2009-05-25 Monday - Running

I used to love to run. 5 miles a day was typical...

Then came the years of letting work consume the available hours in my day...

And then came my illness last year that sapped me of my strength...

Then the emergency surgery last year...the first 3 months afterward were very tender times for my body...I was very cautious about putting my internal organs under any stress.

And then earlier this year, I felt a relapse of my illness coming back...

So, attempts to return to any previous levels of fitness have not gone as smoothly as I had hoped.

But on Saturday I did 0.35 miles

On Sunday, I raised that to 2.0 miles

And today, I continued with 2.0 miles

My body could run further, and longer, but I am holding back until I give my organs a chance to adjust to this new stress level.

But I feel good at the end of the run. My body remembers much. I can feel old dormant strengths returning to wakefulness.

"Rock Steady, Airborne"

2009-05-25 Monday - New [used] Camera

I recently picked-up a used camera, a Canon PowerShot Pro Series S3 IS 6MP with 12x Image Stabilized Zoom



I have to say I am very pleased with it.

6.0-megapixel CCD captures enough detail for photo-quality 14 x 19-inch prints

12x optical zoom lens with USM and UD lens element; 2.0-inch vari-angle LCD display

20 shooting modes and My Colors photo effects

DIGIC II, iSAPS, and Flexizone AF/AE for fast, precise results; 2.3-frame-per-second continuous shooting performance

Powered by 4 AA-size batteries (alkaline batteries supplied); stores images on SD memory cards (16 MB card included)

2009-05-25 Sunday - Correct Breathing

Everyone breathes, but not everyone breathes correctly.

Shallow breathing is probably one of the underlying causes of many ill health effects (mental and physical).

Practitioners of ancient physical/mental disciplines know this truth intimately.

I was fortunate once to have the opportunity to talk with the great Japanese Shotokan Karate Master, Hidetaka Nishiyama, over breakfast, about correct breathing. His advice: learn to "...breath through your toes". Of course you don't actually breath through your toes, but his words were an attempt to express the sentiment with sufficient strength to indicate how deeply one should endeavour to breath.

There are different breathing techniques for different purposes...

There is the slow rhythmic breathing that stills the mind and brings the mind into harmony with the body during meditation...

There is the deep cleansing breath to purge the body of toxins...

There is the deep cycling breath to build the life-force energy charge (known as qi, ch'i, or ki) of the body for maximum physical exertion...

There is the sharp explosive breath of the Kiai ("spirit shout") - which is used to both marshal the body's total defensive posture to absorb a punishing blow - as well as used to focus all of the vital energies into a single point of attack...aligning the mental, physical, and spiritual forces for the maximum force.

These thoughts about breathing were on my mind yesterday as I sat in a pharmacy - taking my blood pressure.

The initial reading of the systolic pressure was quite high. Subsequent readings were all within a +/- range of only a few points.

Disappointing.

I tried the simplest meditation breathing techniques...but the results were not very encouraging.

Then I remembered the words of Master Nishiyama.

One breath, one life.

A single deep cleansing breath technique.

The new reading?

21 points lower.


When I was in the hospital last year for my emergency surgery, part of the recovery process required using a simple device to exercise my lungs to avoid the risk of fluid accumulation. The nurse remarked on my lung capacity being unusual for someone just out of surgery...and my feeling is that decades of training in breathing techniques was the reason. During the initial admittance examination, I was asked to breath deeply and slowly during an automated MRI scanning process...but the technician had to switch to a manual mode because my breathing pattern was outside of the parameters their software was programmed to recognize for a typical patient.

That and $3.50 will buy you a cup of coffee. hehe.

2009-05-18 Monday - Freedom Through Frugal Living

Fabulously Frugal: Living Well on Less Money

Your Money or Your Life, Transforming your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence

2009-05-18 Monday - Self-Improvement

Over the years I have used a simple system of 3x5 cards, one for each day of the week, with a list of topics / skills that I would focus on for a given day of the week.

