not willing to try to make adjustments for his lack of performance, we will have to put a man in his mid-eighties on an airplane to deal with the problem. An unwillingness to at least make an attempt to do the right thing when it will cause grief for the people you have let down is pretty egregious.

Kelly was in a situation at her summer internship where she thought she had fallen behind in her work. She was tasked to learn some pretty complicated materials and she just did not understand it as well as she should. Her future tasks depended on the new knowledge. I asked her how long it would take to learn the material. She told me she could do it in three or four hours. I told her she should consider going into work the coming Saturday. Because it was a place that needed a security clearance, she had to ask permission. When she called her supervisor to make the request, her administrator told her it was not permitted for interns. The administrator laughed a little after Kelly asked the question.

Kelly was a little embarrassed when the administrator laughed. She did not find out until later that the laughter was because her direct supervisor who needed her to learn the new material was sitting beside the administrator when Kelly made the call. They had gotten a kick out of her desire to go the extra mile. Kelly’s boss mentioned it to her the following Monday and thanked her for the attempt. He assured her she was doing just fine. Both the administator and the director of the division brought it up with Kelly during her exit interview. A willingness to go the extra mile is worth it. It does get noticed. Unwillingness gets noticed, too.

The career fair at Big State U is your friend

By Dad

On Tuesday, October 1, 2013

In Education, Work

Day 771 of 1000

Kelly went to her first job fair at NCSU last year. She was not wildly excited about the idea as she said none of the other students took it too seriously. Actually, she pretty seriously drug her feet, but in the end she dressed up very professionally, we updated and beautified her resume, and she went. When she went, she was wiped out–it really is hard work to work a big job fair. She said she was a little skeptical, but that changed to outright enthusiasm after she got four interviews and three job offers. This year, she does not need the job fair as badly as last, because she has a standing offer for internship work at the JHU-APL. Still she plans to spend some quality time there.

Kelly’s experience helped Christian a lot. He is pretty fired up. Last summer, he did research, so he was not looking for an internship. This year, he wore his suit to school today, has an armful of updated resumes, and plans to spend several hours working the floor. I am looking forward to hearing how it goes.

Statistics Unconference

By Dad

On Wednesday, September 18, 2013

In Software, Work

This is something for Kelly. Is this cool or what. A live stream, Statistics Unconference with excellent presenters from JHU, University of Washington, and R-Studio. It is about the future of Statistics and statistical tools.

NCSU wins a huge analytics grant

By Dad

On Friday, August 16, 2013

In Education, Technology, Work

Day 724 of 1000

This morning when I read the news on Free Republic, I ran into this article on a new program at NCSU. That pointed to this article in the News and Observer that describes the new “Big Data” joint venture between NCSU and the NSA. It starts out like this:

As the field of “big data” continues to grow in importance, N.C. State University has landed a big coup – a major lab for the study of data analysis, funded by the National Security Agency.

A $60.75 million grant from the NSA is the largest research grant in NCSU’s history – three times bigger than any previous award.

The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences will be launched in a Centennial Campus building that will be renovated with money from the federal agency, but details about the facility are top secret. Those who work in the lab will be required to have security clearance from the U.S. government.

NCSU officials say the endeavor is expected to bring 100 new jobs to the Triangle during the next several years. The university, already a leader in data science, won the NSA contract through a competitive process.

NCSU university already has strengths in computer science, applied mathematics and statistics and a collaborative project with the NSA on cybersecurity. The university also is in the process of hiring four faculty members for its new data-driven science cluster, adding to its expertise.

