Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Today is the anniversary of the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all the families, relatives and friends of those who lost their lives on April 16th, 2007 in this senseless tragedy.....

The picture below was on the Collegiate Times in 2007 at VT:

There is a permanent memorial at VT. The Collegiate Times has a nice article describing the memorial.

My memories of last April 16th started with a phone call from my wife. Julie called and said, "just wanted to let you know that John is fine." At the time I was on my SunRay reading email while on a con call when she called my cellphone. She never calls me during theday since she is a school teacher. "Why would John not be be fine?" I asked. She asked me if I was watching TV or listening to the news. Of course I was not watching TV or listening to the news. She explained what was going on. I immediately interrupted the Sun folks on the con call and quickly said, "I had to get off the call, there was a shooting at my son's school."

It was then that I turned on the TV and was shocked to see the peaceful and beautiful VT campus on the news. I started getting emails, phone calls from literally around the world checking on John. You sometimes forget in casual conversation that you mentioned something about your kids that your friends and colleagues remember. Every time a call came, I paused the DVR. I was getting the current updates from friend, colleagues\s and family all around the world via email and non stop phone calls. As the numbers kept rising, it became more and more surreal.

 My son John was working for the Collegiate Times during his freshman year.  He put together a very nice week long history of events starting on April 16th through April 23rd that shows what happened each day.

I can not imagine the horror the students and faculty must have felt. There was an article in the post today by Nick Miroff, titled, "A Year Later, Virginia Tech Is Still Healing" is a well written article worth reading. As Miroff points out:

"Virginia Tech students have learned to talk about it in shorthand, if they talk about it at all. This Story

• A Year Later, Va. Tech Is Still Healing
•  Special Report: Va. Tech Shootings 
•  Essay: In Blacksburg, An ER Physician Still Tries to Heal
•  Blog: Va. Tech Students Remember  
•  VT: One Year Later - Living With Chow 

• 
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

They do not use the words massacre, or shootings, or rampage. They call it "April 16th," and sometimes not even that. To say "four-sixteen" is enough. Everyone knows." 

I have been back to VT many times since April 16th, 2007 both as a parent and working for Sun Microsystems where I have given talks and brought down Sun's thought leaders to speak at VT's ACM where my son John is President.  Each time, the first thing I do is visit the memorial

          Governor Kaine has did a good job demanding there was the VT Task Force.  Governor Kaine stated:

"On April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech University suffered a terrible tragedy. Today, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families and the entire Virginia Tech community.

"In the year that has passed since that horrible day, we have grieved for those we lost and prayed for the comfort of their loved ones. We have rejoiced in the recovery of those who were injured. We have been inspired by the unfaltering hope and Hokie spirit of Virginia Tech. And we have renewed our commitment to do even more to learn lessons from that day and to make our campuses and communities safer.

"As I think about the victims' families, I am at a loss for words to express what is in my heart. The courage and strength they have shown in the face of such tremendous, tragic loss is awe-inspiring. We have been inspired by the resilient Hokie spirit of Virginia Tech, both in Blacksburg and around the world. Since that tragic day last April, the unshakeable sense of unity and hope demonstrated by the Hokies has touched the lives of people around the world. Their focus on pulling together to support their school and each other in the days after the shooting, and their commitment to public service through the VT Engage program in the months that followed has moved us all.

"We still have work to do. A continued commitment to improvement is the best tribute we can pay to those who lost so much. And as we move forward, we will continue to be inspired by those in the Hokie Nation."

VT seems to have made the right changes. The VT Task Force seemed to not pull any punches when it came to how the University should have dealt with the events on the morning of April 16th, 2007. As the AP reported and I FULLY AGREE with Governor Kaine about purchasing firearms at gun shows. Virginia needs to get its act together.  This loophole is INSANE!

"Gov. Timothy M. Kaine proposed mandated background checks yesterday for everyone who attempts to purchase firearms at gun shows - legislation that he called critical to helping prevent future tragedies like the shootings at Virginia Tech. Many families of those killed or injured in the April shootings have called on legislators to close Virginia’s so-called gun show loophole, which allows people to purchase firearms from unlicensed sellers at gun shows without having to submit to background checks. Under current Virginia law, only licensed dealers are required to run background checks on customers.
“If by doing this, we can keep one family from having to go through what these families have suffered, it will be the best thing that the legislature will do this year,” Kaine said at Virginia State Police headquarters, surrounded by several of the victims’ families."

Hopefully the healing will continue for those directly affected...

The New Hybrid CNC Programmer/Machinist

The President of AMT - The Association for Manufacturing Technology, Doug Woods, sent out a link to a GREAT CNN video by Tony Harris titled "The New Face of Blue Collar Workers".

The video highlights a company in Greenville, SC called ADEX Machining Technologies, LLC

What is extremely impressive about ADEX is the new position they created. Traditionally, you have CNC programmers and machinists which are separate positions.   Adex has created a hybrid role where employees must be accomplished CNC programmers AND skilled machinists.  The CNN video interviews a number of Adex employees.  Each employee make it very clear that, by wearing both hats, it gives them the satisfaction of both designing parts and then actually creating the part.  

One of the Adex founders made the statement that for each open position they had 100 applicants who applied.  They still had great difficulty finding qualified employees.   The reason is the need for the combined skill set.  As technologies such as MTConnect greatly improve machine tool efficiency, this new hybrid position will become the norm and not the exception.   It is very, very cool to see this rebirth of manufacturing.  As the video indicated, this might be exactly what manufacturing needs to bring the young, gamer generation into manufacturing.  

This is not your father's manufacturing industry anymore.  This really is the new face of blue collar workers.  Also, these new workers are making $50,000 to $80,000 in South Carolina.

Java god James Gosling Leaves Oracle

I just read on the Sun Alumni alias that James Gosling left Oracle last week.
James officially resigned on April 2nd.

James stated on his blog:

"As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good," 

Bill Joy once called James Gosling "the world's greatest living programmer", to which James quickly replied, "who is better dead? :-) "

Words can not express what a HUGE LOSS this is for Java and for Oracle....