I have a few goals that I want to accomplish within the next 2, 5, 10 year timeline:
- Return to college and eventually complete a Ph.D. in Computer Science
- Regain a high-level of physical fitness
- Prepare myself physically for a solo circumnavigation voyage
- Strengthen my language skills to facilitate my travel/adventure plans
- Extend the range of consulting services I can offer my clients

To prepare myself to accomplish these goals, I recently updated my cards with the following self-improvement plan:

Monday
- Language: German
- Physical Fitness: Agility, Speed, Flexibility
- Science: Mathematics
- Computer Science: PHP, Ruby, Python

Tuesday
- Language: French
- Physical Fitness: Strength, Endurance, Running
- History
- Computer Science: Cloud Computing

Wednesday
- Language: Italian
- Physical Fitness: Agility, Speed, Flexibility
- Science: Physics
- Computer Science: C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET

Thursday
- Language: Spanish
- Physical Fitness: Strength, Endurance, Running
- Science: Chemistry
- Computer Science: Java, Spring Framework

Friday
- Language: Japanese
- Physical Fitness: Agility, Speed, Flexibility
- Science: Astronomy
- Computer Science: Erlang, Scala, Parallel Programming

Regardless of whether I have time to complete all of my goals for a day - at least I have a plan - which eliminates indecision.

I'll review/revise the plan every three months and adjust. Future language focus will include Mandarin and Arabic.

2009-05-17 Sunday - Inflation is coming

Deflation fare thee well – Part I: In search of real returns in an unreal world - Eric Janszen

Everyone is wrong, again – 1981 in Reverse Part I: The Great Divide – Eric Janszen

2009-05-09 Saturday - Olympia Wooden Boat Fair

I spent the afternoon in downtown Olympia - enjoying the festivities at the Olympia Wooden Boat Fair....sponsored by the Olympia Wooden Boat Association









I bought a few stones that were custom etched by Reflections Custom Etching (etchers.com)



I also enjoyed a very relaxing 20 minute chair massage by GetInTouchMassageOlympia.com

Sebastian Dean, a very interesting vendor, was selling handmade drums: handmadedrums.com

2009-05-02 Saturday - Extinction Level Event Theories

New Blow for Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Theory

Deccan Traps in India

The Deccan Traps are a large igneous province located on the Deccan Plateau of west-central India (between 17–24N, 73–74E) and one of the largest volcanic features on Earth. They consist of multiple layers of solidified flood basalt that together are more than 2,000 m thick and cover an area of 500,000 km²

(...)

A suspected large impact crater has been recently reported in the sea floor off the west coast of India. Called the Shiva crater, it has also been dated at sixty-five million years, right at the K–T boundary. The researchers suggest that the impact may have been the triggering event for the Deccan Traps as well as contributing to the acceleration of the Indian plate in the early Tertiary.[6] However, opinion in the geologic community is not unanimous that this feature is actually an impact crater.[7] Also, the reported age is in the middle of the ages given for the Deccan rocks.

Massive Volcanic Eruptions Could Have Killed Off the Dinosaurs

2009-05-02 Saturday - Computer Science as a profession

The field of Computer Science often suffers from a mis-perception by the general public. At best, the general public might view Computer Science as a necessary evil for the continued advancement of technology to improve the quality of life for society. At worst, practitioners of Computer Science are viewed a "typist".

So it was refreshing to find a presentation by Dr. Jeannette M. Wing:

• President’s Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University


• Assistant Director, Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, National Science Foundation

Computational Thinking and Thinking About Computing

Her presentation briefly touched on: Five Deep Questions in Computing

The following books were very influential in expanding my own perceptions of science, the profession of being a scientist, the value of encouraging curiosity in a child's development, and the joy of discovery:

---

Shift in Simulation Superiority...

International Assessment of Research and Development in Simulation-Based Engineering and Science, released on Apr. 22, 2009, by the World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC).

This WTEC panel report assesses the international research and development activities in the field of Simulation-Based Engineering and Science (SBE&S). SBE&S involves the use of computer modeling and simulation to solve mathematical formulations of physical models of engineered and natural systems. SBE&S today has reached a level of predictive capability that it now firmly complements the traditional pillars of theory and experimentation/observation. As a result, computer simulation is more pervasive today – and having more impact – than at any other time in human history. Many critical technologies, including those to develop new energy sources and to shift the cost-benefit factors in healthcare, are on the horizon that cannot be understood, developed, or utilized without simulation. A panel of experts reviewed and assessed the state of the art in SBE&S as well as levels of activity overseas in the broad thematic areas of life sciences and medicine, materials, and energy and sustainability; and in the crosscutting issues of next generation hardware and algorithms; software development; engineering simulations; validation, verification, and uncertainty quantification; multiscale modeling and simulation; and SBE&S education. The panel hosted a U.S. baseline workshop, conducted a bibliometric analysis, consulted numerous experts and reports, and visited 59 institutions and companies throughout East Asia and Western Europe to explore the active research projects in those institutions, the computational infrastructure used for the projects, the funding schemes that enable the research, the collaborative interactions among universities, national laboratories, and corporate research centers, and workforce needs and development for SBE&S.