This fits very nicely with Kelly’s analytics internship at the JHU-APL. The other thing I thought was fun and interesting is the connection was not just to the Statistics department, but to the Applied Mathematics department, too. Christian is an Applied Math major. The article also talks about the Professional Masters Degree in Analytics our friend Andrew earned last year.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/15/3109412/nc-state-teams-up-with-nsa-on.html#storylink=cpy

NCSU #2 in starting salaries after graduation

By Dad

On Thursday, August 1, 2013

In Education, Work

Kelly pointed me to a very cool article about the relative starting salaries of students who graduate from universities in North Carolina. Not surprisingly Duke was #1. My sense is that some of the difference there might be attributable to North Carolina natives (and many out of state students) unwillingness to leave this beautiful state while the Dukies might just be passing through to high paying jobs in high cost of living, less desireable places to live. Of course that is just my thought on the topic.

The really surprising news is that NCSU is #2. I think that might be partly due to the greater rigor in their engineering programs. Not unsurprisingly, UNC Chapel Hill was not even #3. Wake Forest, North Carolina A&T, and UNC Charlotte all provided higher paying job opportunities for their graduates then UNC Chapel Hill. Also not surprising, every school ahead of UNC Chapel Hill is a strong STEM schools with a full complement of Engineering programs.

What does a Statistician do?

By Dad

On Tuesday, June 4, 2013

In Technology, Work

Day 651 of 1000

When Kelly tells people she is a Statistics major, people often ask if it is possible to get a job with that degree. Beside the tactlessness of the question we are amazed that people know so little about what is driving innovation in medicine, the internet, marketing, agriculture, sociology, psychology, and just about every other field imaginable. Big money is invested to mine information from the mountains of data produced in clinical studies, internet commerce, engineering research, etc. A deep knowledge of statistics is required to do this work. Statisticians are in big demand.

What prompted this diatribe? I have written about some of the demand for statistical knowledge in the past (see here and here), but another example showed up today in an article on ZDNet today. Dell and Intel are building a “Big Data” innovation center in Singapore. Who will man the center? Statisticians!

Rules for a great career (even if it is accidental) Part 2 of 3 – Give stuff away

By Dad

On Wednesday, May 8, 2013

This is the second in a series of three posts about things that have helped me develop and sustain a career I love. The first post is about how to stay in close touch with people with whom you have worked. The second post is about how to give away free work whenever you can. The third is about how to invest significant efforts in helping previous employers, people who can never help you, and “the least of these.”

A few days ago I wrote a post about some of the reasons I have a career for which I am extremely grateful. I think I have a handle on a couple of the things that have helped me move forward in my career. I wrote about the importance of contact with colleagues from companies or division where you worked previously. That has been an immense help in the development of my career, but there is another “thing” I did that I believe was just as instrumental. I do not know whether to call that “thing” a behavior, a tool, or something else. The best way to describe that thing is “giving stuff away.”

What does that mean–giving stguff away? It means exactly what it says. About fifteen years ago, I was working for at the Oregon division of a large, multi-national organization and one of our vendors asked if I was willing to help a large government agency solve a difficult problem related to protecting the environment by measuring the amount of particles and the turbidity of water in streams in the wild. I jokingly told the vendor I was a Republican and really hated clean water, but it was a worthy effort and I signed up. I wrote a sophisticated program for free with the idea that it would be a help. The skills I learned in the development of the software to perform those measurements allowed me to add some things to my resume that won me my next job at a much higher salary in North Carolina.

I earned nothing for the water quality work, but the skills I learned won me the new job and made me a lot more money than I could have made by my paid work experience alone. When I got to North Carolina, I made a new friend at my church who was making a career change from the clergy by returning to college to earn a degree in Civil Engineering. On his way to a Bachelors degree, he decided it might be a good idea to go on to a graduate degree. He worked with a professor in the Biological and Agricultural Engineering department to perform water measurement work as undergraduate research.

I wanted to help him so I volunteered to write a program to measure water height in streams, lakes, and other water bodies in very remote locations. As a result of that work which I continue to do at the writing of this post, I developed skills with a set of libraries that allowed me to win a position that paid significantly more than the job that brought me to North Carolina. All of this taught me the lesson that anything that I do for free in the support of a noble cause, especially respect to the work associated with my career, helped my career in unexpected ways. So the second set of rules is just one rule: Give your work away in the support of big and small, personal causes. It helps greatly with respect to career advancement and is very gratifying.

