My Platform - The Principles

In the interest of discussing the issues more (which is, all too often, done very little in the political sphere), I have the following to post. This is the last section of my platform. Actually, it is the only part of my personal issue platform that doesn't contain actual planks, just statements of principles. Think of them as the foundation upon which the rest of the platform is built. Basically, this section embodies three principles: the rule of law, freedom, and the golden rule.

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1 - Legislate less; let people live more. Live and let live. The individual’s freedom is the foundation of America’s greatness past and its strength to come.

2 - Preserve life to the utmost. This does not exclude the use of the death penalty, as its execution properly recognizes the sacred importance of life. Capital punishment should be sparingly used, though. Only three types of crimes really deserve it: rape, murder, and treason. Prosecuting abortion isn’t about violating a woman’s body or right to choose; it is about not punishing the innocent in the name of serving another’s wishes OR assuaging her undeserved suffering.

3 - You can’t legislate morality. You create an environment in which morality can thrive. That environment is freedom.

4 - The best person to be in charge of a parent’s child is the parent. Not the federal government, an international body, a public school or daycare, or anyone else.

5 - Rights are negatively secured, not positively mandated. Thus, the right to freedom, life, the holding of one’s property--these are about something of yours not being taken from you. These are rights. The right to an education, a good job, a nice home, healthcare--these are not rights--they are positively enforced. They are about giving you something you don’t already have, not about securing what you have already earned.

6 - Legislation guided by special interests is especially wrong.

7 - Equality is about not placing one race, gender, people group above another, not about making up for past wrongs, or overcompensating to tip the balance of “advantage.” Equality is about treating with an even hand, almost as if the race, gender, ethnicity is not seen.

8 - The greatest robber, and the one which usually gets away with it, is the government.

9 - Keep it simple; keep it fair, keep it unforced, if possible.

10 - When there is a question about federal law, consult the Constitution. Before a federal law is made, consult the Constitution. Before anything is done by the federal government, consult the Constitution. It’s the rulebook.

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The entire platform can be found here.

Tragedy

My prayers go out to the victims and their families in the Aurora, Colorado shooting. I cannot imagine how the perpetrator could have picked a more sickly ironic setting for his crime.

I also pray that confusion is not spread as the result of this tragedy. It is unfortunate that people are already trying to politicize this event and make it into more than is at first apparent. Please, let us see how the facts bear out before we rush to judge.

An Answer (Psalm 40)

I waited patiently for the LORD;
And He inclined to me and heard my cry.
He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay,
And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.
He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God;
Many will see and fear
And will trust in the Lord.

How blessed is the man who has made the LORD his trust,
And has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood.
Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done,
And Your thoughts toward us;
There is none to compare with You.
If I would declare and speak of them,
They would be too numerous to count.

Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired;
My ears You have opened;
Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required.
Then I said, "Behold, I come;
In the scroll of the book it is written of me.
I delight to do Your will, O my God;
Your Law is within my heart."

I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great congregation;
Behold, I will not restrain my lips,
O LORD, You know.
I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart;
I have spoken of Your faithfulness and Your salvation;
I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth from the great congregation.

You, O LORD, will not withhold Your compassion from me;
Your lovingkindness and Your truth will continually preserve me.
For evils beyond number have surrounded me;
My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to see;
They are more numerous than the hairs of my head,
And my heart has failed me.

Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me;
Make haste, O LORD, to help me.
Let those be ashamed and humiliated together
Who seek my life to destroy it;
Let those be turned back and dishonored
Who delight in my hurt.
Let those be appalled because of their shame
Who say to me, "Aha, aha!"
Let all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You;
Let those who love Your salvation say continually,
"The LORD be magnified!"
Since I am afflicted and needy,
Let the Lord be mindful of me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
Do not delay, O my God.

NASB

A Question (Psalm 39)

I said, “I will guard my ways

That I may not sin with my tongue;

I will guard my mouth as with a muzzle

While the wicked are in my presence.”

I was mute and silent,

I refrained even from good,

And my sorrow grew worse.

My heart was hot within me,

While I was musing the fire burned;

Then I spoke with my tongue:

“LORD, make me to know my end

And what is the extent of my days;

Let me know how transient I am.