Center Ice - 3rd Row Seats at the Caps Game

I took my youngest son Tim to today's Caps game.  It was a great game that went into overtime and then a shootout.  We had third row center ice tickets.  Afterwards, we went to Ben's Chili.  Below are some photos of a fantastic day.

 That is Tim and me during warmups at the Caps game on Sunday April 11th, 2010.

That is the GREAT 8 - Alex Ovechkin right in front of us.  I bought Tim an Alex Ovechkin jersey with Ovechkin's name in Russian on the back as a memento of the day.

  Tim outside Ben's Chili Bowl after a great late lunch.

Announcing Virtual Photons Electrons, LLC

Today, I am announcing the official creation of Virtual Photons Electrons, LLC.

After Oracle officially took over Sun Microsystems,  Oracle and I went in our separate directions.  This happened on Friday January 29th, 2010.  The plan was for me to take off until fall 2010.   That plan changed two weeks later after having lunch with Doug Woods, the President for the Association of Manufacturing Technology (AMT).  Just like Vito Corleone in the movie The Godfather, Doug made me an offer I could not refuse :-)  After a week Doug and I agreed that AMT would create The Office of Strategic Innovation where I would be the Director and report directly to him as a consultant.   A few weeks after that I started part time consulting for AMT and currently I am full time.

This was an easy decision as the most fun I have had in my career was working on MTConnect with Dr. Dave Patterson of UCB, along with the other UCB professors, Dr. Armando Fox, Will Sobel, Dr. Dave Dornfeld as well as with the CTO and VP of Technology for AMT - Paul Worndorf.  Doug Woods was the Chairman of the Board and John Byrd was the President of AMT when these two invested seven figures for the creation of MTConnect.  AMT has proven itself as a true thought leader among all associations.

Virtual Photons Electrons, LLC was created with my wife, Julie H. Edstrom as the President and CFO with me as the CEO/CTO.  I thought I have worked for her for 26.5+ years of marriage, so I might as well make it official :-)

Washington Nationals Opening Day

On Monday April 5th, 2010 I was with Doug Woods, Peter Eelman and Pat McGibbon of AMT attending the opening day for the Washington Nationals baseball season.  It was incredible weather and President Obama threw out the first pitch.

Above is President Obama wearing a Nats jacket, but a Chicago White Sox cap (note to the President, we get it, you are a White Sox fan, but putting it on during Nats Opening Day does not endear you to Nats fans) throwing out the first pitch.  I was glad that I was able to capture the ball in mid-flight (you see it below the nationals.com sign in left field).  The pitch was high and thrown to the Nats superstar Ryan Zimmerman.  At least he did not bounce it to home plate :-)

From right to left is me, Doug, Pat and Peter having a great time at the opener.  I forget who won :-)

The Bell System Technical Journal - UNIX Time Sharing System

HUGE thanks to npg (Neil P. Groundwater)  for sending me an original copy of The Bell System Technical Journal.  This was the first document to detail the UNIX time sharing system.  This is dated July-August 1978.  Neil was the first user of UNIX outside the state of New Jersey. This is very cool - thanks npg!

A Big Loss For Internet Freedom Today.....

Comcast won today against the FCC in a trial for net neutrality that could have very negative long term consequences.  The big pipe providers won and the Internet (and everyone who is not a big pipe provider - which is most of planet earth) LOST.

There is a lot of nonsense out there about what net neutrality is and is not.   Here is the bottom line folks, net neutrality is the morale equivalent of equal rights of the Internet. 

Without net neutrality, the big pipe providers can decide (via business contracts) that my particular stream of bits coming to me will be slower because I HAPPENED to select the "wrong" application or device.


Here is a real world and accurate analogy - I purchase new Corvette.  When I get on I-95 heading north, I find out that my Corvette is throttled back to 40mph, but all the Kias are going 75mph.   When I call the Big Pipe Provider and ask "why I am only going 40mph, why are you throttling me back?"  The Big Pipe Provider then says, "Dave, we are not throttling you back, but we are allowing our business partner Kia to go 75mph and this is how we keep our highway prices cheap.  Why don't you sell your Corvette and buy a nice Kia so you can go 75mph?"

I am NOT a fan of big government, but let's not forget who created the Internet and how incredibly successful it has been.    The Internet has been successful BECAUSE it has been based on open and royalty free protocols with neutrality built in by definition.  

Dornfeld's Law

I was discussing presentations in general with Dr. Dave Dornfeld of UCB.   Dave is the:

• Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Director, Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability at University of California

In addition, Dave was one of the real drivers and leaders of MTConnect.  It was through Dave Patterson that I first met Dave Dornfeld when we were working on MTConnect.  Dave Dornfeld is one of the true thought leaders in the world on a number of topics.

Dave made a very interesting statement regarding slicing through the data of any presentation.   What Dave basically said was, "anytime you see 40% in a presentation you should be suspect.  The presenter likely did not want to put in 50% because it would be viewed too high and 30% would be viewed as not being significant."

I got a real chuckle out of that and said to Dave, "I think we need to call that "Dornfeld's Law".

To officially state Dornfeld's Law (until Dave corrects me :-)  

 "The statistical veracity of any presentation can be quickly determined by examining both the frequency and relative contextual importance of the number 40% in the presenters representation of supporting data."

 

• Will C Hall Family Professor of Engineering at University of California at Berkeley

see less...

AMT/NCMS Manufacturing Technology Forum and "China Time"

On Monday March 29th to Wednesday March 31st, AMT and NCMS hosted a great technology forum for their members in Nashville on the 59 acre Gaylord Opryland.   As stated on the NCMS events website, "The 2010 AMT/NCMS Manufacturing Technology Forum will highlight new initiatives addressing “Green in Manufacturing.” Guest speakers will discuss what is going on, what is needed and what you can expect in meeting new manufacturing requirements."

Paul Warndorf was the host along with Richard Garmin of NCMS.  