In a corollary phenomenon, part of the reason I got the two jobs described above is that, before I went to work for them, I got them talking about some of their most difficult problems. Then I spent a few evenings and weekends to write code that I could give to them for free that solved their problems or at least showed their problems could be solved. When these future employers saw what I could do for them for free, they were eager to get me on board as an employee, both of them for a greater salary than they originally wanted to pay. Actually, they were happy to pay the higher salary when they hired me because of the free work performed for them. Of course, I had to perform after I got there, but the expectations of success were already set and I had excellent stays at both jobs.

Rules for a great career (even if it is accidental) Part 1 of 3 – Stay in touch

By Dad

On Friday, May 3, 2013

In Business, Education, Milo and Sarah, Money, Technology, Work

Day 620 of 1000

This is the first in a series of three posts about things that have helped me develop and sustain a career I love. The first post is about how to stay in close touch with people with whom you have worked. The second post is about how to give away free work whenever you can. The third is about how to invest significant efforts in helping previous employers, people who can never help you, and “the least of these.”

I have a career that I love. Beyond my wildest expectation, it gets more enjoyable every year. It did not start out that way. There are several simple things I wish someone would have explained to me about career and life that I did not realized until I was in my forties. This is the first of two posts about the rules I believe got me here. Of course, the rules are not the only thing–you have to know how to do the job, but the rules set things up for my success. The first set of rules has to do with staying in touch with colleagues and are listed at the bottom of this post. The second has to do with giving things away (yes, that means for free) and life-long learning. First, a little about my background and career path.

Education

Through no fault of my own, I have a great career doing work that interests me with good people. At some level I have always known it was by the grace of God because I certainly did not plan it that way. I (barely) finished a degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing in 1978. I got pretty bad grades and when I got out, surprise, it was really tough to get a job. I was a microcosm of what happens to people who study non-STEM degrees today with the exception that college was pretty cheap at the time, I was not saddled with a lot of debt, and I (again) got pretty bad grades.

I worked for awhile at nights in the mail room at a large technology company running computer reports around their multi-building campus. It was truly a dead end job, so I decided to go back to college and get a technical degree. If I had had a brain in my head, I would have done the leveling classes to get into a Masters degree program. No really great school would have accepted me because my grades were so bad, but knowing what I know now, it would have been pretty straightforward to get accepted at a good regional University as a probationary student long enough to prove that I could handle the degree. I already had a lot of the math and chemistry, so it would not have taken long if I worked hard. Later in life, I actually worked with a woman who did exactly that to get into a Masters program in Mechanical Engineering with an English degree and no math.

Career field

So, I went to a technical college and got a two year associate degree in something called Computer Systems Enginneering Technology. It was kind of a cross between computer programming and electronics. With that, I got a really good job at a company named Triad in Silicon Valley training technicians how to work on specialized computers specifically designed for auto parts store. After I had been there a couple of years, a friend told me about a program where I could pay in-state tuition in Oregon while I went to school for a semester in Guadalajara. It sounded great, so I headed to Mexico.

I made no job plans before I went to Mexico, so when we got toward the end of the semester, I started to worry because I had no money. Thankfully, my Mom, Grandma Sarah, was way ahead of me. She saw a want-ad in the newspaper for a technical writer at a robotics company named Intelledex in Corvallis. She sent my resume, I went to the interview when I got home, and they gave me the job. At that time in 1983 there were hardly any industrial robot companies, but one had been started in Corvallis by a group of the engineers and scientists who worked at the Hewlett-Packard ink-jet printer facility. Within a couple of years, I had moved over from the robots to work on something called machine vision. A machine vision system is a computer that has a camera connected to it. The system captures images of things that are happening on conveyor belts and workstation tables to guide robots, check the quality of assembled parts, and that sort of thing. That is the field in which I have worked for the last thirty years.

