Lord, please bless the troops and bring Nathan home safely. Amen.
We heard from my brother Nathan late last week that he had made it to Kuwait. He will be there for 7-14 days before going on to Iraq. He said it was 100 degrees at 9pm and the high was 120!! I don’t think I’ll be complaining about our long stretch of 100 degree highs anymore. Here’s an excerpt from his note:
"There isn’t much here, just sand and camels. I saw my first camel today when I was going to a meeting. We had to travel from the base to the ranges and there were some bedouans herding camels across the road. Other than that, it’s just sand. It’s very dry here so I drink a lot of water. All of the water is bottled because the local water isn’t good here. The food’s okay. There are 3 dining facilities here and a Subway, Pizza Inn, and Burger King. The food’s alright at the dining facilities. I have run into some people from Nebraska that I know and also some people that I have met through other military experiences."
Isn’t it interesting to hear his report – a Burger King? I never would’ve guessed. I’m struck by the casual tone of his note, like he’s just a guy who has been trasnferred to a new town for work, and technically, that is the case, but we all know that this is not just any ordinary job. I’m very proud of Nathan for his willingness to serve our country and very concerned for his safety and well-being. I’ll try to keep you updated on how he’s doing. He may also start a blog of his own if he finds he has time. Please keep him in your prayers, along with his wife, Trish and their daughter, Morgan. And even though it sounds trite, let’s just go ahead and say a prayer for world peace, too.
The Other End of the Internet
We video chat quite a bit with my sister and her kids in Nebraska and they’ve gotten pretty used to it. It just so happened that my parents, who live about half a mile from them, decided to video chat with them last week. Ben, age 2, was a little confused as to what Grandma and Grandpa were doing in Texas, because as far as he knew that was the other end of the Internet. Eventually, they got it explained that they were not in Texas, but at home across the road. We got a big kick out of that one.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Clark’s third law
My New Job
I figured I should post on this before it isn’t considered "new" anymore. About 2 months ago, I transitioned into a new position at work. I’m still working for National Instruments, I just moved into a new role. Previously, I was the Product Support Engineer (PSE) for LabVIEW Real-Time and LabVIEW PDA. So what is a Product Support Engineer? Well, that was always kind of hard to explain, but basically I was the last guy in the chain of people to solve the problems our customers had with those products. I enjoyed it and it was always challenging (which also meant stressful). After 2 years as PSE, with 3 years before that in Applications Engineering, I was needing a change from working on support issues. Luckily, I was offered a Software Engineer position in the LabVIEW Real-Time group. It’s a lot easier job to explain - basically I’m a computer programmer. I primarily program in LabVIEW, aka "G" which stands for graphical since LabVIEW is a graphical programming language, but I also work some in C++. Being a mechanical engineer by education, I was a little worried about what I was getting myself into, but things have been going really well. My first project is something that I’m really excited about and I really enjoy actually "making" something. I don’t mean to imply that it isn’t stressful or challenging, though - we’ll see how much blogging I’m doing closer to the end of the release cycle!
Share Your Photos
Now that you’ve got your free blog set up (see my previous post), you might be thinking that you’d like to share some photos. Who doesn’t want to share their photos with friends and family? Everybody likes looking at photos, but you can only attach so many pictures to an email. What is bad is if you don’t make them smaller before you attach them and you send out a 3 MB email and max out someone’s account; that’s bad form and I’ll cover that in my FAQ soon here. Never fear though, there are sites that provide you with free space to make your own on-line photo gallery. Most people have seen photo sites like the ones from Kodak and Snapfish, but those sites focus on selling you prints and not simply sharing your photos. There have been free photo sharing sites around for a while, like Flickr, but Google recently started testing their Picasa Web Albums.
It’s pretty cool, and best of all it’s FREE. (Yes, free is a recurring theme.) You have to have a Gmail account to sign up and they say it is a limited test, but I don’t think they are turning people away yet. You get 250 MB of space to create albums and upload your pictures. Uploading your pictures is easy. The upload page provides an ActiveX control that you can install that makes uploading pictures easy. You can drag and drop them right into the web page and it even gives you the option of resizing them so that you save space. You can also upload them one at a time through the website without installing the ActiveX control which is nice if you want to upload from someone else’s computer.
You can also upload pictures easily using Picasa, which is a free application from Google for organizing and editing the pictures on your computer. It is seperate from the new web albums but it does let you upload directly to your web album. If you aren’t using anything to organize and backup your photos, I’d recommend giving Picasa a try. Picasa will also let you edit your photos and has an excellent "I’m Feeling Lucky" button which will automatically adjust the image with a single click. I prefer Adobe Photoshop Elements, but that isn’t free. A few clicks to edit your photos will make them look 100 times better, and make you look like that much better of a photographer. It also makes it easy to backup your pictures to CD or DVD, which you really want to do so that if something does happen to your computer, you don’t lose all the pictures you’ve taken of baby’s first year.
If you want to check out what a Picasa Web Album looks like; you can check out my ’favorite’ sister’s site: http://picasaweb.google.com/galenlisalyons
Oh, and if you are wondering how you are going to keep up with everyone’s new web album sites, don’t worry. They provide RSS feeds that you can subscribe to. Actually they currently have some issues with their RSS feeds but I submitted a bug report to them and I’m sure they’ll get it straightened out in no time.