The panel found that SBE&S activities abroad are strong, and compete with or lead the United States in some strategic areas. Both here and abroad, SBE&S is changing the way disease is treated, the way surgery is performed and patients are rehabilitated, and the way we understand the brain; changing the way materials and
components are designed, developed, and used in all industrial sectors; and aiding in the recovery of untapped oil, the discovery and utilization of new energy sources, and the way we design sustainable infrastructures. Data intensive and data-driven applications were evident in many countries. Achieving millisecond timescales with molecular resolution for proteins and other complex matter is now within reach due to new architectures and algorithms. The fidelity of engineering simulations is being improved through inclusion of physics and chemistry. There is excitement about the opportunities that petascale computers will afford, but concern about the ability to program them. Because fast computers are now so affordable, and several countries are committed to petascale computing and beyond, what will distinguish us from the rest of the world is our ability to do SBE&S better and to exploit new architectures we develop before those architectures become ubiquitous. Inadequate education and training of the next generation of computational scientists and engineers threatens global as well as U.S. growth of SBE&S. A persistent pattern of subcritical funding overall for SBE&S threatens U.S. leadership and continued needed advances, while a surge of strategic investments in SBE&S abroad reflects recognition by those countries of the role of simulation in advancing national competitiveness and its effectiveness as a mechanism for economic .

(...)

NEW PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
Most of the new petascale systems are built on multicores with complex memory hierarchies. From the programming standpoint, these new large multicore systems present another major disruptive technology—a challenge even greater than cluster computing and message passing. According to John Hennessy of Stanford
University, this is “the biggest problem Computer Science has ever faced”. Simple porting of highly scalable codes like the QBOX or any computational mechanics codes will not lead to any reasonable efficiency, and it carries the danger of largely underutilizing these very expensive petaflop systems, as the PITAC report
suggested. Researchers will need to rewrite their application codes and rethink carefully their corresponding algorithms and software. Numerical libraries such as ScaLAPACK will have to undergo major changes to accommodate multicore and multithread computing. The complexity that this involves can be illustrated with a
simple example: Consider a system with 128 cores per socket, with 32 sockets per node, and with 128 nodes per system for a total of 524,288 cores. Let us also assume that the system has four threads of execution per core. Hence, the total number of threads that a researcher has to handle is two million, a large number of threads indeed!

Management of so many threads is an almost impossible task, even for very experienced programmers, and therefore new programming languages are required to deal with this enormous multithreading complexity. New languages from the High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program of the U.S. Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) point the way toward the next-generation programming environment on petaflop computers. Specifically, Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) languages for the SPMD (single program multiple data) model, such as Unified Parallel C (UPC), co-Array Fortran, and Titanium, and dynamic
languages (X10/IBM, Fortress/Sun, Chapel/Cray), offer many advantages for programming in the new environments. They support both private and shared data, distributed data structures, one-sided memory communications, synchronization, and collective communications. PGAS languages are a good fit to shared memory computers but also to hybrid shared/distributed architectures, and they have locality that may be important when dealing with more than 100 cores per chip.

UPC, in particular, is expressive enough to allow programmers to hand-optimize. An example is shown in Figure 5.5, where UPC is compared against MPI for gather/scatter operations used in finite element codes; there is a clear factor-of-two speedup by using optimized UPC instead of MPI. In terms of the dynamic languages, X10 emphasizes parallel safety, whereas Fortress and Chapel emphasize expressivity. Fortress uses a math-like representation; X10 and Chapel employ a more traditional programming language front-end. Before the HPC community is likely to adopt these new languages, however, there are many challenges to be addressed, including interoperability with the existing languages, scalable memory models, and parallel I/O procedures.

2009-05-01 Friday - Funny Animal Videos

http://www.knoxville-zoo.org/einstein.htm

2009-04-26 Sunday

IBM Computer Program to Take On ‘Jeopardy!’

2009-04-23 Thursday

Funny youtube video: Wall Street Meltdown

Business events scheduled for the coming week

Selling my land in Evening Shade, Arkansas (10 acres)

2009-04-14 Tuesday - Dishwasher Haiku

A friend's dishwasher died this week...time to write a poem...

