Red's Insights

OAM Monday 7/11

2011-07-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

Monday ... another day back at work. But this week is a litte different. Karla and I are home alone this week. Riley is off at camp attitude for the week. Camp Attitude is a camp for kids with OI "brittle bone desease" and Riley is with a group of kids from our church that are there to help. They say they are there to be "Buddies" with the kids. We will see how things go when he gets back next week. Rachel is into her 2nd week in Europe beginning her time in Switzerland.

Mom and I realize that we live really boring lives. Things are too quiet around the house.

OAM Day 7 Saturday

2011-07-09T22:32:00.000-07:00

Today was a robot day with the Philomath Frolic parade in the morning. Riley drove the robot down the street while the remainder of the teams followed behind walking. It was a little warm by the end of the parade, but no real issue.

We spent most of the afternoon playing games (Ticket to ride, 5 crowns, Phase 10) and the a couple of games of crocket after dinner. We also has a fire outside tonight as well.

Riley would be sure to tell you that the TTR game was epic. He actually lapped mom's score twice. He had like 12 tickets with over 120 points just in routes. However he also lost epicly in the other games too.

OAM Day 5 Thursday July 7

2011-07-07T22:28:00.000-07:00

Today Rachel should be on a ferry going across the English Channel. France starts today.

Today we went out and saw the new CARS 2 movie. I thought it was really good. Not just a rehash of the first one. I love the "Materhorn" :-)

OAM Day 4

2011-07-06T21:33:00.000-07:00

Day 4 - Wed Jul 6
Today was another work day. Came home and Karla, Riley and I played some games: Crocket twice (Mom smoked us on both games), Five Crowns (Mom won again!), and then played Ticket to Ride US and Mom won that too!

I still believe the Ticket to Ride is an awsome game. We have the US, Europe and Nodic editions with the expansion packs for US and Europe. This is a great fun family game.

Enjoy!

OAM Day 3

2011-07-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

Day 3... Tuesday July 5

Today was a quiet day (both Karla and I had to work today). Riley had to a chance to go to his first youth group today: Mini-golf (bad score). Sarah Silverstein says hello (she is back from Africa).

Had a change to tell more people what Rachel is doing today.

Enjoy!

Floyd

And so it begins...OAM

2011-07-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

Well last year my daughter (I know that I haven't spoken much here about her) received the opportunity to go to Europe with a band. Specifically Oregon Ambassador's of Music and Voyagers International from Wheatridge Colorado. And so we have been steadily moving toward the day she was to leave and yesterday was it. We dropped her off up in Portland on Thursday to start band camp and prepare for the trip, then went back up Saturday to see her only concert her in the states. We then picked her and took her to a hotel for a very short rest and then to drop her at the airport at 3:30AM (man this was early).

This all means that my wife and I are without my daughter and for the most part without communication until she heads back to the states in 3 weeks. It is a little trial run for college next year, and it is going to be tough.

I am going to try and write this more for her when she returns to see what we did around here. So today is day 2, 20 left to go,

Rifle and Shotgun Merit Badge

2009-10-27T16:47:00.001-07:00

The past saturday my son's boy scout troop went to a merit badge clinic put on by the "Albany Rifle and Pistol Club". This was a district wide event and there were a large number (>80) of boys from around the district. Now the event had both Rifle and Shotgun training with the number of boys split about even between the two events. My son and most of those from his scout troop decided to spend most of the day working on the rifle badge and not worry about shotgun; there was just too many boys to effectively work on both badges. You couldn't do it unless you were a crack shot to begin with and could make the required targets in just a couple of rounds. Since there were so many boys, the organizers had them shoot in shifts of 10-14 boys each. Now they had rifles (22cal) for each boy to use and they handled the safety issues really well. The only cost was for us to provide our own ammo, but this wasn't too much.

This was a really well run event at a great facility. I really appreciated the work of the people from the club who came to help out. Thanks!

My son did not finish his badge (he had a cold and had a hard time concentrating as the day progressed), but he had a great day.

A New Season

2009-09-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

No new Scout stiff for awhile, this is the beginning of the season again and besides a Court of Honor that will happen soon nothing much else is happening. The boys will start working on a couple of Merit Badges soon so that will help.

The season starts again...

Boy Scout Summer Camp

2009-09-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

Well as much as I wanted to remember to write in here about my son's Boy Scout adventures, I forgot to write about summer camp this year.

