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I just wrapped up my first week at the new job. I now work at ITT Visual Information Solutions, or ITT-VIS for short. ITT-VIS used to be commonly known as RSI, or Research Systems. My official title is “Software Engineer II”. Unofficially, it’s “ENVI developer”. ENVI is one of the base products of ITT-VIS. It’s kind of hard to describe, but it’s basically visualization and analysis software for remote sensing and GIS data. I work on a small team that develops the ENVI product and generally helps engineer things around the shop.

A long time ago I posted an article complaining about having my IDL programming skills erode away. Well, that certainly won’t be the case here anymore. ITT-VIS main product is the proprietary IDL language, which most of ENVI is written in. So basically, I’m helping to write our products in the house language, which I managed to learn while at Digitalglobe. IDL is an interesting environment and it is extrememly powerful. I can’t wait until I really get up to speed there and get some these ideas I’ve had for IDL projects going.

Right now, it’s pretty intense with so much to learn to get up to speed. I really like it there and I hope I won’t have to switch jobs anymore for a very long time.

Jaime and I went to the Boulder International Film Festival Saturday to see Air Guitar Nation, a documentary about the growing international sport of Air Guitar.

Air Guitar Nation follows the story of formation of the US Air Guitar Championships and the rise of American Air Guitar Champion C-Diddy to become World Champion in Finland at the World Air Guitar Championships. The other main character is Diddy’s american rival Bjorn Turoque (pictured above). The documentary, story, and sport are all real.

The movie was pretty much hilarious. They also mixed in a message about world peace. Apparently the founding motives of the Finnish in establishing the World Air Guitar Championships is that “If you’re holding an air guitar, you can’t hold a gun”, so if everyone air-guitared, there would be world peace.

Competitve air guitar is modeled on ice skating. Competition consists of two rounds, the individual round, where the players choose their own song, and the compulsory round, where all players play the same song, only revealed to them at contest time. Judging is by three judges using a 4.0 - 6.0 point scale, just like skating. Each song is 60 seconds. The main judging criteria is “airness”. Airness is described as “the extent to which the performance transcends the medium and becomes a higher form of artistic expression. It’s hard to describe, but you’ll know it when you see it”.

Funny stuff and a good message to take things less seriously. I don’t know where you can see this film, but I’m sure it will be available on DVD at some point. Click on the video link on Diddy’s hompage to see the video of his winning performance.

Rock on.

I’ve been hearing a lot about whether the current field of Presidential candidates’ messages are ‘resonating’ with folks. We all know by now what the cliche means, but I suppose I haven’t experienced much of it yet personally. As a single, white male under age 40, basically none of those candidates are speaking to me. They are trying to win votes in minority blocs or they are talking to big business owners or unions or something. Seems like a regular guy like me who can mostly take care of myself and doesn’t really bristle at the prospect of paying a little more taxes is not of interest to the campaigns. It always seems like they’re talking about someone else with their message. You hear a lot about single mother in the inner city, the American farmer, the small-business owner. You don’t hear a lot about white males who are not wealthy, but getting along fine. I think, however, that Barack Obama is doing a really good job of ‘resonating’ with me for the first time. Every time I listen to guy, I can’t help but think that he’d be a million times better as a leader than anyone involved in the current administration. Now, I’m not an unabashed Barack-and-roller, but at this point he is obviously a better choice than anyone else. I like the fact that he is _clearly_ an extremely intelligent person. That alone is a good sign. Whether or not you think he is inexperienced, which really, I don’t think at all, he is _clearly_ smart enough to go to the White House and figure out what to do. There really shouldn’t be any debate about that.

I hope, unless Gore can be drafted, that he’ll beat Hillary Clinton. I really don’t like Hillary Clinton. All this talk about how inexperienced Barack Obama is, somehow you don’t hear the same about Hillary. So far as I can tell Hillary’s qualifications are as follows:

1- She passed the Bar at some point in Arkansas.
2- She was married to the President for 8 years.
3- She carpetbagged a Senate seat in New York.

OK, that really doesn’t seal the deal with me. Her message doesn’t ‘resonate’ with me. She always seems snarky and angry. Something about her bothers me. It’s certainly not her gender, it’s more of this vague feeling that it would probably be alright if had a President someday who _wasn’t_ named Bush or Clinton. I am certain we can find a leader elsewhere. Really. Senator Obama seems to me to be that guy.

So, I’m watching Obama. It’s early, but I like his message, and he is very easy to root for. Until Al Gore gets drafted (Please,please), I’m for Obama.

Iraq used to be nation in the Middle East. Now it’s merely a place full of various people (many of them American soldiers), most of whom are either trying to kill each other or simply trying to stay out of the way and not become casualties.

WTF?

I want someone to explain the reason that the USA is militarily involved in Iraq. The putative reasons were demonstrably false.

1- Saddam Hussein hated the USA, had stockpiled WMDs in order to use them against US or US Allies’ targets.
2- Saddam Hussein was harboring Al-Qaeda and helping train them.

OK, oh-for-two. Neither assertion is or was true. So, why again four years later are we not only still “at war” in Iraq, we are escalating the conflict, pouring more US Soldiers and (billions of) dollars into Iraq?