Behold, you have made my days as handbreadths,

And my lifetime as nothing in Your sight;

Surely every man at his best is a mere breath.             Selah.

Surely every man walks about as a phantom;

Surely they make an uproar for nothing;

He amasses riches and does not know who will gather them.”

“And now, Lord, for what do I wait?

My hope is in You.

Deliver me from all my transgressions;

Make me not the reproach of the foolish.

I have become mute, I do not open my mouth,

Because it is You who have done it.

Remove Your plague from me;

Because of the opposition of Your hand I am perishing.

With reproofs You chasten a man for iniquity;

You consume as a moth what is precious to him;

Surely every man is a mere breath.”                           Selah.

“Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry;

Do not be silent at my tears;

For I am a stranger with You,

A sojourner like all my fathers.

Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may smile again

Before I depart and am no more.”

NASB

A Little Bit of History

Ever heard of the jerry can? If not, you have been missing out. I was.

So, think about the gas cans that we have today. Thanks to the CARB law, you can go out and buy all sorts of useless, plastic, ventless things. Ironically, with my little experience (Thank God it has not been more. I mean that very sincerely.), I have observed that these "safe" cans are in fact more hazardous and environmentally malicious than the more robust vented ones they replaced. Just thinking of a couple of the old gas cans that my parents own, I weep for the good old days. And, those cans probably aren't as robust as the ones discussed in the article above. My own CARB gas can is now effectively employed as a cleaner dispenser... because that's all it's good for.

Since it leaks so well, I may as well keep it in STORE mode and leak a little out when I need it for cleaning purposes. It is very dependable that way.

Right Back in Software Engineering

You thought I was trying to move on, right? No such luck.

Well, the IDR went well last week, once we finally decided on a test interface. It only took one follow-up meeting. During the first gathering, on Tuesday, I was glad that the former PE for this project stepped up and ran the meeting. It definitely took a load off of me. But, this last one, I more or less ran, and I must say, I kind of enjoy occupying the here's-the-way-it-is seat in the room.

This past week, I've enjoyed actually getting my hands dirty (wait.... that's an oxymoron, isn't it?) with the software. A lot of the "fun" has centered around decomposing what a bunch of LabView code is doing that was written 10 years ago, and then comparing that with a bunch of incomplete requirements documentation and some relatively esoteric ADATE code. It's esoteric for me, that is. I only heard of the language a few weeks ago, and now I have to understand what some dozen code files do. Finding documentation online is like trying to search for pearls in freshwater oysters... oh wait, you CAN find pearls in freshwater osyters. Never mind.

Anyway, the next few weeks will be filled with all sorts of interesting things like creating an RS-232 packet protocol, boning up for DDR (Detailed Design Review), and performing various wonders in C#. (If you saw the test framework we have, YOU might think anything accomplished is a wonder of some sort.)

But, unfortunately, those weeks will not involve hardware, unless I get pulled back onto some test station integration. We can always hope...

In which I have been enjoying a couple new TV shows.

Well, one's new and one's a few years old.

A couple weeks ago I started watching Bunheads and this last weekend I dug up Ballykissangel. Two shows that almost couldn't be more different, but both quite a bit of fun to watch. The first would earn serious ridicule from a certain brother of mine and the second, well... it reminds me of Last of the Summer Wine, and therefore makes me feel like an old geezer. But, I don't care.

Not sure what it is about Bunheads, but something about the strange personality (which any sane person would expect me to go mad at watching) of Sutton Foster's character is kind of endearing to watch... just a pretty funny show in all. The whimsical capers of the ballet girls are also a highlight. Oh, and the character Fanny is almost insufferable... yet, I keep coming back for more.

Ballykissangel is set in a small, quaint Irish town and reminds me of several of the older BBC shows. Nicely homelike and slowish.... I don't really know how to describe it. [huge, sick cliche] It's just a warm show. [huge, sick cliche] With its own sort of intrigue and adventure. I think I'm partial to the whole story-of-a-young-humble-priest sort of deal.