There  were a number of great speakers and below is a listing of some of the highlights that stuck with me:

• Richard Garmin of NCMS got everyone's attention by starting off with the statement that there are some people who incorrectly view manufacturing as "dead, dumb and disappearing".    Rick set the stage for a very engaging and interactive three days.
• Rick Garmin said by 2020 that 50% of all autos manufactured will have non combustion power trains.
• Dr. Dave Dornfeld of UCB and Director of LMAS, discussed that technology evolutions will come in terms of wedges for machine tools and manufacturing that will increase efficiency and production.
• Jeffrey Walker of DOE's Industrial Technologies Program discussed ISO 50001, the "Save Energy Now Toolbox" and a number of software tools such as MotorMaster+ for analyzing motor efficiency.
• Jim Reeb of Caterpillar asked a very thought provoking question,"how do you hibernate a machine tool while maintaining thermal stability?"
•  Dr. Christian Brecher, Professor Dr.-Ing. WZL RWTH Aachen, Germany, gave a very interesting talk and made the statement, "MTConnect is the perfect system."  Dr. Brecher also discussed the concept of the total digital factory.  I pointed out that until the machine tool vendors totally open up their systems, this will never be truly possible to achieve.
• Dr. Tom Kurfess of CU-ICAR stated that "80% of the cars BMW makes in the US are exported." This was a very impressive statistic.  Dr. Kurfess also pointed out that when we see machine tools spitting out gigabytes of data per hour, the ability to store and analyze this data will be critical.  He also pointed out that it takes 3x the energy to build a car in the US versus Europe, but our power cost is 1/3 the price of Europe.   Imagine if we had Europe's efficiencies?
• Dr. Kurfess also pointed out that a BMW diesel that is running in LA will have cleaner air coming out of the tail pipe than what went into the air box at the front of the car.  Amazing....  
  

If there was one presentation that really got my attention it was on China's progress in R&D and manufacturing.  Here are some fascinating statistics:

• The United States graduated 77,000 engineers in 2009.
• China graduated 1.6 MILLION engineers in 2009.
• In a five year time period, China went from having to import bullet trains from France, to designing, manufacturing and exporting their own bullet trains to other countries.  This absolutely blew me away.
• The next day I heard on NPR the term the describes the above phenomenon as "China Time".   When and not if, "China Time" becomes the new Innovate-to-Product standard, then other countries will have to totally rethink how they compete in the global market place.

The question for every company, not just machine tool vendors, will be, "how do you compete in "China Time"?

In addition to the Technology Forum, we had multiple conference and committee meetings as well which were very productive.

Even You - EVEN me?, huh.....

Today is Easter and I had an interesting experience during communion at our church today.  

I am at the front of the church, on my knees receiving communion with my family and other members of

the congregation when former Bishop E. Harold Jansen of the Lutheran Church says to me,  'The body of Christ, that was given for you. The blood of Christ, that was shed for you" and then the Bishop looks at me at says "EVEN YOU."  I then said loud, "EVEN me, huh?"

As we were leaving,  I made sure I was in Bishop Jansen's line so I could shake his hand and have a nice laugh with him, which we both did.

Needless to say, this was a first at our church, I think :-)  So why did Bishop Jansen decide to point out that EVEN Dave Edstrom can get communion?  Well, first of all Bishop Jansen is a great man with a great sense of humor.  But, what prompted this is that a month ago he called my house looking for my dad.   He just says,  "is John there?"  I immediately recognize his voice and realize that he has dialed the wrong number, so I say "John Edstrom?  John is in jail and I am not sure when he is going to be out.  I can give him a message though the next time I visit him?"

There is a three second silence on the other end and then I hear, "who is this?"    I then reply, "hi Bishop Jansen, this Dave and you dialed my house."   We then joke around for a little bit before he hung up and called my father.

For some reason, it did not occur to me that there would be a payback on Easter :-)   Bishop Jansen is a great man and we are very lucky that he agrees to be part of our church. 

MTConnect Technical Advisory Group Meeting at CU-ICAR

Last Monday the 15th, through Wednesday the 17th I was at Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) attending the MTConnect Technical Advisory Group Meeting (MTAG) in Greenville, South Carolina.  I flew down with Paul Warndorf, Vice President of Technology and CTO for AMT.  I always learn a lot traveling with Paul.

The MTAG was hosted by Dr. Thomas Kurfess who is the Director of the Campbell Graduate Engineering Center at CU-ICAR.  Dr. Tom Kurfess was a very gracious host who gave us a tour of CU-ICAR as well as arranged for private tour at BMW's Assembly Plant in Spartanburg, SC where they build the X5 and X6 models.

The MTAG meetings were the best ever.  I believe that is because of the passion and expertise of the MTAG members as well as the rapidly increasing adoption of MTConnect with machine tool builders, software companies, integration companies and MOST IMPORTANT customers.

Below are some photos I took at the BMW Assembly Plant Tour.

Above is me standing in front of a BMW V-12 aircraft engine at the BMW Museum in Spartanburg, SC.

Above is the description of the aircraft engine I was in front of in the earlier photo.

Above is a 1,400 HP 4 cylinder BMW race car engine.

As the text states, this is a photo of BMW's diesel engine that is listed as the sportiest and most efficient in the world.

Mac OS X Backspace and Delete For Old Unix Geeks Like Me

 Below is a picture of my toolbar:

As you can tell, this is not your typical toolbar on a MacBook Pro.  I have demoted the standard Apple apps and promoted applications such as:

1. Terminal
2. Console
3. Network Utility
4. System Profiler
5. Activity Monitor
6. Techtool Deluxe
7. VirtualBox
8. Spaces
9. Time Machine
10. Opera
11. Chrome
12. Firefox

So, I am not your typical Apple Fan Boy user is my point.  I like the power tools of life.  I like saving time.  I love that my MacBook Pro runs Unix underneath.  I am more and more impressed with Mac OS X until I ran into the no damn BACKSPACE key on the MacBook Pro.  That was a stupid design decision.   Please don't tell me how Steve Jobs is god and that whatever decision he makes are great.  I will show you the Apple Lisa in my father's basement.  I will show you pictures of the Newton.  Even Apple can make mistakes.  Don't get me wrong, Steve Jobs is a marketing genius, but he is not god.

I am an old Unix guy.  I have been using Unix since 1981.  That is a lot longer than most, but not as long as some.  What I love about Unix is its simplicity.  It is elegant in its simplicity.  Everything is a file with Unix and that makes it very extensible.  It is exponentially extensible.  I love power tools that just work.  I am a vi person and up until recently a Pine person for email.  Why?  Huge capabilities with absolute minimal key strokes.