I stayed at Intelledex for eight years as a technical writer, trainer, applications engineer, and regional sales manager. I got to know enough about machine vision that one of our customers, the University of Texas at El Paso, invited me to start and run a vision laboratory to develop machine vision systems for use in factories in Texas, New Mexico, and Northern Mexico. While I was there, I was able to take the leveling classes I needed to enter and complete a Masters degree program in Industrial Engineering. We were successful enough that, I actually got invited to lecture to the faculty at the National University of Singapore about the program and some of our systems got deployed as far away as Israel. After that I got invited to Texas A&M to start a similar program there and to start a PhD. That program and the PhD never progressed very far because marriage and real life got in the way and lead me back to machine vision with Motorola, another of our old customers in Florida.

What made my career take off

It should have dawned on me that the reason I had the educational opportunity at UTEP and the job opportunity in Florida was because of connections I made in my work with the robot company. I left Motorola to start a business that was pretty wildly unsuccessful and needed to go back to work. I really did not know where to go, so I went back to the well and called some of my old Intelledex friends. They said, of course we will hire you. That was really a wake-up call. The people that rehired me were now at a different company, ESI in Portland, that had purchased the machine vision part of Intelledex. I realized the people I worked with before were not only just workmates, they were friends who valued what I did. Not only did we enjoy working together, they valued me for the contribution I could make.

The next big event in my awakening was initiated by the dot-com bubble. I got caught in a mass layoff due to business conditions and I found myself on the street. That really set me on heels. I had a mortgage to pay and a family to feed. I wracked my brain and called everyone I could to find a job. One of the guys I called was a camera salesman. He said he knew of a job in, of all places, Corvallis. I called the guys and guess what? It was populated with some other of my old compatriots from Intelledex. By now I start to clue into the fact that I have friends out there. It really irritated me that no one emphasized the importance of staying in touch with workplace colleagues. My rules for a great career were an outgrowth of that epiphany.

Right now, the shoe is on the other foot. Some of my old Intelledex compatriots work for me as contractors. It is nice to be on the other side of the equation and reinforces the knowledge that a job helps both the employee and the employer.

Rules for a great career

When you leave a company (or move from one division to another) make a list of people for whom you have respect.
Follow the careers of the people on your list and send them an email or even a card whenever they get promoted or change companies.
If someone on your list loses their job, wrack your brain and make some calls to people who might be able to use them. It helps both the employer and the employee.
If a company tries to recruit you and you cannot take the job, actively try to find someone who can feel the need and make follow-up contact to see if they are still looking.
Take every opportunity possible (after putting God and family first) to meet with your colleagues and ex-colleagues in informal settings (e.g. Take them to lunch when you are in town).

Final anecdote

I received an email two days ago from what I will just call an unfriendly acquaintance. He and his wife both work in the same field as I. He saw I had a connection with a company that might be able to give work to his wife. He essentially had to swallow his pride and ask me for a favor. I will derive great joy from introducing his wife to the CEO of a company that very well needs someone like her. This will help an old friend (the CEO), create a new friend (the wife), and turn an unfriendly acquaintance into a friend. The CEO is already on my contact list, but the (hopefully) ex-unfriendly acquaintance and his wife will now be on my contact list whether the job works out or not. I plan to contact all three in the next couple of weeks to see what happens.

Working with Ubuntu again

By Dad

On Thursday, October 11, 2012

In Software, Technology, Work

Day 417 of 1000

Christian has been stressed out about a test he took about a week ago. He was pretty sure he was going to get a score of about 70%, but was hoping for 80%. He messaged me today that he got a 94%. We were both happy. I am happy about something else. I have spent a lot of the day loading a Linux development environment into a virtual machine on my computer. That is part of my job! I have to pinch myself when I think about what I am doing for a living. It does not get much better than that.