Big Day Tomorrow

After two weeks of research, and 3 revisions of my slides, I am getting to the bare and bitter end before my IDR tomorrow. I almost have a complete presentation together and it still needs another look over, but I feel like my approach is set, and only polishing is left. Some 16 invites have been sent, nearly all accepted... and a whole extra meeting called to prelude the IDR.

So, this project was one of those, "It's all the same" type of deals. My mentor has instilled in me an alarm bell, now, that goes off whenever I hear that phrase. What started as a project that was just "the same" turned into a "We have real questions here", which turned into a "We have some real problems here", which turned into "We can't do it like it was proposed."

To make matters even more interesting, we have a rather unique customer (internal to Rockwell) who is a combination of "I am going to contradict what I just said because I forgot" and a "I am going to contradict what I said because I just changed my mind" kind of guy. This morning he was all set, just about, on calling for the IDR to be canceled, or at least pushed back, so we could look into an entirely new integration option, or two.

It's interesting to see how my coworkers and superiors react to situations like these... the colorful language that flows, the all-but-so-and-so's an idiot response. One can never know the joys of distributed talent until one sees the insides of a large engineering firm.

Between the chaos and confusion, I've been able to have some really interesting conversations with my mentor. He's kind of lost most of his faith in humanity and is constantly bemoaning the inefficiencies around him, but he's also a very decent person and open to talking about real issues of life, even of his own. I can only thank God that I have had the opportunity to discuss issues surrounding the meaning of life with him on more than one occasion.

Into the World of Engineering: Sometimes by baby steps...

... and sometimes by leaps and bounds.

Well, the past two weeks at Rockwell have been a whirlwind. I have gone from being assigned a fairly clear cut task of turning a set of LabView test code into C# to a multifaceted project involving requirements capture, systems work, and hardware design. It's still the same project, mind you. The scope has just increased. I am now set to go into the real test ground... Initial Design Review... that's a little (insert sarcasm) meeting where the customer, project engineer, systems, hardware, and software people all gather to see the results of YOUR requirements capture, to decide whether a thing can be done or not, and hopefully, how it should be done. I can say one thing for certain. I have never had this kind of responsibility laid on my shoulders over the entire time of my co-op.

We're talking time estimates, materials research, interface design, and many a long conversation with hardware engineers trying to figure out what they actually designed. Almost everything that goes into a bid, without doing the actual bid. I can't recall how many times my manager has resorted to an expression like, "This is engineering, man. This is the thing!" as he is mentoring me through the process. I feel like this next week could be sink or swim for me. I guess my job isn't on the line, but it feels like my competence is.

If anyone reads this blog still... I would appreciate your thoughts and prayers as I head into a tough week. I am hoping I won't have to pull weekend hours to get ready for this thing, but I guess it is possible. I have a lot of work yet to do before showtime on Tuesday. I am trusting God to guide me through this experience. It has the potential to be very rewarding. That is my hope and prayer at least.

We're talking old...

Well, I saw my first full-length silent film, The Farmer's Wife directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was interesting to say the least. There were lots of boring parts, where you just want to scream, "Get on with it! What's the next scene?!" But, once you get into it, you can start to appreciate (maybe by viciously hating) the exorbitant pauses on facial expressions and the exaggerated emotional gestures.

And, for the record, there is nothing like an awkward silence as the awkward silence in a silent movie.

The most awkward way to end silence is with another silent expression.

The Brave Old World of Vacuum Tubes

So, I picked up of one of these at a ham radio tailgate sale last semester.

It's a 6N010 Relay made by Amperite. It's supposed to have a 10 second delay to closing. After hooking mine up to 6.3 VAC, I discovered it has something like a 22 second delay cold and as little as a 7 second delay hot.

I was worried that it might not work because that mica plate, across which the filaments are stretched, is broken, not completely, but there is a definite tear in there. It still heats up, though, and closes the connection. So, I am pretty thrilled. We'll have to see what all I can do with this little beast.

Oh, incidentally, these tubes are selling upwards of $100 on eBay... I picked mine up for less than a buck.

In the world of test equipment...

I recently acquired one of these off of Ebay:

HP 200CD Oscillator

And, after giving it a decent cleaning and turning it on, I discovered that it doesn't quite half work. It might have something to do with a couple of those tubes in there that look burnt out....

Hmm... might be kind of hard to get OE replacements for those.

