Telsa Man Out of Time

This is kind of a random one, but I read Tesla Man Out of Time. He was an engineer at the end of the 1800s and start of 1900s (around the same time as Edison). Tesla invented the original AC motor/generator which enabled AC power (the stuff you get out of the wall socket). While Marconi is usual given credit for RF (wireless), Tesla actually figured it out first. He did a whole bunch of other stuff including creating Tesla coils (a way to get huge voltages - if you ever see a big metal thing with lightening bolts coming out of it, it is probably a Tesla coil). The book was interesting although much heavier on his life and light on the details on his stuff worked. If you've never heard about the whole fight between AC and DC it is kind of interesting. Edison wanted to distribute DC and Westinghouse wanted to distribute AC. AC was obviously better (after Tesla made his addition), but Edison wouldn't give up so he tried to make AC look dangerous by electrocuting animals with AC in public and arranging to have the electric chair use AC.

Apartment Search 2

Almost forget to mention:

Whoa. Apartment search using GPS device and web enabled cell phone. Whoa!

Apartment Search

Over the weekend I headed up to San Jose to search for apartments. I decided that it must be nice to sell a product that is in such high demand you can tell people that not only can they not see the product, they can't even see a model of the product before buying, oh and they're going fast so if you don't purchase now it may be gone before you come back! Oh, and it is crazy expensive.

I did end up finding a place, it's not the nicest or biggest, but the price is "reasonable" (and they had a vacant unit to show me). It is within walking distance from downtown Mountain View. Mountain View isn't a big town (about 65,000 people), but it has a bit of a downtown and it is not a long drive to Sunnyvale or Palo Alto. It also gives me a bit of a head start toward San Francisco compared to where I'll be working.

I didn't really think through the timing of the trip so Sunday everything was closed, but it gave me a chance to drive around and get to know the area. I went to downtown San Jose for the first time. I thought it was nice until a coworker pointed out that San Jose has 1 million people, more than San Francisco, so you'd expect a bit more than a couple blocks of restaurants as a downtown. I went to the Tech Museum in San Jose. It's basically a science museum, but more focused on man made stuff than natural phenomenon. Like most science museums it is more kid focused - and I think parts of it exist just so the engineers in the area can explain to their kids what they do.

The big excitement of the trip was on the drive back to the airport. The car seemed to be handling a bit odd, although it was a PT cruiser so I just figured it was the car's usual crappy performance. I got on the freeway and after a bit it started making a clear ca-chunck ca-chunck sound. So I took the next exit and pulled in to a gas station (yes I know the correct thing is just to get over to the side and stop driving, but it was a rental so I cared more about my comfort than the wheel of the car). When I got out I saw that a back tire was still on, but deflated and coming apart. I called up the rental car place and they sent someone to change the tire (yes, I probably could have done it, but wasn't really looking to find out). Anyway, nothing too big - although I was surprised, I thought that a tire popping would have more obvious symptoms - like a loud popping sound.

Today was the last day at work. Mostly just went around and said good bye to people (oh and got a little irritated because I found out that management made a decision I had warned about 7 months ago, but then reminded myself I don't have to care anymore). For those that worry what I might say - I was very positive with everyone before I left. I'm not trying to be negative, but it is interesting that when I joined the company it was 6 months to first implant and today I was informed that the new schedule has first implant 6 months from now, but I don't care because tonight begins my two weeks of unemployment!

How am I not myself?

Whoa. I just watched I heart huckabees. Whoa.

How to Rig an Election

With it being a frosty 58 degrees with a bit of wind outside, I ended up staying inside and learning that the government is evil this weekend (actually Friday night I headed up to the Getty to meet up with several family members - which was very nice). This consisted of reading Fair Game, catching up on daily show episodes and reading How to Rig an Election.

