Its no surprise by now that i'm a conservative person. I don't like people talking about how this country is awful and lost its place in this world. Hey if you don't like it, LEAVE! There's only millions of people that would take your place...
In his most recent CNN.com posting, Glenn Beck disects a bitter Philadelphian discussing why we shouldn't have celebrated this 4th of July. What's Right with America? Plenty is the article de jour. However, Glenn doesn't focus on attacking this POS, he in fact puts perspective on the positive things that America provides its citizens.
While Chris Satullo from the Inquirer cites our lackluster track record with prisoner interrogations, the information that is required to really assess the situation is not available (NOR SHOULD IT BE) to really validate his entire argument. I don't claim to know what is really going on in these "secret camps" our government allegedly has, I can only hope that as Americans, our security is the first and foremost priority and will be kept by all means necessary. So go ahead Mr. Satullo, play monday morning quarterback...its easy to be brave in writing. Just know that you are able to write those awful things, only because someone else is doing the fighting for you! Mentioning our heritage and independence, Mr. Satullo says we have let our founders down. I'd like to know how our founders would have dealt with September 11th. Would we have let religious fanatics take over the world, or imprison them as untrusted people (remember Washington had slaves!)
On the Positive side, Glenn reminds us that despite our setbacks in combating terrorism, we are still the best...
"So, for at least one day, lets just remember that America still leads the world in the principles that matter most: the rule of law, freedom of religion, equal rights, freedom from an oppresssive government and, fortunately for the Philadelphia Inquirer, freedom of speech."
ah, nothing like a warm fuzzy on a friday afternoon...
Friday, July 11, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Glenn Beck Said it best...
Glenn Beck is in my book awesome, concise and aware of the general public's feelings on this election. OR maybe i'm just a conservative looking for a place in this country... check it out.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/25/beck.conservatives/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/25/beck.conservatives/index.html
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Meeting Manners-Observations of a Junior Engineer
Without going into naming names and pointing fingers I feel it is theraputic to discuss some common distrubances in corporate America. Sitting in a 2 hour briefing on the next "big thing", i'm surrounded by men at least 20 years my senior. Armed with their blackberries, computers and leftovers from lunchtime I witness how professionalism is notably lacking.
First of all I love my blackberry, and i'm proud to say I know how to turn the ringer (all the ring notifications) OFF during meetings. I know this is an advanced feature of "cutting edge" technology, but is it too much to ask people to silence their cell phones, and perhaps pretend you are in a movie theater??? Now this audience included a VP for the business area and I still observed more than 4 blackberries chiming to indicate email or phone calls. I was *hoping* this VP would have the kahones to remind his audience that its RUDE to leave them on. No such luck--maybe i'm more easily distracted, but I found myself *waiting* for the next ring to go off.
Next up is the laptop. Again, I love my laptop and all the little noises and reminders that are present in my daily life AT A DESK. However, dragging your laptop into a 2 hour meeting when all you have up is Outlook and MS Messenger...well it doesn't take a genius to see it is not necessary to attend a meeting youhave no intention of listening to.
These are the noises I heard "DO da loop"--indiacating an instant messge...."DA da loop'- returning the instant message. "DO da loop"-incoming "DA da loop"-outgoing. No one even flinched. When did this behavior become acceptable??
I'll tell you one thing...being a young engineer, attending conferences with other young engineers, I've observed better behavior from hungover college graduates. Call it the optimism of youth and drive to succeed that exists only when starting a new job. Really? No, I call it manners. No one sits there with their ringer on LOUD and their instant messenger up and running. In fact most will leave those unneccessary work tools alone and listen. I'm amazed that young engineers are sometimes percieved as lacking an attention span, yet our "senior management" can't seem to keep their toys in the box.
I'll end this tyrade with one last pet peeve. The socially inept person who chooses to chow down on doritos long after lunch time is over. So first he walks through the attendees, excusing himself while everyone shifts to let him by b/c undoubtedly he has a spot in the back. Everyone watches him reach for the loud bag of chips. he happens to sit next to me, i watch him "try" to open the bag quietly, but as we all know, chip bags are not quiet. So he slowly makes a lot of noise and crunches down on those chips with determination and open disregard for those having to watch, smell, and hear his choice in mid afternoon snack.
Doritos leave cheesy fingers so sucking off the last reminants is clearly necessary. (gross) I found myself shifting my chair away from Mr. Doritos.
Professionalism in my opinion is best judged when no one is *watching*...during a meeting.