Bill Joy used to send his emails with lower case only because he calculated that he saved something like 27% by avoiding the short pause to hit the shift key at the beginning of sentences.  I think he is probably unique in that style :-)   If you look at vi, you see an extremely powerful editor.  Speaking of vi, there is a long standing story about Bill writing vi in a weekend.  He did not.  See below.

Below is a short snippet from an interview with Bill Joy on the creation of vi that was reproduced by SoftPanorma which was reproduced from Linux Magazine November 1999 FEATURES onThe Joy of Unix: 

Linux Magazine: So you didn't really write vi in one weekend like everybody says? 

Bill Joy: No. It took a long time. It was really hard to do because you've got to remember that I was trying to make it usable over a 300 baud modem. That's also the reason you have all these funny commands. It just barely worked to use a screen editor over a modem. It was just barely fast enough. A 1200 baud modem was an upgrade. 1200 baud now is pretty slow.

9600 baud is faster than you can read. 1200 baud is way slower. So the editor was optimized so that you could edit and feel productive when it was painting slower than you could think. Now that computers are so much faster than you can think, nobody understands this anymore.

The people doing Emacs were sitting in labs at MIT with what were essentially fibre-channel links to the host, in contemporary terms. They were working on a PDP-10, which was a huge machine by comparison, with infinitely fast screens.

So they could have funny commands with the screen shimmering and all that, and meanwhile, I'm sitting at home in sort of World War II surplus housing at Berkeley with a modem and a terminal that can just barely get the cursor off the bottom line.

It was a world that is now extinct. People don't know that vi was written for a world that doesn't exist anymore -- unless you decide to get a satellite phone and use it to connect to the Net at 2400 baud, in which case you'll realize that the Net is not usable at 2400 baud. It used to be perfectly usable at 1200 baud. But these days you can't use the Web at 2400 baud because the ads are 24 kilobytes.

Back to the point of this blog post where I am admittedly jumping into some historical rat holes :-)  I have been using Unix since 1981 and have always used the DELETE key as the Unix intr and the BACKSPACE key as the erase key.   What does this mean in English?  The DELETE key interrupts or basically kills what you were doing on a command line.  The BACKSPACE key will backspace to the left of where you are on the line and remove whatever it backspaces over.  Some individuals use CONTROL-C as the Unix intr function.  I never liked that because that involved pausing and hitting the control key then the C key.  Like Bill Joy, I believe shorter is better.

On the MacBook Pro there is no BACKSPACE key.  This is stupid.  Apple easily could have put a BACKSPACE key on the keyboard.  Why do I need only one FN key, one CONTROL key, but I need TWO COMMAND keys and TWO ALT/OPTION keys?  I realize that the Apple Fan Boys and Apple Sycophants will go nuts over this heresy, but it makes no damn sense....

BUT, there is a solution.  After googling my brains out and going down many, many wrong paths, I have found a solution that works for me.  Now, for the average Apple user, this may not be the solution, but for old Unix geeks, it is a very clean solution.

You need to do three things:

1. Turn off the keyboard shortcut for the F12 key that pops up the Dashboard.  You do this by going into System Preferences--> Keyboard --> Dashboard & Dock then deselect the Dashboard F12 function.  See below.

    2.  Select the Use all F1, F2, etc. as standard function keys.  What this means is that to use the functions that are represented by icons on your upper row function keys, you MUST first hold down the FN key.  No big deal to me, because these keys are not used that often for a typical Unix geek.  Your typical Apple user might freak out though.  Your typical Apple user is not using a Unix terminal all the time like I am though either.   You do this by going into System Preferences--> Keyboard --> Keyboard then select the Use all F1, F2, etc. as standard function keys.    See below.

   3.   Redefine the F12 key by going into the Terminal Settings--> Preferences --> Settings --> Keyboard  and redefine the F12 key to be a CONTROL-H which shows up as a \010  as you see below.

   3.  Then make sure your  stty looks like the following in your .cshrc file   stty  intr '^?'
         The system defaults to having CONTROL-H as the backspace key.  In other words, the system puts in the equivalent of     stty erase '^H'

Now, when it hit the DELETE key it will operate as an intr and when you hit the F12 key it will operate as the erase function as all of us old geeks are used to.   Three easy steps.....


NOTE:  A question I received in early August 2010 asked me, "I've just switched from a PC to MAC, and this is also my only complaint. I'm just a regular user though - how the heck do I access my .cshrc file so that I can follow your above instructions? Thanks so much." 

The answer to the question is that the terminal app is located in the Utilities Folder inside the Applications Folder.  The purpose of this post is for those individuals who are using a terminal window and want the  DELETE key it will operate as an intr and when you hit the F12 key it will operate as the erase function.

                      

When Big Parts of Your Past Are Closed Down

This past week it was announced that the Kansas City, MO School System will close down 29 of its 61 schools.

In this group of closures is the High School I went to Hickman Mills.

What is interesting about this is the following about my youth:


        Westridge Elementary School CLOSED
        Baptiste Junior High School CLOSED
        Hickman Mills High School CLOSED

The numbers are devastating:

  * Kansas City has 61 schools
  * 29 schools will close by fall
  * 700 jobs will be lost
  * 25 million dollars will be spent on the transition
  * KC had 75,000 students
  * KC now has less than 17,000


I went to 6th grade at Westridge, all three years at Baptiste and one year at Hickman Mills during a five year stint my father was assigned to Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base which is also CLOSED.   The shopping center near our house had so much crime that ALL THE STORES CLOSED.

When I took my family on a trip about ten years ago, I took them to Trenton, Illinois and Kansas City, Missouri to show them where I lived.  We did this during the summer.

In Trenton, 30 years after my parents left, NOTHING HAD CHANGED.  The people who purchased my parents house were still there.  All the neighbors were still there.  The population of 2,100 had not changed. It was simply surreal to go back to a small town and it was as if time had stopped.