Dishwasher Haiku:

Dishwasher Silent
Like Cherry Blossom Falls Now
Scrubbing Good For Soul

2009-04-07 Tuesday - Friendship, Duty

A plane disappeared into the jungles of Venezuela a few weeks ago. 6 souls missing.

On Thursday this week, Bob, one of my oldest and dearest friends will fly to Venezuela to help coordinate a spotter plane Search & Rescue effort for a close friend of his who was the pilot of the downed aircraft.

I am on standby as the emergency backup reserve force for the Search & Rescue effort that is about to commence.

If his plane should go down in the jungle, I am his backup. He will be carrying a Satellite GPS tracking device - with a special encoded "Rescue Me" message pre-programmed. We have discussed protocols for keeping me updated on his status - and informing the U.S. Embassy of his mission, location, and flight plans.

My gear is always packed and ready to go at a moments notice - stored in a duffel in my closet. A practice I learned during my brief time with the U.S. Army's 1st of the 75th Airborne Infantry Ranger Battalion - and later during my time serving with the U.S. Army's Rapid Deployment Force, 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, and the 2nd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalary Regiment.

Within 36 hours, I can be boots-on-the-ground in Venezuela.

I've known Bob for 26 years. He's the kind of friend that when the call comes, you go. No questions asked, Right or Wrong, Flat or Flush, High or Low, Win or Lose.

"Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno"
"un pour tous, tous pour un"
("One for all, all for one")

2009-04-01 Wednesday - Integrity

My little company suffered a major setback last week.

Last week my firm lost out on a major bid process.

I did my best - but it wasn't enough.

The submission process required that I had to rely on someone else to do something that they said they would - and they didn't. There were extenuating circumstances - but it boiled down to the fact that I neeeded to rely on someone else - and they failed to complete a task.

Now, there was a simple way that I could have ensured that the task was completed: I could have asked any one of a number of contacts in my professional network to comoplete the task - but the terms of the task were explicit in regards to the qualification of who could perform the task...and that would have required "stretching" the truth...a willingness to ask someone else to tell a lie.

The potential pay-off? Hundreds of thousands of dollars in new revenue..the creation of jobs for people.

The cost? My integrity.

But you see, that's just not who I am.

In matters of principle, you can't afford to venture into that gray area.

No matter what the consequences - I would rather win or lose by my principles.

For some men, winning isn't everything.

Honor. Integrity. Truth. I choose to believe that those are the things that count the most.

In the past, clients have made specific observations regarding their ability to rely on my rectitude. I take great pride in that reputation.

I would rather my small company remain small - than grow it by any means that might ever call into question my integrity.

When I speak of a thing, you will know that my words are true.

The Outlaw Josey Wales:
Ten Bears: These things you say we will have, we already have.

Josey Wales: That's true. I ain't promising you nothing extra. I'm just giving you life and you're giving me life. And I'm saying that men can live together without butchering one another.

Ten Bears: It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double tongues. There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life.

I sleep well at night. My conscious is clean.

The end does not justify the means.

2009-03-21 Saturday - Roots vs. Root-less-ness

A man eventually wearies of traveling.

The desire of wanting to put down roots is a powerfully compelling feeling.

A place to call home.

Friendships that grow stronger and deeper with the passing of the years.

A feeling of belonging.

The waxing and waning of the seasons.

To know a place - deeply.

But even though a man may desire to put down roots, the fates don't always deal those cards to every man.

---

The Double Life

By Don Blanding

How very simple life would be

If only there were two of me

A Restless Me to drift and roam

A Quiet Me to stay at home.

A Searching One to find his fill

Of varied skies and newfound thrill

While sane and homely things are done

By the domestic Other One.



And that’s just where the trouble lies;

There is a Restless Me that cries

For chancy risks and changing scene,

For arctic blue and tropic green,

For deserts with their mystic spell,

For lusty fun and raising Hell

But shackled to the Restless Me

My Other Self rebelliously

Resists the frantic urge to move.



It seeks the old familiar groove

That habits make. It finds content

With hearth and home – dear prisonment,

With candlelight and well-loved books

And treasured loot in dusty nooks,



With puttering and garden things

And dreaming while a cricket sings

And all the while the Restless One

Insists on more exciting fun,

It wants to go with every tide,

No matter where . . .just for the ride.

Like yowling cats the two selves brawl

Until I have no peace at all.



One eye turns to the forward track,

The other eye looks sadly back.