This year we went to Camp Baldwin in the Oregon Cascades near mount Hood. Actually it is on the eastern slopes of mount Hood near the small town of Dufer, OR. The one thing that everyone going to this camp will tell you: it is dusty! We went durting the first week of August and spent a full week at the camp.

Camp Baldwin is the one scout camp in this area (State?Region?) that gives the boys the opportunity to earn the Horsemanship merit badge. This was the one reason we went here this year and most of the boys took advantage of the time to earn the badge.

One items to remember. This camp requires the boys/patrols to do their own cooking. You get up at 6:30 in the morning to meet the food truck and pick up supplies for Breakfast and Lunch; then you come back to camp by 4:00 to pick up dinner supplies. Everything is simple and the boys cook their meals together as a group. This can be good or bad take your pick.

I went the first part of the week (including driving the troop trailer up to the camp and having to drive down the massively potholed road to camp to deliver all of our gear). It was a great time and when we picked him up on Saturday he was very dirty, but had a great time.

Hope you like this little blurb about summer camp.

Boy Scout Small Boat Sailing

2009-07-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

I thought that I would start to blog about the trips that my son's boy scout troop have been going on. I was an eagle scout and am now an assistant scoutmaster in his troop. It is a great time and gets my son and I closer together, as well as my being able to help other boys learn (my specialty is knots).

This past weekend we travelled to Fern Ridge Res. near Eugene OR. We spent the afternoon working on the Small Boat Sailing merit badge and having some time on the lake. I was a great time.

Time Flies

2007-09-05T22:21:00.000-07:00

Its been quite awhile since I have written here. Things have changed in work, so here are the highlights:

Last month I was promoted to be the manager of the inter mask design group. This is a position that I saw being posted (it was in a very close department that I worked with closely) and I felt I was very qualified to handle. And I got it.

This is a major change from my previous position. Things change.

A girl's 13th birthday.

2007-06-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

What I sould have made clear in my profile, or at least in some of my earlier posts, is some of my beliefs so you can undestand my views. I am an absolute christian, meaning I truely believe in the bible as truth and make no excuses for that! Some people try to sugar coat things or try to turn what should be black/white ideas into so putrid shade of grey. However, I still believe there is right/wrong, good/evil and life/death. Some things never and shouldn't change.

I am also a very devoted husband and father. I have two children and my oldest, my daughter, just turned 13 (man that can make you feel old). Now alot of people just gloss over this bithday, or make some idle comments regarding the transition from childhood to adolesence. However, my wife and I decided to make more of a statement at this time.

We had a number of family friends (all women) write my daughter letters of encouragement, but not any of her direct relatives (to elminate the normal biases). These letters were placed in a nice wooden box that I had a friend make, and we gave her the box on Saturday at here party. To say she was overwhelmed would be an understatement. She couldn't believe the comments, or the time that these women took to write these letters. My wife and I also did not even read any of these. They were her letters.

We also gave her a necklace that my wife had put together for her. It has a white gold ring on a silver rope chain. Beyond this standard symbol however, she also have placed on it three silver charms: a crown, a heart and a cross. These each had a special meaning and together meant something very special. We wrote a nice letter to go along with it and read it aloud as we gave her the necklace. The letter was then also put in the box.

All together it was a great afternoon. We were really busy getting everything together and tying up the loose ends, but from her reaction I'm sure shre will rememer it for quite awhile.

Enjoy your day.

Life is busy

2007-06-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Well Its been awhile. I have been quite busy.

It seems that without fail, our lives go into overdrive during these last couple of months in the school year. My daughter was in a school play that had some late night practices for a few weeks. My son starting Little league and between practices and games was busy too.

This is over and above the standard school projects, music lessons and church activities that occur throughout the year.

It just seems that these last couple of months become even more of a pain.

The Value of Inspiration and Drive

2007-04-06T08:11:00.000-07:00

I finially found the quote from Mark Twain that I have been looking for awhile now:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

I completely agree with this quote and wish I would have taken its meaning to heart 20 years ago.

You need to worry less about what might happen and more about what might NOT. Being safe and not rocking the boat can make for a safe course, but not for a enlightening one.

Enjoy.

Tires... What a racket

2007-03-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

Well I needed to buy some new tire for one of my cars this morning.

So I went over to one of my local tire places and got a new set of tires. All said and done they were over $700! There has to be some serious mark-up somewhere in this process. Now I understand that there are now environmental costs associated with the Tire business (recycling fees and the like), but still that seems like a lot of money.