First of all I love my blackberry, and i'm proud to say I know how to turn the ringer (all the ring notifications) OFF during meetings. I know this is an advanced feature of "cutting edge" technology, but is it too much to ask people to silence their cell phones, and perhaps pretend you are in a movie theater??? Now this audience included a VP for the business area and I still observed more than 4 blackberries chiming to indicate email or phone calls. I was *hoping* this VP would have the kahones to remind his audience that its RUDE to leave them on. No such luck--maybe i'm more easily distracted, but I found myself *waiting* for the next ring to go off.
Next up is the laptop. Again, I love my laptop and all the little noises and reminders that are present in my daily life AT A DESK. However, dragging your laptop into a 2 hour meeting when all you have up is Outlook and MS Messenger...well it doesn't take a genius to see it is not necessary to attend a meeting youhave no intention of listening to.
These are the noises I heard "DO da loop"--indiacating an instant messge...."DA da loop'- returning the instant message. "DO da loop"-incoming "DA da loop"-outgoing. No one even flinched. When did this behavior become acceptable??
I'll tell you one thing...being a young engineer, attending conferences with other young engineers, I've observed better behavior from hungover college graduates. Call it the optimism of youth and drive to succeed that exists only when starting a new job. Really? No, I call it manners. No one sits there with their ringer on LOUD and their instant messenger up and running. In fact most will leave those unneccessary work tools alone and listen. I'm amazed that young engineers are sometimes percieved as lacking an attention span, yet our "senior management" can't seem to keep their toys in the box.
I'll end this tyrade with one last pet peeve. The socially inept person who chooses to chow down on doritos long after lunch time is over. So first he walks through the attendees, excusing himself while everyone shifts to let him by b/c undoubtedly he has a spot in the back. Everyone watches him reach for the loud bag of chips. he happens to sit next to me, i watch him "try" to open the bag quietly, but as we all know, chip bags are not quiet. So he slowly makes a lot of noise and crunches down on those chips with determination and open disregard for those having to watch, smell, and hear his choice in mid afternoon snack.
Doritos leave cheesy fingers so sucking off the last reminants is clearly necessary. (gross) I found myself shifting my chair away from Mr. Doritos.
Professionalism in my opinion is best judged when no one is *watching*...during a meeting.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Life after grad school...Picking a candidate...
So after a nice vacation from blogging, i'm back. Not sure where this blog may lead me, but I thought I would maintain a blog of misc. things that intrest me. Today I want to talk about http://glassbooth.org/ . This is a site dedicated to identifying individual intrests and matching those to the current candidate platforms. This site is different in that into goes more depth when looking into the big ticket items such as tax reform, immigration and the death penalty. First you allocate "points" into which issues you believe are most important. The second part is about 10 questions on how you either oppose or support various issues. The questions are worded in a neutral and unslanted (if thats a word) way as well. Then you submit your results. This whole process took less than 5 mintues. It then tells you how close you were to matching current platforms on either the democratic or republican side. It also has quotations from public sources on speeches or campaign promises that are telling of where the candidate stands.
Personally, I get tired of the primaries. While its a monumental time in American history, I find that listening to speeches aimed at gathering the most support rather dull and predictable. Sure they are going to say what you want to hear, sure they will contradict themselves and go for the jugular when confronting their competition. I just wish it wouldn't invade my TV time at night (thank GOD for DVR). I am not politically apathetic, yet I save my energy for voting when my time comes.
I won't even reveal which party I support because I'm annoyed at how devisive that statement can be. I just listen to others rant and rave and post stupid stickers on their cars. Again, i'm not apathetic, but I don't think Americans as a whole need yet another reason to hate each other.
So in turn, I encourage everyone who reads this (the few of you who know this blog exists) to go to this site http://glassbooth.org/ , figure out who best fits your beliefs and keep it to yourself ha! Just kidding, if you must idenify your party affiliation through bumper stickers and cheesy pins, I won't hold it against you.
Ciao!
Personally, I get tired of the primaries. While its a monumental time in American history, I find that listening to speeches aimed at gathering the most support rather dull and predictable. Sure they are going to say what you want to hear, sure they will contradict themselves and go for the jugular when confronting their competition. I just wish it wouldn't invade my TV time at night (thank GOD for DVR). I am not politically apathetic, yet I save my energy for voting when my time comes.