I’m getting wall-eyed from the strain,

(It’s tough to have an idle brain)

But One says “Stay” and One says “Go”

And One says “Yes,” and One says “No,”

And One Self wants a home and woman

And One Self craves the drifter’s land.



The Restless Man always wins

I wish my folks had made me twins.

2009-03-15 Monday - A New Ending

T.S. Eliot once wrote:

"What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from."

2009-03-14 Saturday - Low Tide

Photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash
source: https://unsplash.com/photos/TbaKBqQR8yk

Sitting in my favorite restaurant in Olympia Washington: Tugboat Annies.

Rain fails lightly outside.

From the 2nd floor window, I look out across the marina....across the boats tied in theirs slips...and even further... out across the cold, dark, waters of Puget Sound.

A mist hangs over the water in the distance.

A gray, drizzly, day.

The water is at low tide. Rocks and muck are revealed.

Your ship beached as the current rushes out of the bay. The mud and muck sucking the keel deeper into the black ooze as the weight of the ship works against itself. At low tide you can see the rocks and logs that were hidden just below the surface of the water. You wonder how you missed those on your way into this quiet bay. You plot them on your chart...small "x"'s to remind you of the hazards that await you.

Sometimes it may seem as if life too is at a low tide.

Low tide for the stock market.

Low tide for the job market.

Low tide in your relationships.

Low tide of hope.

Low tide indeed.

Time to stitch the sails and organize the cabin. Lighten the load. Get some rest.

Prepare.

The skipper shouldn't be worried though. The rythm of the tides ensures that if there is a low tide, there will be a high tide. He just has to wait. And take care that his ship is ready.

Coil the sheets, flake the sails, square away the cabin, make ready.

The tide may be out, but she'll be back boys.

2009-03-12 Thursday - Man's Arrogance

Artificial life 'could be created within five years'

"But there would be no safety issues for a long time as any initial organisms would be very primitive and need large-scale life support in the lab, reports New Scientist."
(...)
"...There's nothing you'd expect to go wrong - the way we expected things to go wrong with the assembly."

However, according to Dr Anthony Forster, of Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, who is also creating a synthetic living cell in a test tube with Prof Church, "until you actually try this you won't know".

"But there would be no safety issues for a long time"

"There's nothing you'd expect to go wrong"

""until you actually try this you won't know"

Precisely!

It seems that some folks need to be reminded that Chaos theory rules.

weird al yankovic jurassic park

When the genie is let out of the bottle - it will be impossible to put him back in.

Just because you can do a thing - does not mean that you should.

Witness the proliferation of small nuclear weapons that can now fit inside a suite case...and are now the single largest security threat to millions of people living in large cities. This risk arose because scientists conceived of an idea - and implemented it - without regard to how that new technological capability might be controlled.

The natural order, for the majority of other life forms, is a struggle to survive.

Survival of the fittest is the law of the jungle.

Systems always seek equilibrium.

Every form of life exists in a continuum of a food chain.

I would be so much more at ease, and filled with hope that a disaster can be avoided - if only the scientists were more forthright about their safety measures, precautions, protocols, defensive measures - and if they talked openly about their contingency plans. Instead - comments like "no safety issues" read like the foreshadowing scenes in a bad B-grade Saturday night horror flick.

2009-03-06 Friday - Missing A Home Lost in the Past

I've been "on the road" most of my adult life. It is a lifestyle that is often required by my profession.

I find myself remembering tonight my grandfather's farm in Arkansas. The fields that went on as far as the eye could see...soybean and cotton in the fields. The old barns. The tractor shed. Learning how to ride my first horse. The idyllic summers spent on the banks of the White and Black river learning to fish for catfish with my cousins. The brilliant star-filled sky at night. The sound of the Whip-poor-will in the morning and at dusk. The smell of my grandmother's cooking in the morning. Laughter at the kitchen table late at night. Fourth of July celebrations. The sound of country music playing constantly in the background. Simple lives. Easy nights of sound sleep. Big down-filled beds. My grandfather's easy going manner..his particular way of looking off into the distance when he listened to the daily farm report on the radio. His boots that he bought on his trips to Texas. Learning how to trade antiques under his tutelage. The warmth of the fireplace on cold winter nights.

Early in the years of my travels, I always made a point of returning to my grandfather's farm for Christmas every year.

My grandfather is gone.

The old farmhouse has been torn down.

The family is scattered.