I have been pretty down on the change to Ubuntu Unity from the normal desktop that they had previously, but after talking to my buddy, Andrew about Windows 8 and Android, I realized there is a pretty big shift in desktop architecture going on and I better get on board or I would be left behind. Thankfully, I have a very cool project going on with Linux and the Microsoft Kinect right now, so I decided I would do the development on a Linux platform rather than Windows. I am not all the way to loving the whole new Unity thing, but I am to the point where I can see it is really not so bad. Give me a few more days and I might really love it. I will keep you posted.

Blogging for my day job

By Dad

On Thursday, September 13, 2012

In Education, Work

Day 389 of 1000

There are lots of semi-interesting going on right now. Kelly has been given credit for a couple of additional classes that will allow her to get a summer internship position if she can find one. Hopefully it will be in a place where she can stay with someone on the west coast. If you know a company that needs a high GPA, Spanish speaking, statistics student for a summer internship, let me know. She will be between her junior and senior year. Her classes include three semesters of calculus, statistics, mathematical statistics, operations management, linear algebra, Java programming, etc. She has great people skills.

Christian has started his job as an undergraduate researcher in Optical Sensing Lab at NCSU. The professor who runs the lab said he would put Christian’s bioup there soon.

My buddy, Brett at my day job and I have decided we need to up our presence on the internet so we are both going to write blog posts for the company blog. I hope to do it at a rate of a couple per week if I can think of good material. I will put a link to the first post here as soon as I write it. Maybe I will be able to get to it this weekend.

Christian’s undergraduate research

By Dad

On Friday, August 31, 2012

In Education, Software, Technology, Work

Day 376 of 1000

Christian asked his Electrical Engineering professor what he could do to get some undergraduate research in the EE department. His professor told him to get in touch with the EE head of graduate programs who got the word out that there was an undergraduate math student who would like to do some research. From there, he got two interviews, both of whom gave him an offer of work. He would like to take both, but I doubt there will be time for that.

The latest offer would give him three hours of independent study research credit gathering data with a spectrophotometer. It might even lead to paid work. It is under a young professor who got his PhD from one of the top two optics school in the country. That would be an awesome opportunity because it is real research aimed at discovery and he would be gathering primary data. The first job was also quite good because it would give him an opportunity to hone his expand on his Python programming skills. I am not sure that would turn into anything other than a software maintenance job, but programming experience never hurts.

Doing a hard degree is hard

By Dad

On Sunday, July 22, 2012

In Education, Work

Day 336 of 1000

My brother-in-law, Lauro has a very important job in Mexico. Part of the reason he got the job is that he went to a very prestigious school and studied a hard engineering degree. The only way he could afford to go to that school was by studying very hard in high school to get a scholarship. The scholarship required him to do work at the university while he studied which made his degree even harder. His first job in Tijuana with a large Japanese manufacturing company was not so prestigious, but he did well there because he had already learned how to do hard stuff during his university years.

I have been talking to Kelly and Christian about this. Right now they are starting the hardest part of difficult degrees with lots of high level math. If they want to get through, they will have to work very, very hard and they will have to work long days. They have done a little of that already, but nothing like what is coming. If they do, they will not only get great degrees and open some new doors for themselves, but they will learn that the hard work is a joy onto itself. The latter is WAY more important than the former and I want that for my kids. It is great that they have the example of their uncle Lauro.

The funny deal is that it is never too late to start working hard on something that pushes you out of your comfort zone. I went back for a Masters Degree when I was thirty-two and it was one of the great joys of my life. At the time, I had regular misgivings about whether I was crazy or something. My buddy Andrew is starting back for an awesome Masters Degree at NCSU. He has always had an incredible work ethic, but I am sure leaving his day job to go back to school was not a comfortable decision. Still, it is a joy to watch. The thing that is cool is that my kids get to see examples like that. My hope for them is that they take those examples to heart.