I won't even reveal which party I support because I'm annoyed at how devisive that statement can be. I just listen to others rant and rave and post stupid stickers on their cars. Again, i'm not apathetic, but I don't think Americans as a whole need yet another reason to hate each other.
So in turn, I encourage everyone who reads this (the few of you who know this blog exists) to go to this site http://glassbooth.org/ , figure out who best fits your beliefs and keep it to yourself ha! Just kidding, if you must idenify your party affiliation through bumper stickers and cheesy pins, I won't hold it against you.
Ciao!
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Where did December go???
So class is over, funny it still feels like November to me. Anywho, in my last post I promised some pictures of my recent projects. I don't have anything on Vizrt yet, but I do have some from the Federal consortium on Virtual Worlds. This is a picture from NOAA,
the venue for the inworld meeting. I got there early which was a good thing, evidently the grid became overloaded and wasn't letting people in after 8:00am. I met a few avatars from the DoD and Civil agencies which had surprisingly varied roles. Some had agriculture intrests, others worked for DoD and thats about all I got out of them. They wern't really there to talk about their work. I sat next to a colleague and spent my time watching the video on the screen listening to the real world presentations which ranged from what IBM is doing in Second Life, to what NASA has created in second life (its very cool, go check it out!)
In terms of Vizrt, a collague of mine was tasked with making the script so after my creative consulting before Thanksgiving, I haven't had to contribute much to the production of the actual clip. I think i'm in some of the video though! If I do get a copy and it isn't huge, i'll post it on my blog (pending export control)
As for the presentations, I think everyone did a great job. The RFID stuff is really really big, I know retail is taking off with it as a practical security and tracking measure, but many other communities are taking aim at utilizing active tags and tinyOS. I think i did a report on TinyOS a while ago, and focused on the wine industry using RFID to transmit conditions on the grape vines to a centralized point.
The video gaming obviously was a hit, (note everyone kept interrupting them, which i'd take as a sign of interest, not rude-ness) I'm interested in the use of gaming as a training mechanism for cultural sensitivity and negotiations. While doing my research on virtual teams, I found quite a bit about gaming for the war fighter. Sandia had a project (now public knowledge) to train the war fighter on peaceful negotiations.
The Second Life team had the unfortunate luck to go last. I think your presentation was great, well researched. I was absolutely exhausted by the time the last group came around, and I apologize to the group for the collective mood. You guys were great, and second life defined had enough substance to turn it into a final project.
I give kudos to the wiki team for having a virtual member. Michelle presented very well even over the phone. Wiki's are a very large part of the organization I currently work for. The obstacles that plagued the team that rolled out our wiki was huge. We had legal and communications blocking us most of the time, and when we finally got a beta version out, we were only allowed to release it to a selected group of people (kinda kills the point)
As for my team, Virtual Teams. Its a huge topic and I struggled with my globalization part because when i think of a virtual team, i think of those who work in different parts of the country. I've never experienced a global team (since you have to be a US citizen to work in my area) so all the stuff i presented was from research, not first hand knowledge. I use virtual technology almost daily, whether it be awful netmeeting or think tank, I'm constantly jumping on a tool to show somebody something since my team is out of Fairfax and I sit in King of Prussia.
Alright if you are still reading this Thank You for your attention. This posting serves as my last post as a grad student (providing I don't fail) I enjoyed discussion in class and research I was able to conduct. If anyone wants to get a hold of me, feel free to email me at mmp190@gmail.com
Happy Holidays!
the venue for the inworld meeting. I got there early which was a good thing, evidently the grid became overloaded and wasn't letting people in after 8:00am. I met a few avatars from the DoD and Civil agencies which had surprisingly varied roles. Some had agriculture intrests, others worked for DoD and thats about all I got out of them. They wern't really there to talk about their work. I sat next to a colleague and spent my time watching the video on the screen listening to the real world presentations which ranged from what IBM is doing in Second Life, to what NASA has created in second life (its very cool, go check it out!)In terms of Vizrt, a collague of mine was tasked with making the script so after my creative consulting before Thanksgiving, I haven't had to contribute much to the production of the actual clip. I think i'm in some of the video though! If I do get a copy and it isn't huge, i'll post it on my blog (pending export control)
As for the presentations, I think everyone did a great job. The RFID stuff is really really big, I know retail is taking off with it as a practical security and tracking measure, but many other communities are taking aim at utilizing active tags and tinyOS. I think i did a report on TinyOS a while ago, and focused on the wine industry using RFID to transmit conditions on the grape vines to a centralized point.