We go to Kansas City, Missouri.   I take them to Westridge Elementary School and it is closed.  I take them to Baptiste Junior High School and it is closed.  We go to Hickman Mills High School and it is open.  I decide to take my family inside.   One of the stories that my boys did not believe was that teachers were allowed to hit you with a board in Kansas City, MO.   So, I asked some of the older teachers to tell my sons that it was true that you teachers used to be able to hit kids.  The teachers at Baptiste Junior High called hitting kids with a board "swats".   The number of "swats" you would get was typically 3 or 5 depending on the "crime".   Mr. Bennett, the music teacher, used to pull kids out and give them one swat if they were not singing loud enough.   I witnessed this many times.

The swats I got were for fighting in gym class with my best friend.  He did a power drive on me and nearly knocked me completely out and I got swats for it.  The other time I got swats was for refusing to speak to the Principal Mr. Shipley when he asked me to identity who the smokers were on a field trip.  I got three swats for both crimes from Vice Principal Mr. Hamm.   Mr. Hamm was a large man who probably was about 230 pounds versus Mr. Shipley's 165 pounds.   When I got swats in gym class, I was wearing shorts that had less thickness than a kleenex.  Mr. Hamm did not hit me on my zero percent fat rear end, but instead on my ham strings.  I have to be honest, it hurt like hell.   Many of the teachers had their own paddles.  I remember Mr. Cox, the science teacher, had a custom paddle with holes in it.  He said it allowed him to swing it faster.  He kept this big paddle on his front desk every day just to remind everyone to not screw around.   What Mr. Cox did not know is that we paid attention because he was a good teacher, not because we were afraid of his paddle.

I did watch Ron Britt's father throw Mr. Hamm up against a wall when he came in to school to clearly send the message that if Mr. Hamm ever touched his son again that he would "kick his sorry A$$".   Ron Britt's father was absolutely right.

Anyway, back to the scene at Hickman Mills High School.   The teachers there looked at my three sons and said, "Absolutely kids used to get swats if they were misbehaving.    It was very common.  They no longer hit kids in Missouri, but Missouri was the last state to outlaw corporal punishment."

What is interesting regarding Corporal Punishment is that according to WikiPedia:

Corporal punishment used to be prevalent in schools in many parts of the world, but in recent decades it has been outlawed in most of Europe and in Canada, Japan, South Africa, New Zealand and several other countries (see list of countries, below). It remains commonplace in a number of countries in Africa, south-east Asia and the Middle East (see list of countries, below).

In the United States, the Supreme Court ruling in Ingraham v. Wright (1977) held that school corporal punishment does not violate the federal Constitution. Paddling continues to be used to a significant extent in a number of Southern states, though there has been a sharp decline in its incidence over the past 20 years.

 That night I went to a bar in Kansas City with my best friend when I lived there.   There was no one in this bar and pool hall.  It was a large bar and pool hall so I asked the person behind the bar, where was everyone.  I will never forget her answer, "Two people were kill last night next door, so attendance is down.  Can I get you a beer?"

There  was an article in the paper that listed the neighborhood that we lived in was ranked #2 in total crimes for the 180+ districts in KC.

The best summary line of that trip was my middle son Michael who said about Kansas City, "this explains a lot about dad...."  :-)

Virtual Photons in Quantum Biology

I was reading an interesting white paper (it is posted as a white paper but appears to be available in book form as well)  at Global Quantum Quest titled "An Advanced Treatise in SUBSPACE and QUANTUM ASPECTS of BIOLOGY" and specifically Chapter 6 on Virtual Photons.

The excellent white paper is written by Professor William C. Nelson, The College of Practical Homeopathy, London England.

The explanation of what happens with an MRI was particularly well written:

"The detection of particular body-made photons has become another paramount science in the utilization of magnetic resonance imagery (MRI). In MRI, when the body is exposed to a large magnetic field, the protons of the hydrogen inside the water molecule, the two protons next to the oxygen, will move with their magnetic moment, to parallel the magnetic field. When the magnetic field is removed these protons will jump back to their original state, and in so doing, will release a photon. The photon that is released is vibrating at 64 megahertz, and has a wavelength of approximately 3.8 meters. The magnetic resonance machines will then intake this photon and, through sophisticated computerized processes, be able to describe the amount of water and the location of the water via the triangulation theory used within the computerized software."

Above is just one example of the clarity of Professor Nelson's writing and the entire white paper that is posted is very well written.

A Fine Line Between Clever and .... Stupid

OK, so the actual quote by David St. Hubbins in the movie Spinal Tap is "It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever. "  Now that I have addressed the hard core Spinal Tap fans :-)


What I am referring to is a security issue that some people don't even think about.  The social networking sites and activities are extremely popular as we all know.  Millions of people are on facebook, twitter, myspace, LinkedIn, Flickr, or insert your favorite site here.  Everyone likes to share in in an open way.  

The problem is that the average user either does not know know or has not taken the time to think through some of these seemingly innocuous actions.  For example, you are on vacation and keep sending out tweets on what a great time you are having with a bunch of long time friends. You have turned on geotagging on your twitter account because you feel it adds to the personal nature of your tweets.   You think, what's the big deal, geotagging simply means you add your location to your tweets by automatically using the location feature built into your smart phone.

Now, before you think that websites should do a better job of warning the user - many already do. If you check out the warning twitter.com on geotagging, it is very clear, for example, just one part of the twitter site states:

When using Tweet With Your Location, please keep in mind:

Your exact location will be stored with your Tweets, and your exact location or place information may be publicly displayed based on your application settings.

Once you post your location, it’s public. Even if you delete it later, it can remain in third-party applications or other external sources, like search results.

twitter makes it very clear.  Twitter makes it extremely clear and shows exactly how your tweets will appear with your location.  This is also an "opt in" decision, so the default is to not have geotagging turned on.  However, this does not mean that the user reads the warning, nor that the user understands the warning.  This is not twitter's fault.  This is not the users fault, but it is just a fact of life with new technology.

To show how this information can be used in ways that most users would not not suspect, you only have go to a site call RobMeNow.com 

When you go to RobMeNow.com, it has a very succinct message:

Geotagging is a fun way to show burglars when your not at home.  Think before you geotag 

RobMeNow.com really drives home the point that you need to think about the possible secondary and tertiary affects when you make social networking decisions. 

History Of Sun Microsystems Stock

This graph of the entire history of Sun Microsystems stock price I found very interesting.

Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds

My wife sent me this TED video on a Temple Grandin who is a lady with autism.   This is a must watch as is the HBO movie titled Temple Grandin.

TED brings out the following:

"Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids."

 My wife teaches autistic children is how she came upon this very interesting and fascinating person.

How The Daily Show Finds All Those Clips....

I was listening to This Week in Tech (TWiT), (thanks npg for turning me on to Leo Laporte and friends) which, IMHO, is the best podcast on the net.

Leo was told on this Sunday's podcast that The Daily Show uses SnapStream to find all of those snippets.  SnapStream allows you to enter text then searches TV streams for occurrences of that search string.  For they have a free test  example, this is a search of "Health Care".

They have both consumer and enterprise products.   I thought this was interesting to show what tools that the comedy writers at The Daily Show likely use on a hourly basis.

Investing In a Clear and Compelling National Security Strategy

This past Sunday, Mike McConnell wrote an article titled: To win the cyber-war, look to the Cold War.   Mr. McConnell is the former director of NSA and the former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) during President Bush's second term.

Mr. McConnell brings out the point:

"The problem is not one of resources; even in our current fiscal straits, we can afford to upgrade our defenses. The problem is that we lack a cohesive strategy to meet this challenge"

I am personally not convinced that resources are not an issue.   I think we have a severe lack of security experts in this country in the commercial world.   I would like to say a lot more invested in colleges and universities in terms of security courses and better collaboration between the three letter agencies, industry and academia.  Security must be baked in from the beginning, because if you do not, you can never go back and insert it later with any real success.  Java is a great example of designing security in from the beginning.


A very interesting topic that Mr. McConnell brings up is the Cyber ShockWave simulation at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

I was disappointed that Mr. McConnell did not discuss the importance of open source in security.  Security through obfuscation never works.


A statistic to put this in context was brought out at the Wall Street Journal's blog page by Sarmad Ali is the following:

"There were 54,640 total cyber attacks against the Department of Defense in 2008, according to the report. In the first half of 2009, the number of attacks targeting the department was 43,785. The report maintained that if the influx of incidents continued for the rest of the year, it would represent a 60% increase over 2008"

As devices get smarter and smarter, devices will be suspect to attacks as well. 

The Importance of Bringing Manufacturing BACK to the US

I was at Boeing Tuesday evening attending an event on investigative journalism.  In Boeing's lobby they had this great model of a Boeing jet that has listed on it (in very small print) many of the companies that work together to make a Boeing jet.  The text above says it all in terms of the importance of bringing manufacturing back to the US.

It takes 10,000 American companies providing jobs in all 50 states to help Boeing build an airplane for export.

Investigative Journalism Panel With Washington, DC News Legend Gordon Peterson

Thanks to my long time friend, John Gardner of Boeing, I attended a very interesting event last night in Rosslyn, VA.   John also invited Joy Warfield and Dave Ellis to attend.  All four of us worked together at Sun Microsystems for many years.

The primary speaker was Gordon Peterson, Senior Correspondent and Anchor of ABC 7/WJLA-TV News here in Washington, DC.  Gordon Peterson is known as the "Dean of Washington, DC News Anchors" with 41 years of experience.  Jeanne Cummings, POLITICO's assistant managing editor in charge of Enterprise, was also there with Mr. Peterson.  The event was called the:

Rooms With A View

Leadership in Political Journalism 

Below is Gordon Peterson and me after the event. 

 The event went for about an hour and half with Mr. Peterson discussing in detail what happened in the Scott Brown election in Massachusetts.  As a native of the bay state, Mr. Peterson was able to bring great personal insight into what really happened in that election.  The bottom line was not a statement against President Obama, but rather Martha Coakley was a simply awful candidate who run a terrible campaign and Scott Brown was a good candidate who ran a great campaign.

Most interesting to me was the state of investigative journalism in this country. As I am known to do :-), I asked a question of both Mr. Peterson and Ms. Cummings.  The question I asked was:

Before I ask my question Gordon, I was hoping you could share with us your favorite Glenn Brenner story if you do not mind.  (Glenn Brenner was a legendary sportscaster in DC with the quickest sense of humor of anyone I have every seen).  I am curious on your thoughts on the current state of investigative journalism in the country today.  Specifically, I have an ongoing discussion with a friend of mine who believes that with all of today's social media, twitter, facebook, blogging, etc. that we are witnessing better investigative today than ever before.  He uses the Iran protests and the tweets coming from there as an example to make his point.  My counter is that those tweets from Iran could be coming from an eleven year old boy in Ashburn, VA - you simply do not know.  My primary counter is that we are seeing the death of so many local and regional papers that are not being back filled by any credible sources that true investigative journalism is taking a real hit in our country.  What are your thoughts?

Mr. Peterson said that it is very expensive to have reporters at newspapers and on TV doing real investigative journalism.  He said that even the Boston Globe is having difficulty financially.  He said there is no question that we are seeing a drop in true investigative journalism.  He did say that POLITICO is one of the new and upcoming organizations that he admires for their investigative journalism work.  Ms. Cummings said the death of the regional papers is very serious.  She mentioned a number of examples of the work that POLITICO has done.  Mr. Peterson mentioned Real Clear Politics as a site that he feels is a very good political information site.  Both emphasized their real concerns going forward.

At then end of his discussion on my investigative journalism question, Mr. Peterson said, "so, you want to hear a story about Glenn Brenner?"  I replied, "please".  Mr. Peterson started with:

OK, I have a thousand Glenn Brenner stories, so let me share one with you.  Glenn Brenner was a pitcher who has a record that still stands to this day.  When Glenn was in the minor leagues, he was and is, the only pitcher to hit the on deck hitter during the game while on the mound.  When I asked him what happened he showed me the motion and I interrupted him.  I said, wait, you pitch right handed but you are left handed?  Glenn said that he was left handed but pitched right handed.  I said to him, "well that's the problem, you were pitching with the wrong arm!"

The banter between Glenn Brenner and Gordon Peterson was amazing for 16 years from 1976 to 1992 before Glenn Brenner died of a brain tumor. 

 Glenn Brenner had one of my favorite lines of all time when talking, during his sports segment, about Mookie Wilson, a Mets outfielder. Brenner looked at Gordon Peterson and said, "Mookie Wilson?, Does anyone really believe Wilson is is real last name?"  Gordon Peterson just cracked up as all of us watching did as well.