They say these are supposedly good tires (their own brand) and they do have a good reputation and warranty service, so we shall see.

Have a great day.

Enjoy

femoore.myopenid.com

2007-03-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

I found something interesting today...

I have been toying with an application that would allow for DVD/Music - Media sharing between friends. Not file sharing, but the loaning of the physical media to friends you trust to return it.

Anyway... I have been thinking that there should be an easier way to manage user identifies. Specifically, I don' t want the legal hassles of maintaining the personal infomation of a number of users in yet another login/user database. That is why when I found OpenId I thought I found the holy grail!

I haven't had the time really look at the interface specification or the libraries provided to access the user information, but on initial look it seems pretty good. We shall see.

Having all this person infomation floating around the internet is just an invitation to identity theft. I am hoping that a service like the above will succeed, if only to let developers focus on the unique value and not on replicated functionality like identity management.

Enjoy.

My wife is away...

2007-03-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

Well my wife is gone to here womans retreat for the weekend. She does this about once a year and I get to spend the weekend being Mr Mom. It wouldn't be too bad, but with my son's weekend class at OSU tomorrow and church on Sunday, I don't get to sleep in at all.

She will bw home Sunday afternoon and hopefully I can keep the house in order.

Enjoy the weekend.

Mothership

2007-03-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading a great science fiction book: Mothership by Tony Chandler.

I really liked this book. I was looking one day for a good e-book I could load into my IPAQ and found this one on fictionwise.com. It was stated to be more of an teen novel and not really that great (according to some reviews on amazon.com). However, I liked the premise and the sample chapter that I read, so I bought the book.

Now I don't recall if I looked at the page count when I started the book or not, but for an e-book then is a fairly large book for me. It was over 2000 pages on the small screen of my IPAQ and even over 400 pages on my PC's screen. This is larger than any other e-book I have read.

It turned out to be a great simple read. No real deep thoughts or strange plot twists. A really simple plot (some have written it is too simplistic) that I found captivating. While others mentioned the transparency of the characters (no real depth) I found the characters enchanting and could empathize with their plight early on. I was caught up in the story and needed to finish it.

I would recommend this book. Don't expect too much, just enjoy the story.

Enjoy.

Spring Irony

2007-03-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

Seems kind of ironic that here ir is March and I have only now thought about having my chain adapter installed on my car.

To be specific my vehicle is a 2003 Saturn Vue and need a special set of chains (they are called 'Spiders'). They attach to the wheel via a metal plate that is mounted to the wheel lugs and the chains snap and lock into these adapters and circle the wheel like your hand would grab a hockey puck around its perimeter.

Now we don't see snow really around here (a few flakes and some small storms), just not enough to justify the use of the chains. We have them to use in case we want to drive over the mountains during the winter months. This weekend my wife is going to a conference over on the Oregon coast (Cannon Beach) and will been to travel over the coast range. The weather reports are predicting rain and it could turn to ice/snow easily. Wo to play it safe I am running out today and getting the adapters installer on the Vue. She will probably not need them, but it is cheap insurance.

The really ironic part of the whole thing is that we moved out here from Colorado! We actually purchased the Vue from a dealer in Fort Collins when we were living out there. We never used chains and actually didn't even own then until we moved here. Now the State Patrol is really strict out here with regards to the chain law, so we went ahead and got the chains. Just seems ironic that we lived for over 15 years in Colorado and never used chains, and have been here in Oregon only 4 years and now have chains for both vehicles and have actually used them.

Just a little bit ironic.

Enjoy.

NIH to the max!

2007-03-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

Man do I hate the old Not invented here syndrome (NIH).

If you knew me you would know that there are only a few things that really get under my skin. The big one is patronizing me. This NIH stuff reaks of the patronizing. It makes you think that you don't know what you are saying and and demeans your authority.

A simple coorolary to NIH is the adage "well why should we change? The old was isn't broken so why fix it?". I HATE THIS!

I have wasted too much time in the last few years of my professional career trying to explain why people should change their older (and in more than just my opinion) broken methodologies, to adopt more standard industry trends and tools. When we think we have made a decision and are moving forward, a month later the conversation will come up again and we have to spend more time justifying our previous answer.

So how do you fix this? I really don't know short of eliminating all of the old guard when the new group comes in and then start from a fresh slate. In government that works, but in industry it is a little more difficult. Especially is you value your people beyond simple existance as resources. So you have to tread lightly, try not to make too many people mad, and take small victories where you gain them.

In life as in business I am learning a lot regarding management, even though I'm not a manager.