The video gaming obviously was a hit, (note everyone kept interrupting them, which i'd take as a sign of interest, not rude-ness) I'm interested in the use of gaming as a training mechanism for cultural sensitivity and negotiations. While doing my research on virtual teams, I found quite a bit about gaming for the war fighter. Sandia had a project (now public knowledge) to train the war fighter on peaceful negotiations.
The Second Life team had the unfortunate luck to go last. I think your presentation was great, well researched. I was absolutely exhausted by the time the last group came around, and I apologize to the group for the collective mood. You guys were great, and second life defined had enough substance to turn it into a final project.
I give kudos to the wiki team for having a virtual member. Michelle presented very well even over the phone. Wiki's are a very large part of the organization I currently work for. The obstacles that plagued the team that rolled out our wiki was huge. We had legal and communications blocking us most of the time, and when we finally got a beta version out, we were only allowed to release it to a selected group of people (kinda kills the point)
As for my team, Virtual Teams. Its a huge topic and I struggled with my globalization part because when i think of a virtual team, i think of those who work in different parts of the country. I've never experienced a global team (since you have to be a US citizen to work in my area) so all the stuff i presented was from research, not first hand knowledge. I use virtual technology almost daily, whether it be awful netmeeting or think tank, I'm constantly jumping on a tool to show somebody something since my team is out of Fairfax and I sit in King of Prussia.
Alright if you are still reading this Thank You for your attention. This posting serves as my last post as a grad student (providing I don't fail) I enjoyed discussion in class and research I was able to conduct. If anyone wants to get a hold of me, feel free to email me at mmp190@gmail.com
Happy Holidays!
Sunday, November 25, 2007
More adventures in Second Life and Vizrt
It feels like a while since i've been talking face to face with classmates, so regrettably I have a lot to say...
I feel lucky because work and class have seemingly run parallel this semester. I've been on a "special topics" run where Second Life and Vizrt's Green Screen visual studio have occupied my last week and a half before the holiday of course.
On Friday, November 19th I attended the Federal Consortium on Virtual Worlds. It was an inlife and in real life meeting held in DC. We utilized the NOAA's space and their beautiful island to listen to governmental agencies collaborate on advances and usage of virtual worlds. I have some neat screen grabs from the event that I will post and met some people involved with the CDC, dept. of Agriculture, and the DoD. Amazingly, the DoD was very up on secondlife. Their avatar was pretty stylish, not quite what you think of when DoD comes to mind.
Vizrt was an interesting journey to Manhattan last monday and tuesday. I worked out of the NYSE in a virtual studio that is supplied to users of the NYSE (namely media and traders) who can broadcast market news with green screen technology controlling thte background. The easiest way to explain it is the weather person on local news. They use a green screen so in life they are presenting infront of a blue/green screen, but over the air it appears they are in front of a map giving us the cold weather predictions. I don't have any cool pictures, but before xmas, we will have scripted and filmed a movie that advertises LM. Sorry to be short, i'm in the Tampa Airport ready to board a flight...more to come tomorrow :) HOpe everyone had a great turkey day!
I feel lucky because work and class have seemingly run parallel this semester. I've been on a "special topics" run where Second Life and Vizrt's Green Screen visual studio have occupied my last week and a half before the holiday of course.
On Friday, November 19th I attended the Federal Consortium on Virtual Worlds. It was an inlife and in real life meeting held in DC. We utilized the NOAA's space and their beautiful island to listen to governmental agencies collaborate on advances and usage of virtual worlds. I have some neat screen grabs from the event that I will post and met some people involved with the CDC, dept. of Agriculture, and the DoD. Amazingly, the DoD was very up on secondlife. Their avatar was pretty stylish, not quite what you think of when DoD comes to mind.
Vizrt was an interesting journey to Manhattan last monday and tuesday. I worked out of the NYSE in a virtual studio that is supplied to users of the NYSE (namely media and traders) who can broadcast market news with green screen technology controlling thte background. The easiest way to explain it is the weather person on local news. They use a green screen so in life they are presenting infront of a blue/green screen, but over the air it appears they are in front of a map giving us the cold weather predictions. I don't have any cool pictures, but before xmas, we will have scripted and filmed a movie that advertises LM. Sorry to be short, i'm in the Tampa Airport ready to board a flight...more to come tomorrow :) HOpe everyone had a great turkey day!
Monday, November 12, 2007
5 Classes Left
WOOHOOO, thought i'd start a count down. How many other people are graduating this semester??
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