We are just not that important

By Dad

On Wednesday, June 27, 2012

In Christianity, Family, Work

Day 311 of 1000

I happened onto a great article by David French at NRO this afternoon. I very much encourage you to read the whole thing. It was about who unimportant we are. it very much resonated with me. He pointed out the fact that, even though in the big picture, we are literally irrelevant, we do not have to be irrelevant to everyone.

Not to my family, however. For them, my loss would change everything. That’s when I realized a fundamental truth — a truth we’d all do well to remember: We can have (at best) a small amount of influence over a large number of people, but we will only have a large amount of influence over a small number of people.

An old friend and I were talking (via email) about just that topic the other day. As my kids finish up there time at home with Lorena and I, we have begun to realize that the relevance of our lives is tied up in helping just a few other people, but in a very personal way. With the kids moving on to bigger and better things before long, we want to find a way not to lose that relevance. Some people move to a foreign country to help spread the gospel. Others stay at home to involve themselves with grandchildren, charity, important causes, and other such worthy endeavors. It seems easy to maintain relavance when it is one’s own kids who are involved, but to extend that to others is a big deal and always seems to accrue to the one who is willing to help the less fortunate and less prepared more than the one who is organizing or leading it all.

The thing I liked most about French’s article is that he articulated the difference between obligation and self-fulfillment. I have always thought about doing things for others as a way to be fulfilled. The older I get, the more I realize the only path to true self-fulfillment is by meeting those obligations given to me by God. I will give David French the last word as he explains it beautifully.

In Judeo-Christian tradition, the relevant question relates to our calling, to our duty, not to our ambition and personal fulfillment. For some, our call places us on the battlefield, where a nameless (to us today) young private bleeding on Little Round Top did greater things for his country than I will likely ever do over the entire course of my life. For others, the call places them in a firehouse, at a PTA meeting, in a cubicle, or — yes — sometimes in the highest reaches of government. But for all of us the call remains to faithfulness and care for our families, the people whom we influence the most.

I used to think I could be important, and ordered my life accordingly. Now I realize I’m not and try my best to simply know, understand, and do my duty. Dean Slaughter concludes her article by envisioning the ideal, how in that ideal world “we will properly focus on how we can help all Americans have healthy, happy, productive lives, valuing the people they love as much as the success they seek.” I’d say as spouses and parents we should strive toward different goals, where we focus on fulfilling our deepest and most meaningful obligations — to the God who created us, to those we’ve sworn (through marriage) to love, and to those we’re called to raise from their birth or adoption

Christian comes through with the Lego NXT

By Dad

On Tuesday, February 7, 2012

In Technology, Work

Day 169 of 1000

Lego NXT tire inspection In my day job, I am working on a product that performs three dimensional scans of all kinds of stuff with a product called a Gocator made by a company in British Columbia named LMI. There are a ton of tire companies around here that want to look at their tires with 3D machine vision, so we needed a demo. Christian came to the rescue by building up a tire presentation system with his Lego NXT set. It works great. The tires that came with the kit have tread and raised lettering on the sidewalls, just like real tires.

It works like a champ. I will talk to my boss this afternoon about buying two or three sets to use for demos. Maybe I can get Christian a job building demo stuff for us!

Thursday in Roanoke while Lorena fights Microeconomics battles

By Dad

On Thursday, January 26, 2012

In Education, Technology, Work

Day 157 of 1000

I am scheduled to put over 1000 miles on the pick-up this week. This morning, I am writing from a McDonalds about a half an hour out of Roanoke, Virginia. My understanding is that I will maintain this fairly crazy travel schedule through the end of March. I have a trip to British Columbia the first week of April, then, hopefully, I will only need to make a couple of road trips per month. I get a little bit fried from sitting in the pickup for so long with only restaurant food and very little exercise, but going out to meet customers, look at their machine vision applications, and try to find solutions is absolutely invigorating. I am working on a bleeding edge technology to solve a new class of problems that have been waiting for a solution for a long time.