I found the story below by Gordon Peterson at Washington DC Metblogs:

There will never be another Glenn Brenner. But there are a lot of good people out there doing sports. Let me tell you a story about the time of his last illness. He was lying in George Washington University Hospital, after the doctors had learned that he had an inoperable brain tumor. He was in a coma, and many of his friends were at his bedside around the clock. I ran home for a quick shower in the wee hours of the morning one day, and as I returned, I noticed a homeless woman sitting on a wall outside the hospital. She had a small portable radio, and as she walked by, she said, I’m praying for your buddy. I broke down on that one.
                  Former W*USA sports anchor Gordon Peterson on a washingtonpost.com Live Discussion

It was a very interesting night and always fantastic to see John Gardner, Joy Warfield and Dave Ellis PLUS getting to meet and get my picture taken with Gordon Peterson.  When I was speaking with Mr. Peterson after the event, (when I got my picture taken with him), I said to him, "hey, can I get my picture taken with you?"  He said "sure!".   I said, "great, I just went up seven points in my parents book if I can get my picture with you."  Gordon laughed.  Dave Ellis took our picture, I shook his hand and thanked him.  As I was walking away, Gordon said to me, "hey, good questions by the way."  I turned back and smiled and said thanks.  My night was made :-)

The Greatest Soldiers - Good Luck, Safe Travels and God's Speed To Chris Edstrom

My cousin Chris Edstrom is headed back to Afghanistan.  He has already done two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

This will be his fourth tour of duty in a war zone.

Tom Brokaw coined the term the "Greatest Generation" - a term which represents  the Americans who grew up during The Great Depression and then went on to fight in World War II.

There is no question of the sacrifices of that generation - both abroad and at home.  Americans were asked to sacrifice at home to help those soldiers abroad.  Americans were previously asked to pay for the wars - something George W. Bush should have absolutely done.  To put ANY WAR on the credit card of our children, grand-children, and beyond was an egregious and reprehensible decision.  If we ask our young men and woman to sacrifice, then so should the Americans back home.

My personal belief is that the sacrifices we are asking our young men and woman today are greater than those of World War II.  Yes, I realize I am opening myself up for flames, but that has never stopped me before, so let me explain.

In previous war efforts, soldiers would do a single tour of duty.  More than one tour would be (typically) at the soldiers choice.  You never heard of a soldier doing four or five tours of duty in Vietnam for example.   The soldiers in Vietnam did not have the support of the American people.  Can anything be worse than being drafted to fight in a war then be spit upon when you return?  The Vietnam Vets did not get parades when they came home - the got agent orange dropped on them in Vietnam and got chronic lymphoid leukemia (CLL).

Ask my father about his two tours of duty in Vietnam and CLL...


The soldiers  in today's wars - Iraq and Afghanistan - such as my cousin Chris Edstrom - are the greatest soldiers.  These soldiers are asked to do the impossible.  They are asked to do the impossible every day and are asked to to go on multiple tours of duty.  They do not know who the enemy is as soldiers did in previous wars.  Fighting in Europe, the pacific rim or Vietnam would be considered a vacation spot (and is) versus Iraq or Afghanistan.  They have to deal with the constant pressure of never knowing where the next  IED might be found all while not just fighting a war, but being asked to rebuild nations at the same time.  

No soliders have had such adverse set of circumstances placed on them and they are doing tremendous work.  This is why Tom Brokaw was right about the "Greatest Generation", but I believe today's soldiers are the "Greatest Soldiers".


Good luck, be safe and God's Speed Chris....

MTConnect's Tipping and Inflection Point

It is coming up on four years ago, March 2006,  when I was asked by the Association of Manufacturing Technology to line up a Sun Manufacturing Executive to speak at AMT's Annual Member Meeting in October 2006.  I have twelve suggestions at the end of this post that I believe are needed to take MTConnect to the next level.

Before I jump into the title of this blog post, let me recap how we got here....

Every time I  had a Sun Manufacturing Executive lined up to speak, a few months later that Sun Exec was either RIF'd or quit.  I was running into "Murphy's Law" in terms of securing a speaker :-)   When my third contact at Sun was no longer available to speak, I called the President of AMT,  John Byrd, to apologize that we had let AMT down.   After finishing the half-hour long conversation with Mr. Byrd, Peter Eelman, VP of Marketing for AMT, called me and asked if I would like to do the keynote. While I was flattered that I would be asked to give this keynote, I explained I would need to get up to speed on the machine tool industry.  Peter said that AMT could make that happen.

To prepare for the Annual Meeting, I spent two days in Chicago at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) meeting with a number of companies in mid September.  IMTS is the world's largest trade show of machine tool companies. I was very fortunate to have Paul Warndorf, ATM's CTO, taking me through IMTS introducing me to the largest as well as the most influential hardware and software machine tool-CAD/CAM companies.

At the end of the second day I met with John Byrd, along with a number of his VPs, to discuss what I had learned.  I told them I felt the machine tool industry did not have a manufacturing problem, but a computer science collaboration problem. I told John that the machine tool industry was 12 to 15 years behind the computer industry.   When I inquired on the economics of our industry, I was told that the American machine tool companies have seen their domestic market share go from 70% in 1986 to 15% in 2006.

I made two suggestions for the machine tool industry:
1) They needed a wakeup call to start a revolution.
2) They needed to hear from someone who has led technology revolutions.

I said that, with proper preparation, I could do the wakeup call. The real challenge was that I knew of only one person who had the credentials to discuss the technology revolution that the machine tool industry CEOs would be able to fully appreciate.  That person was Dr. Dave Patterson of University California at Berkeley. I told AMT about Dr. Patterson's leadership with RISC and RAID. I said I would reach out to Dr. Patterson, but I felt the odds that Dr. Patterson would be available to do this, in a little over five weeks time, would be a long shot at best.

Fortunately, for the American machine tool industry, Dr. Patterson agreed to change his busy schedule to come to speak at our member meeting.