How to rig an election is the story of Allen Raymond who worked on multiple Republican campaigns and was eventually sent to jail for blocking the phones of democrat call centers in New Hampshire on election day. He talks about some of the tricks he pulled, a lot of which were based around direct mailings and calling. He also discussed how he would take minor facts about the opponent and blow it out of proportion. For one candidate who got campaign financing from a questionable source he got that source to give a small amount to the other candidate so that when his guy was accused of taking the money he was able to throw it in the other guy's face. In the direct mailings he would take quotations from the opponent that occurred at vastly different times and string them together to make the person look horrible. In one of his early campaigns he claimed that the opponent who had run a summer camp fired all of the employees and took a giant bonus for himself. In reality the employees were councilors and were "fired" because it was the end of the summer and at the end of the summer he figured out how much money was left and gave himself a portion as his salary. Allen also did a lot of this against the wishes of the candidate he was working for. One example of the phone stuff Allen did was to target particular groups of voters that were likely to have a racial bias against other groups and have a recording of someone in that group supporting the opponent. I was going to list some examples, but they are sufficiently racist I'll leave it to your imagination.

He never wanted to do anything illegal, but beyond that didn't worry about ethics. There were two items that were responsible for getting him arrested. One was a set of phone calls he created that went out to select people during the super bowl claiming to be from a made up organization, but sounding like it came from two of the three candidates in a republican primary (I think for senator of New Jersey). The whole idea was to get people mad at those candidates for calling during the super bowl. The other one that got him in jail was arranging for so many people to call the Democrat's get out the vote centers in New Hampshire that it would shut down their phone lines. One of the call centers was at a volunteer firefighter station. He had actually asked a lawyer if it was illegal and was told no, but did not get it in writing.

One interesting item is that as crooked as this guy seemed, he thought that Rove and the Bush team really crossed the line. Also he chose to work for the Republican party because it looked like they would be on the upswing so that's where the money was. So he wasn't in it because he believed in the cause. But it also wasn't pure greed because he came from a wealthy family and for the first several years he had a small salary and was living off money from his family (of course later on he did quite well for himself).

It is a bit of an odd read, because no matter how reformed he claims he is, it is hard to be too trusting of anything he says. And even if he thinks he is telling the truth, he clearly has a bit of an odd perspective on the world.

So the conclusion of this weekend is don't trust the government, don't trust the media, don't trust anyone. The entire political process is evil and lies. And all this especially applies to Bush/Cheney/Libby/Rove. Hm, I'm actually not sure to what degree that conclusion is serious or a joke. Well, the don't trust anyone might be going to far, but I think I'm actually serious about the rest.

Fair Game

Back in 2003 my major news sources were slashdot, the onion, and occasional daily show episodes. Most of what I knew about Valerie Plame Wilson came from what Max would mention to me. Actually not too long before the war started up the one person in the house who read the Wall Street Journal told me that the US was going to go to war with Iraq and I told him he was crazy (well, I was right about that, but wrong about the US not invading Iraq).

Having not followed the story very well at the time it was very interesting to read Fair Game by Valerie Plame Wilson. For everything I'm about to say I realize that this comes from the person on one side of the issue, but I think it has been shown that she is the far more trustworthy party. While others probably followed this better than I did for those that missed some of it, here's my supper quick summary (I'm sure if you head to wikipedia you can get a better and more accurate summary):