Milkbone Bandit
We’ve gotten into the habit of giving Red, our trusty Australian shepherd, a treat before we leave the house and leave her alone inside. We thought it would be a good routine to get into to help her get over any initial anxiety of getting left home alone. Apparently it worked, because we don’t think twice about leaving her for several hours anymore and when we get home she is usually sleeping in the back bedroom and comes staggering out after we’ve been home a while. But we’ve continued to give her a treat when we leave, so she likes to see us go.
We keep the milkbone box in the cupboard under the kitchen sink. You can even just open the cupboard and tell her to get a treat and she’ll grab one (or two) out the box so you don’t have to bend over. Apparently when we left for mass this morning I didn’t get the cupboard shut completely, because when we got home Jenny found the milkbone box in the middle of the kitchen. It was unharmed, but it was a little light. Apparently the temptation was too great even for Red.
The funny thing is that not only did she eat her fill of milkbones at the time, she also had the foresight to stash some around the house because I found her eating one this evening. It won’t be long before she starts teaching Livy all of her "tricks".
Curiously Strong
We had an epiphany of sorts this evening – Olivia Grace is a very smart child. We knew this would be the case, what with her valedictorian mother and salutatorian father (that’s right I was #1; he was #2). But little did I know just how clever she could be at a wee eight months. While we were waiting for JR to come back from playing Good Samaritan to a friend with a dead battery this evening, I decided to read some email and RSS feeds to amuse myself and Olivia wanted to come along. She wasn’t as interested in the computer as I was, so I set her on the floor to play and looked for a "toy" to amuse her for a few minutes. I spotted a shiny silver Altoids Tangerine Sours tin that requires placing one’s thumb in exactly the right position to open it – she’d never figure that out, I thought, and presented it to her, much to her delight. After reading a few minutes, I noticed that she was very quiet and the tin was no longer making a rattling noise. I looked down to see tangerine sours all over the floor and my little genius with the sweetest little puckered up baby face you ever did see! Yep – she ate one – and they are "curiously strong"!! I thought for a second about running for the camera, but decided to remove the choking hazard from my child’s mouth instead. Does this mean I’m out of the running for "Mom of the Year"?
SketchUp Your Next Project
Along with all of my other hobbies, I also enjoy woodworking. And being a mechanical engineer, I enjoy designing my own plans. In college, I designed and built my own futon and I made Olivia a rocking bassinet stand. Unfortunately, most computer aided design (CAD) software for drawing up plans are really expensive and when I’m just looking to do a few woodworking projects that isn’t going to pass the local comptroller. Lucky for me Google has a free 3D modeling software in beta called SketchUp.
I thought it would be fun to give it a try and it just so happened that Jenny had volunteered me to make some portable hinged bookshelves with bulletin boards for a childrens education program at church. Wow was it easy to use. Granted I have some CAD experience, but it was very intuitive and I was able to draw up the plans for the bookshelves in about 30 minutes having never used the program before. That is unheard of. The only thing I had to look up how to do was to be able to type in the actual dimensions for the objects I was creating. I was even able to add colors, textures, and a woman to give you a sense of scale for how it will look. It isn’t targeted to the same market as most professional CAD programs for engineers like Pro-E, but for smaller jobs and visualizing things it really works well. There is also a commercial version with more features like being able to print to scale and export to CAD file formats for $500. Another cool thing about SketchUp is that you can import your 3D models into Google Earth.
Let the Blogs Begin
A while back I posted on how I set up my blog and who I have hosted through (here). But if that is a little intimidating, or just too much work, there are simplier options. Even FREE options. I haven’t done an extensive review but here are a couple of recommendations backed up by a little unbiased research.
Since I use Wordpress as the software backbone of my blog, I feel obligated to give them a ’shout-out’. Not only do they provide the Wordpress software that can be installed on a webserver, but they also provide free blogs on www.wordpress.com. It uses wordpress, just like my blog, so it should be easy to use.
Probably the highest recommended free blogging site on the web is Blogger. It started in 1999 and is now owned by Google. They provide a lot of options and features but also keep it simple so it’s really easy to use. They also just recently started a beta of a new easier to use interface which I’d recommend if you are interested in starting your own blog. To get started in the beta go here. My favorite sister actually recently started her own blog so you can go check it out.
Now you want to post your own photo galleries for free too? OK, but that is a post for another night.
Tech Meets Toy
Just in case anyone is shopping for Christmas presents already, I’ve got a new item on my list. The next generation of robotic LEGOs released this week. LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT®. What makes them so cool? Well, not only can you build cool stuff, but they are also infused with technology. These robotic LEGOs include motors, sensors, and an intelligent central brick which can be programmed. But programmed with what you might ask? Why LabVIEW of course. Yes, the software being used by kids, and adults, to program these new LEGOs is a specialized version of the graphical programming language called LabVIEW created by National Instruments (NI). (In case you didn’t know, I’m a software engineer at NI on the LabVIEW team.) You can check out more details here. Another cool thing is that these "toys" are used in education. Better yet, NI allows its employees to take time out of the work day to volunteer helping local schools teach with LEGO MINDSTORMS. So this school year I’ll be helping out in a nearby 5th grade class. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes and what kind of robots they build. We’ll see if I make it all the way ’til Christmas before buying some myself!
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