The solution involves the use of a regular machine vision camera (imagine an industrial, high quality webcam) which captures 2D images to create 3D images with the help of a line laser. The technology has been around for a long time, but now a company has packaged it in a way that makes its use in generic applications very, very much easier than was ever possible before. My company has given me license to develop a product around the new technology and I am enjoying it immensely.

In some much more interesting news, Lorena’s Microeconomics professor asked the whole class to prepare to draw some graphs that describe Microeconomics concepts on the whiteboard in front of the class. He did a really bad job of describing the concepts so no one in the class was prepared to draw the graphs except Lorena. Lorena was prepared because, when she could not figure out what to do, Christian showed her the Khan Academy Microeconomics videos. She was the most prepared of the class, so the professor picked her first, then (according to Lorena) he with ridicule through two of the examples. I was getting pretty exercised about the whole deal until she told me he was not really mean, just demanding and he did it to the whole class.

I am really sad that Lorena cannot draw like Kelly because it would be great to have a drawing of him for this blog post. Lorena, if you read this, next time you are in class, take a surreptitious photo of your professors with your cell phone so Kelly can draw them for her (and my) blog posts. Lorena describes the guy as a fat, bald guy with long hair who looks like he might be very comfortable on a Harley Davidson. I like the guy already and wonder if he has any tattoos.

That Khan Academy thing reminded me I want to ask Kelly how many Linear Algebra videos she watched today.

Off to my new job in Charlotte!

By Dad

On Wednesday, December 14, 2011

In Health, Work

Day 114 of 1000 (211.6 lbs.)

I am heading to Charlotte early this morning for my first day of a new job. I will be driving quite a bit more and flying a little, but it will be nice to be out of the house and back to factory automation. I will be able to write more in the evenings when I am on the road.

P.S. Did you see I am back on track Wendy! Thank you for the push! Hold my feet to the fire!

My last day at Bioptigen

By Dad

On Tuesday, December 13, 2011

In Health, Technology, Work

Day 113 of 1000 (212.8 lbs.)

You will notice that I was shamed into putting my weight back up again (Thank you, Wendy–hold my feet to the fire!) The problem now is that today is my last day of work here at Bioptigen. They will take me out to lunch as some place really good, probably the Carniceria around the corner that has a working man’s Mexican restaurant with handmade corn tortillas. How can I resist that? I think it would offend everyone if I did not eat a couple barbacoa tacos. So, I will skip breakfast this morning in hope that I do not shoot up five pounds. They really should start a research project on my energy conversion. For every pound I eat, I think I gain four or five pounds.

My stay at Bioptigen has been great. The work was interesting (image processing algorithm development for ophthalmological optical coherence tomography), the people were really great, especially my new Russian friends, and I will miss it a lot. I hate the last day of work at a job after I have made good, hopefully lifelong friends and done very interesting work. I always wonder whether or not I am making a mistake, but the new work is also interesting with great people, and what appears to be more opportunity, so I am looking forward to it. I will talk a little about my new job tomorrow.

Finals week and Economic Animation

By Dad

On Monday, December 12, 2011

In Business, Education, Money, Technology, Work

Day 112 of 1000

This week is finals week at Wake Technical Community College. Everyone in the house except me studied for finals. I worked on a project for my new job which involved mostly study about a new product. I am going to be glad for three weeks of non-study activities starting next week. The one fun thing that happened this weekend was Christian’s Macroeconomics project. He had to put together a brief video of some macroeconomic principle. The first pass was not so good, so he decided he would try to learn how to do animation and use that to smooth over the rough spots. This is what he produced:

Update: He did it in Linux with Kdenlive, Inkscape, pencil, paper, scanner, and his Nikon d90.

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