Valerie Plame out of college joined the CIA and was trained to be a field operative. She worked in Greece under the identity of an embassy worker and her work as a spy was to go to parties and events to find people who could be convinced to give over information and to become a spy for the US. After that tour she became a NOC - a nonoffical covered officer - the job a lot of spy movies use that I always assumed was false. The CIA gets them a job with a company to use as cover to go find people who might be willing to hand over info, but since they don't have cover as an embassy worker and thus no diplomatic immunity if caught they get no special protection and aren't suppose to claim connections to the government. At some point in there she marries Joe Wilson who was an ambassador to Iraq at the start of the first Iraq war and later worked for the government dealing wth Africa. Valerie then moves into a new division of the CIA that is working on non-proliferation and she specifically works on Iraq. When Italy revealed possible evidence that Iraq was buying Uranium from Niger Valerie was working on it and someone mentioned that her husband would be a perfect person to send to investigate. He agreed and went and found there was no way that the transaction had taken place and gave a report to the CIA. The pressure to look into this came directly from Dick Cheney. Later the president used the evidence of this purchase as a major part of his case that Saddam had WMD. Joe Wilson was displeased with that choice and wrote an article explaining that it was false. Then the white house starting attacking Joe in the media and eventually leaked that Valerie was a spy. Part of the attack was claiming that Valerie recommended Joe for the trip as a way to get him a free trip - which is absurd because the CIA only paid his travel expenses and not many people choose to go to the second poorest country on earth (the attacks ruined Joe's consulting company and main sources of income). A lot of what happened during this time also came from senators being directed by the Vice President. The Wilsons also had two young twins which added a lot of stress to the situation. The attacks got stretched past the 2004 election with the Wilsons looking like the questionable ones, but eventually things turned around. And it kind of wrapped up with Libby getting convicted. Bush commuted his sentence so he was still guilty and had to pay $250,000 but did no jail time (one thing I didn't realize is if Bush had pardoned Libby, Libby could no longer use the 5th amendment to avoid testifying in front of congress about Cheney and Bush's involvement).

Obviously I skipped a lot. But the overall message is the government lied to start a war it wanted, and then used the media to try to discredit those that disagreed and ruined the career of a covert operative working to keep WMD out of Iraq.

I was amazed to find out that after her name was leaked in 2003 Valerie kept working for the CIA in a non-covert role till 2006. I think that if I worked for the government and the white house started attacking my family I wouldn't stick around so long. Another interesting item is that Saddam was trying to maintain the image that he had WMD. The heads of his military all knew that their division did not have them, but was sure that the other divisions did.

I'd really recommend the book - it is a lot like all those movies about the secret spy who the government turns against and tries to discredit (ok, it is a bit less extreme than the Borne series or The Recruit, but it is real!). Also there are a ton of details I left out in the summary. It is a little tough to read since significant portions (especially in the first 100 pages) have large portions that are blocked out. Even the title of one of the chapters is blocked out as well as portions of the chapter where she talks about her postpartum depression. A lot of info the CIA made her block out is actually already known so the last 80 pages are another author running through the details of the story and putting in a lot of what is blocked out. One of the main items the CIA didn't want published is how long she was at the CIA which caused major sections to be blocked and many places where one word in the middle of a sentence was blocked. Particularly funny was the chapter she wrote about the CIA censoring her work and the portions of that which were censored.

2 weeks to unemployment

Today I started the two week count down to unemployment aka I gave notice. As noted about 22 months ago, quiting is not as fun or exciting as it should be. Especially when your boss is working out of town and you do it over the phone, it ends up a bit muted.

My unemployment stint will only last two weeks, then I'll be headed up to Santa Clara to start doing RF (wireless) chip design. I'm really excited both about moving to Silicon Valley and getting into the field of RF design. I'm not posting the name of the company because I'd prefer my blog not come up if someone searches for the company name, but if you're interested I'd be happy to say more over email (it's not a small company, but you've probably never heard of it). RF is a particularly challenging area of electrical engineering so I think it will be really interesting to get into. And I have a feeling that this whole wireless thing is really starting to catch on and has a bit of growth potential.

I do have a bit of regret for leaving medical devices. But I've learned that while the end product is important, even more important is the day to day work. I'm also sad to leave Southern California, it's especially tough right now since beach weather is just starting up (well, that and the friends I've made). Although I get past it by remembering how much good asian food there is in sunnyvale (not to mention SF). Oh, and the people I know up there - you come before asian food, really. It's a bit odd because I sort of know the area where I'm moving because I spent so much time there for my current job.