Enjoy.

Memories (part 2)

2007-03-05T08:26:00.000-08:00

Interesting...
After my post on Friday regarding the differing value of education and experience (beyond the Undergrad level and mainly directed at work in industry not research), I had a couple of conversations with some friends on the subject. And they agree with me. I will slightly adjust some of my ideas though.

With regard to Graduate education. There are valid reasons for the added education. In some industries the competition for jobs is fierce. In order to make yourself stand apart from the rest, the advanced degree can help you out (like I mentioned in my previous article). However, if you are looking toward any type of teaching, at any level, then you should pursue at least a Masters degree.

A few years back I was looking to change careers. Not exactly by choice, but it was a good excuse to look. I ended up back in the same industry, but I was looking. One position I was interested in was a teacher of Math and Computer Science at the Junior college level. I have over 15 years experience in the field and a good command of the subject. However, since I didn't have a Master Degree I was out of luck. Learn more every day.

However, I do stand by my original thoughts. An advanced education just as a way to earn more money is not effective. If you are doing it to position yourself for a particular job's requirements that is different.

Have a great week.

Enjoy.

Memories

2007-03-02T09:32:00.000-08:00

It really shows that experiece is must more valuabe then education. Now there have been some studies that show for people early in their careers an advanced degree is valuable. However, later in life the value of experiece wins out as the memories and lessons learned from earlier come to bear.

Today was just that kind of issue. Now I have been working for this same company for quite awhile. While many people, including a number of external employment adviser, say this can be a problem (too much baggage), I don't entirely agree. You learn how an organization works and have professional associations. Today we needed some information for a new project and I told my collegue that I knew some people from where I used to work in the company that could help out (memories). I called the person and after a short conversation I found the information that we needed.

Now while this 'baggage' means that I still have a number of freudian slips, calling here there and the like. It also means I have been through a lot as well.

Never underestimate the power of memory and experience!

Have a great day.

Enjoy.

Smoke and Mirrors...

2007-03-02T09:27:00.000-08:00

Well it was dust and not smoke, but the title sounded better.

Last night I spent most of the evening working to install an equipment rack for some sound equipment at my church. Now the rack was about 1/8" too tall and so I needed to carefully 'modify' the edge on the counter where we have our equipment so that it would fit...

No dire consequences here. Everything worked as planned and I was able to sand the small amount off the bottom of the counter with my hand-held grinder (a dremel tool specifically). The only issue was the sheer volume of fine dust liberated in the process. A major pain. If I don't end up with a case of lung cancer from all the dust I will be surprised.

Anyway...

Enjoy.

Is a blog just random gripes?

2007-03-01T09:43:00.000-08:00

I was talking with some friends/co-workers during lunch the other day. A one point in the conversation the question came up regarding blogs.

Now my boss to the forth power, has an idea that the only way our organization can survive is by embracing web2.0 technologies. In the spirit of this he personally has started up a blog. I have read it, along with a number of the comments that were posted by us underlings, and it seems reasonable. If they can gleem any new genuine ideas from the comments then is will be worth the effort. As well it has been said that the management is too far apart from the people doing and having a way to get to a directors ear is probably a good thing.

It seems the while people view email in a similar way to voice communication, it is personal, they don't view blog posts in the same way. The same people who would never talk in public, or send a personal email to a manager, seem to be extremely free to post replies on a blog. Possibly this is a 'new' thing and will change as people get more comfortable with the medium. It is an interesting effect.

Enjoy.

What is web2.0?

2007-02-28T11:42:00.000-08:00

I know this is one example of web2.0 technology, however what is the business model for making money with web2.0 technologies? I really don't know the answer? If I did then I wouldn't be working for my company, and would instead have opened my own to make the money.

I have been working on some ideas, but they are really just ways to increase the user interaction on a web site. For the ideas I am working on, this is really what I want. It is based on all user interaction and user contributed content. I am also hoping to use a mashup with a couple of other sites, but don't know if there are API's for those sites.

I am also looking into the Rails framework. More on this later as I figure out what I need to get everything to work together. Since the application involves a database to track the user data, it is a natural language to use.

Listening Library

2007-02-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

I seem to be hooked.

Awhile ago I started checking out audio books from the library. You know those books on tape (or CD) or various stories. I seem to be hooked on them now. I have enjoyed listening to them during the short (15min) commute I have to work and when I need to wait for my daughter after her play practice in the evening.