Can anyone possibly state unequivocally why we are engaged in Iraq? Who is the enemy? What does it mean to “win”? As far as I can tell, we are not at war with “Terror”, we are at war with insurgents in Iraq. Mostly, I would argue that these insurgents are not people who posed a threat to the security of the United States until we illegally invaded their country. The same down home red-staters who think the insurgents are some evil scum are the first ones who would turn out, NRA baseball caps shining, to meet some foreign invasion on our soil. But if Iraqis do the same, they’re “terrorists”.

We are stupid. We are arrogant. There is no denying it. We have a leader that perfectly reflects that. The US foreign policy is based in ignorant aggression, lack of diplomacy, some strange, vague Christian Fundamentalism, brinksmanship, and the false impression that our military might is unlimited in the world. We are the stupid people who elected this administration and have suffered its megalomaniacal “War President”. Well, now that GWB and Barney are they only subscribers to the Iraq war escalation, what are we to do to stop them? Again our Congress fails us, lamely debating and failing to pass even a non-binding rebuke for the Administration. We have seen the age when the US Government has begun to fail. What can be done to restore sanity again to public discourse? What can be done to prevent the President from sacrificing more of best and bravest in this ignorant delusion of “winning in Iraq”?

No one can answer these questions. The real answer seems to be that the war in Iraq is happening because it suits the president and vice-president’s tastes. Really. In my heart I believe that this war was started and carries on simply because the loonies in the White House and Blair House have some agenda that is fulfilled by it. We must face the fact that some of our best and bravest citizens are being killed in Iraq so the President’s ego and the business interests of his friends are served.

This ongoing militarization of US foreign policy is the biggest crisis to face our nation in a very, very long time. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et. al. Made the biggest, stupidest mistake of our entire generation. They confused having “the strongest military in the world” with having unlimited miltary power. Big difference. Big mistake. Now our military is hopelessly overstretched in the Middle East, our treasury is a smoking ruin, and we have certainly taken our eyes off the prize. Where is Osama Bin Laden? George Bush has said that he doesn’t care where he is. WTF? We need to admit that we were screwed over by the Bush Administration, and that our Congress utterly failed us. I want to hear every Senator explain WTF they were thinking when they voted in support of the war. If you can’t state why you did that and what you’re doing about it now, you don’t deserve to represent us in Congress. You failed us then and you aren’t exactly doing anything about it now.

I don’t know what to do about it. I used to abstain from voting so that I wouldn’t feel responsible for sending these assholes to represent us. Now, I vote, but it has made me even more hopeless about the entire situation. No one who runs is able to do the job anymore. The system is utterly broken.

But I have hope still. My fellow Americans, I have a dream today. Well, it’s more like a fantasy. What I’m hoping for is that the new Congress finds it’s spine somewhere along the lines, begins to behave like a co-equal branch of government, and puts a stop to the most egregiously unconstitutional behavior of the Executive Branch. I hope that Albert Gore waits until much of the early infighting and smoke clears and then runs for the Presidency with Barack H. Obama as the Veep. In my mind its the “dream team”. I want intellectuals in the White House and Blair house. I want peaceful, thoughtful men who aren’t slaves to big business. I want men who understand science and aren’t crassly and ignorantly anti-intellectual. I want men who can be religious without forcing their religion on others as a centerpeice of their policy. I guess I, like many, want the exact opposite of the fools we have endured since 2000. Please run, Al Gore, please. Only you have the foreign policy experience, intelligence and integrity to lead us out of this dark, dark time. Gore/Obama ‘08. Let it come to pass.

Well, another football season comes to an end this weekend. The cycle begins anew. We’ll start looking for teams’ draft strategies here soon. Is that Mel Kiper’s hair I see?

This was an excellent season in many respects. The Jets making the playoffs was obviously unexpected by nearly everyone, so that was quite gratifying to watch. Kind of like Bengals fans recently, we’re enjoying the team’s success more because we have waited and suffered long. Chad Pennington made a comeback, in fact he was the NFL Comeback Player of the year, which he well deserved. Most folks wrote him off before the season, even the Jets tried to give him a 5 million a year pay cut. He’s the man. The new coach seems like the Greatest Thing to come along since… well ever. This dude has obviously got what it takes. Let’s see if can go a little deeper into the playoffs next season.

The Richmond Speedways, my fantasy football team of three years now, won the title in the league called “Smack Talk All-Stars”, in dominant fashion. Of course drafting LaDanian Tomlinson with the #2 overall pick didn’t hurt. My pal Loomis drafted Shaun Alexander wiith the first pick, which I enjoyed referring to as the “Sam Bowie” incident all season as LT set scoring records. Baltimore D, Carson P, TJ Houshmandzadeh and Laveraneus filled out the regular starters. I only lost twice: Bengals bye week and Charger bye week. Go figure I think I won 13 straight including the playoffs. That tends to make your football season more enjoyable.

I’ll make my Super Bowl pick, so I can be semi-publicly humiliated when it’s totally wrong.

I think the Colts roll, say 24-10. They’ll load up the box on Jones and Benson, make Rex Grossman throw a lot. Peyton and Marvin have been waiting for this moment for eons and I say they’ll put on a clinic. Colts win going away. Plus, as horrible as the NFC was this year, it would be an injustice for them to have the championship. It just wouldn’t seem right.