This is improvisation...

I can only sit back and humbly appreciate.

What...? Faster?

Evidently, you can go a lot further with these Hanon exercises than I realized before. I am going to need to crank up the speed a little. I was taking another look at the double metronome marking at the top of an exercise in my Hanon Studies book, and I put that metronome speed into the digital piano, and yeah... I definitely can't do that yet. You'll see what I mean in the first minute of this video:

Nano Fun

Well, I was going to talk about some of the exciting things I was learning this semester, right?... if I had the time. Well, I guess it is obvious now that the time eluded me. In fact, all time eluded me, as well as much sleep. But, now that the relentless pace of school is over for the present, I can look back on a few interesting things that occurred.

One class I took this semester was called Nanotechnology and Science Policy, taught by one of my new favorite professors, Dr. Gary DeBoer. This class was just supposed to be a 1 hour seminar, but the workload made it feel more like a 3 hour class throughout much of the semester. A couple of the perks of this class, though, were the two field trips we took.

The first of the excursions began at 4:00am on the Wednesday after Spring Break. We boarded a bus and took a 5 hour drive to Houston. Our first stop was the NASA Johnson Space Center. On the JSC campus, we were guided by a couple materials scientists, one of which had worked with Dr. DeBoer at NASA doing carbon nanotube research. We were shown various, materials, metallurgical, and chemical laboratories as well as some tourism interests, such as the mockup of the international space station (which is used for training astronauts) and a Saturn V rocket. I must say one of the highlights was picking up 1600 deg F space shuttle tile material in our bare hands

The second stop of our first trip was Rice University. This visit gave a taste of the work of graduate level research in the hard sciences, and the picture was definitely attractive to me. We were shown around the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology and presented a lot of information about the nano-work done there at Rice. We also got to see several labs and talk with scientists who discussed their work, showing us what they did. The campus in the center of Houston was beautiful and definitely more inviting than LeTourneau's. The field trip to Houston was a long day--almost 20 hours--but it was fun.

The second field trip took us to Dallas, where we visited the University of Texas at Dallas. They have a large nanotechnology wing, much broader than Rice's. Among their advantages, they also boasted a highest level clean room for chip fabrication. The research done at UT Dallas in nanotechnology was a little more interesting to me as it was largely associated with the field of Electrical Engineering, while much of Rice's focus was in the Biomedical field. It was a neat experience also to meet in person and talk to one of the major authors of a peer-reviewed work that had been handed out in our Nanotechnology class earlier in the semester. I guess you could say that the field trips brought the class full circle.

I am definitely glad I decided to do this whole honors thing.

Free computing....

Just installed Ubuntu on the computer I pulled out of a dumpster at LeTourneau this semester.

2.8 GHz Pentium D
512 MB RAM
15.4 GB IDE hard drive

The hard drive I pulled out of a separate computer that was even older. I suspect there is a bad sector or two in it. I should really get a new one, but I don't want to spend much money on a hard drive for a computer that I didn't pay a dime for. I am borrowing the RAM from my Dad, so I may just buy a GB online for $10 later. 512 megs is killing me.

One thing is certain... I am getting a renewed appreciation for just how far computer technology has come in the last 6 years.

The Joys of Test Equipment

So, helping out on a Senior Design project has its perks here at LeTourneau. I got to use a four-channel digital oscilloscope, an RF signal generator, and a network analyzer this weekend. Definitely realizing more and more that Electrical Engineering is the right area for me.

Oh, and if anyone is looking for ideas for a birthday present... I've got something: An oscilloscope, preferably with a digital user interface and at least two input channels. Should be only about $500 to $5000.

A Semester to Remember

Oh boy! This semester is going to be fun. Not only am I taking seven classes and labs, I am also grading Circuits I homework, coordinating the final project for Digital Electronics, and helping out on a Senior Design project. Oh, and the work I have to do to apply for a massive scholarship. I have already eaten up many hours researching and writing the essay for that application. I am going to be so busy, it's going to be sensationally fun. As long as I don't fall behind.

If I can carve out the time, I'll try and post something now and then about what I am learning. I feel like I am going to be a little bit of an authority on several fields by the time this semester is over.