Well, ok, all that stuff is just rationalizations. The real reason for the job change is my current employer stopped serving free dinner so I found a job where they serve free breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

First Sunburn of the Year

On Saturday I headed up to Laguna Beach and discovered that I was not the only person to decide to go to the beach on one of the first beach worthy weekends of the year. Once I figured out parking it was really nice to get back to the beach after a long break from it.

The other super exciting event on Saturday was buying and using an electric razor. I decided that I want to try to shave every day and figured switching to electric would help. I went for a fairly simple norelco based on advice from coworkers. Well, an electric razor is no match for 3 days of growth on my face - I think a spoon would have been better. But, I haven't given up yet, I think it is only fair to try it on one day's growth, since the whole point is that is all it will ever have to take on. Keep reading further posts to hear about my thrilling adventures in shaving.

On Sunday I headed down to Sea World with Evan. Not the best park I've seen, but it has some good shows. The Whale (Shamu) show was a bit over done, but if you get past the corny stuff, the jumps and tricks were really cool. It was a huge let down to realize that there is more than one "Shamu". Being Jewish I didn't really have a "there's no Santa" moment as a kid. I feel like this was it for me, not that I was that into Shamu, but I did think Shamu was one real whale. The dolphin show was ok. The otter show was like a bad high school play. No, we didn't sit the slash zone. I do wonder at what age or stage in life, getting sprayed with water goes from desirable to undesirable? One unexpected aspect of Sea World is that it is owned by Anheuser-Busch. So not only do they sell beer at the park, but they have an area where you can sample different beers for free (well, if you forget about the park admission price). They also have some clydesdales there which is an ingenious method of advertising a beer company to children.

Faking It and San Diego Zoo

Over the weekend I read Faking It. It's sort of an advice book for people leaving college. Mostly it is just being funny, partially giving real advice on how to fake it, and partially giving real advice. It is completely aimed at guys. It has some stuff like a few authors to know in case anyone ever talks literature and stuff like basic advice on buying and wearing a suit. If you're interested spend 10 minutes in a book store checking it out - you should be able to skim through a good portion. Or if you're not a guy in your early to mid 20s then just skip it. The cover on amazon is different than the one I have - a 40 being poured into a fancy liquor glass. The book also confirms a number of things my parents had to slowly convince me of - like that the stuff in my bathroom should match, that I should get a decent set of towels, and I should put artwork on my walls (that's some of the less funny advice).

On Sunday I headed to the San Diego Zoo. I would say that it is a rather nice zoo, but I could also tell you there is some good food in France. I actually think that the San Diego wild animal park is nicer because it seems so much more natural having a bunch of different animals out in a large area. In defensive of zoos in other cities I do think the San Diego Zoo cheats by designing everything based on knowing that the weather will be nice. I won't go into too much detail, but there's a lot more animal sex going on at the zoo than I remember from childhood zoo visits. Not sure if I just caught an interesting day or if that's what happens when you don't have parents to pull you away and you have a sick enough sense of humor that if you see something starting you get closer rather than walking away.

In foreign countries where I do not speak the language, I have little shame when it comes to trying to communicate with people I do not know in order to get what I need. Rather than state an example - I'll just encourage you to think of your favorite of my stories about me finding my way around another country - if you know me well enough to read this, you almost certainly have a long list to choose from. But when I'm within driving distance of my home and everyone around me speaks english (well, ok, maybe not everyone, I am 70 miles from the border, but everyone relevant to the situation), even if the other person initiates the conversation - I have no idea what to say. And often end up mumbling half a sentence or just smiling dumbly. And afterwards wonder if my half sentence meant anything or if the other people were left guessing what country I'm visiting from. Well, I guess it does save them from trying to parse my run-on sentences and trying to figure out who taught me it is ok to put sub-sentences in parentheses and split parts of sentences using hyphens.