It seems that my children and I have different tastes in stories :-) While we have all enjoyed the Harry Potter series and for the most part have also enjoyed tapes of the older original Hardy Boys mysteries, they don't like my taste in Science Fiction. I have a penchant for hard science fiction (science fiction with plausible precursers) with my favorite probably being stories related to time travel. Being an engineer I guess this is only normal (I love to consider the possibilities and probabilities of such fanciful devices).

Lately I have been listening to Carl Sagan's Contact. While you can definitely read his irreverence in the store line (I have read that the character Ellen follows his beliefs very closely), I still appreciate the science and the questions raised in the story. I have read the book earlier and love the movie adaptation (enough said), but the tapes are a bit hard to follow. The book has a number of vignettes and montages, along inclusions of related quotes at the start of each chapter, that make it difficult to follow if you are not listening carefully (or have already read the story). My kids just say its 'wierd' and hard to follow.

Chalk another one up to Dad's strange ideas.

Enjoy!

Disneyworld Vactaion from New Years

2007-02-26T15:21:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to write up some stuff about our vacation to Disneyworld over New Year's 2007.

We had a great time (why not) and the kids only wish they could go back tomorrow. I wouldn't mind, but my bank account will have to catch up for awhile. I really enjoy the Disney experience and they really make you feel like a king while you are there, but everything costs so much and the fast food in the Hotel's food court isn't really for those on a diet either.

We spend longer then we normally have in the past. In other times (well we have only gone to WDW twice in the past, while we are old hands at Disneyland) we have only had a few days to spend in the parks. Both times before we were only able to spend 4 days and that is really the absolute minimum depending on the time of year you go. The last time we went during spring break and the time before we really didn't have any planning and was difficult to figure where to go.

This time we knew we were going during the absolute worst time (crowds wise) and knew that we needed more time. So we decided to spend a full week, and later even added an extra day for travel. Since we live on the west coast (Oregon), and we have to drive for awhile to get to the airport anyway, the extra day was needed and mostly burned on airline flights and buses to the hotel. We left around 6:00am from Portland and ended in Orlando at 7:30pm. Long Day.

We had the best days in the parks though. This trip was the best for our family, and instead of having to wait for everyone else in the party, we were able to just take our time and enjoy everything. I might take some time later and write up a full trip report. This is useful for my typing skills too.

Enjoy

Conversion to Google...

2007-02-26T15:00:00.000-08:00

Well,

As could be seen by the dates, I haven't posted for quite awhile (over a year). I thought it might be a good thing to look into it again so I went ahead and logged in again. I noticed that now blogger is integrated into google accounts. I needed to go back and look up my gmail information, but I went ahead and converted the account.

2005-12-18T20:56:00.000-08:00

Its been a little while since I wrote something into this place. Things are really busy right now. With Christmas and end-of-the-year stuff, things are winding down, with people trying to finish stuff before the break.

I have been really looking at getting back into the home automation hobby. I have tried a few things over the past few years, but nothing organized. I have been trying to use X10 to control the devices, but in our house, it doesn't want to work properly. In all honestly it is probably my problem. There is probably noise on the line that is swamping the X10 signals.

I have one thing I seem to stay with. I alway have used a program called "MisterHouse" (http://misterhouse.net). The program is written in Perl and since I have used Perl extensively it makes a natural fit. Stay tuned for more details.

Good News...?

2005-12-06T21:48:00.000-08:00

Well I heard some good news today. In October I submitted an abstract to a conference in May. This is really good news since it means that I can give a presentation in front of my peers and it make a good statement on my resume. It will mean a lot of hard work in the next couple of months. We will see.

CD's for christmas

2005-12-05T17:44:00.000-08:00

Well, I've think I've got a good idea for sending eveyone a CD of pictures from vacation along with their christmas presents.

You see, at the end of October we went to Disneyland with a large family group for vacation. There were 21 of us, so it was more of a mob. We spend a week enjoying DL and DCA and even took some time to head out and see the Peterson Car Museum in LA. Everything was a blast and everyone said that they had a great time. However, I promised to make a CD of our digital pictures for everyone. I haven't had a chance yet to do it, but probably the best time will be to put them in the gifts. We will see...

its a start...

2005-12-05T17:38:00.000-08:00

Well I've finially decided to try my own hand at a blog. I've been looking around for awhile and feel that this is as good a place to start as any. I really just wanted somewhere I can write some generic ramblings about what intersts me. I know that these posts won't be of much use to anyone else, but hey it gives me something else to do with my time.