There were numerous emails, con calls and meetings during that brief five week period to bring both Dr. Patterson and me up to speed as well as to collaborate on the wake up call and the revolution or "moon shot" as I called it.  I worked closely with Dave and we "hit it out of the park" at the Lake Las Vegas AMT Members Meeting.

The real key turning point, immediately after Dave and my presentations, was when Doug Woods, then  Chairman of the Board for AMT and now President of AMT along with John Byrd said they would invest a significant amount of money to make MTConnect a reality.  Lots of time, money and passion has gone into MTConnect.  The real driver in all of this has been Will Sobel who is the President and CEO of System Insights.  Will's expertise and insight (pun slightly intended here) was absolutely key to reach the point where we are today.

Back to the point of today's blog:

MTConnect's Tipping and Inflection Point

MTConnect  has been a huge success by any reasonable metric.  MTConnect has seen a number of significant events in a short time period:

• My suggestion, in September 2006, to the AMT Executives that they needed an open and royalty free machine tool standard to compete globally in the 21st century.
• In October 2006, the "Dave and Dave" Show (Edstrom and Patterson) at the Lake Las Vegas Members Meeting was a big success and a clear inflection point.
• Doug Woods and John Byrd investing in the creation of MTConnect.
• In early 2007 it was Paul Warndorf who led the creation of the MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTAG).
• Many meetings in 2007 and 2008 helped create MTConnect. Will Sobel worked closely with Paul Warndorf to make this a reality.
• IMTS 2008 was MTConnect's coming out party thanks to Peter Eelman's insight into having The Emerging Technology Center as the focal point for MTConnect.
• December 2008 MTConnect 1.0 was officially released.
• There was a GREAT article on MTConnect in  Modern Machine Shop that is titled:  "MTConnect is For Real".

So, what is the next inflection or tipping point trigger that is needed to take MTConnect to the next level of adoption?  I think there are actually multiple areas that need to be addressed.

• MTConnect needs a clear set of metrics for success in 2010.  My favorite quote in terms of metrics or planning is:

To measure is to know.  
      
If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.

In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it.  I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be.
    Lord Kelvin - Sir William Thomson

•  MTConnect needs multiple success reference customers in a variety of geographies and disciplines.
• MTConnect needs more end user customer involvement.
• MTConnect needs more software ISV involvement.
• MTConnect needs more involvement from large software companies such as IBM, HP, SAS, Google, ....
• MTConnect needs an End User Community framework and venue.
• MTConnect  needs a University/College outreach program.
• MTConnect needs to brain storm on creative ways to fund future R&D.
• MTConnect needs a Java agent.
• MTConnect needs a full time global evangelist.  Someone who is out meeting with customers, the press, machine shops, partners, CxOs, government groups, R&D groups, software companies, hardware companies, universities, colleges, ....
• MTConnect needs more companies like System Insights to help companies transition to MTConnect.
• MTConnect needs to educate the cloud computing companies about MTConnect because MTConnect and Cloud Computing is the perfect marriage.  
• When I was asked the obvious question, "why is Sun Microsytems involved with a machine tool standard?"  My response was always two words: Cloud Computing.   The reason I felt (and feel) this way is that when MTConnect is implemented throughout a plant, the data needs to be turned into information.  Manufacturing plants and machine shops do not want to spend the capital on a bunch of hardware to analyze the data.  What they want is for the data to be sent, safely and securely, to the cloud so they can analyze their plant or machine shop without incurring the huge upfront and unpredictable costs associated with large server procurements.

Water Droplets at 2,000 Frames Per Second

My father sent me this video of water droplets shot at 2,000 frames per second. This is a great example of how much we do not know about some of the most common everyday occurences we witness countless times per day....

LogMeIn: Maybe the BEST Time Saver EVER

For geeks like me, it is typical that you are the sysadmin for family, friends and relatives.  Parents are a unique challenge shall we say.  After all, you can blow off everyone but the two people who have the ultimate trump card on you and they can play it again, and again, and again, again:  "if not for us, you DON'T EXIST! FIX MY DAMN WINDOZE PROBLEM!!!!"   :-)

The challenge in being a remote trouble shooter is that you can not see the screen and can not touch the computer, so this requires a logical set of questions:

• What were you doing at the time of the error?
• What exactly does the error message say?
• What are you trying to do?
• Why are you trying to do that?
• Have you tried this before?
• What was different this time?
• What else is running on your computer?

As you can see from just a small set of questions, it is not easy being the remote trouble shooter.

Now all this has changed for me with LogMeIn.  NOTE:  I do not own any stock or have any financial interest in LogMeIn - I am just a HUGE fan :-)

I heard about LogMeIn on Leo Laporte's This Week In Tech (TWiT) podcast.  I thought I would give it a try as Leo has a great reputation in terms of his likes and dislikes regarding technology.  Cars - he should sell his new Mustang GT and get a Corvette :-)

The install really could not be any easier.  You install LogMeIn on the remote system you want to manage and install a plugin for your browser on the system you will be using to talk to the remote system.

After you login, below is an example of what you see.  This screen shows the three computers at my parents house.

 

The window above shows the screen after you login to a specific system.  In this example I logged into the old Dell.  As I move the mouse, my parents can see what I am doing.  When they move the mouse, I can see everything they are doing.  The response time is very good.  It is amazing how well this software works.   Please notice that the image above was when LogMeIn was providing the Pro version during a trial period.  I find the standard free version very nice and I could easily see why someone would want the Pro version.

On the window below there are many options that provide additional data on what is happening on the remote system.

Finally, LogMeIn does offer a paid for Pro packages that provide additional capabilities     These additional capabilities such as file sharing, remote printing, remote backup, iPhone client, cloud backup, additional help, .... LogMeIn does a very nice job balancing the free and premium/paid for capabilities.  Very cleanly delineated are the differences between the two classes of software.

It used to take me 45 minutes to drive to my parents house, another 45 minutes trouble shooting, then 45 minutes home.  This was if there was no traffic and the problem was reasonably straightforward.  It could easily be four hours.  Now with LogMeIn, even during this past week's multiple blizzards, my parent's three computer systems are simply a click away.  PLUS, I can be pro-active and make sure the systems are running fine whenever I want to check on them.  

Yes, there are other programs out there, but LogMeIn is the best that I have seen or used.....