Happy New Year

Happy new year everyone! I'm always excited around new year's - I like looking back on the milestones of the previous year and set some goals for myself to accomplish in the upcoming year.

On December 31, 2006 I officially became the 30th full-time employee of Aechelon Technology. I was hired to be one of three "Integration Engineers" in charge of delivering and maintaining the hardware/software involved with our company's Image Generators (IG) as well as helping people integrate them into their systems. In flight simulation terms, the IG is the computer(s) that draws the scenery seen by the pilot through the cockpit windows as they are flying. Here's a good example of a customer that created a specific type of simulator using our IG:



The scenery that is rendered is created from very high resolution satellite images that are taken of the area of interest. These images are combined with real world elevation data for the same area to create a 3D landscape that is indicative of the real world. After that we implant 3D models of certain buildings, trees, airfields, etc that the pilots use for visual reference in real life. Because we need to simulate everything the pilots can encounter we also render friendly and enemy aircraft, helicopters, technicals, aircraft carriers (including LSEs), enemy combatants, rain, snow, lightning, explosions, fire, smoke columns, rotor wash, etc. Additionally, we simulate all the visual sensor systems for any given aircraft including forward looking infrared (FLIR), night vision goggles (NVG), low-light TV (LLTV), etc. These are all physics based - where the material type for every pixel is taken into account along with temperature, humidity, etc to determine how hot something is to draw the correct infrared image. We have both simulated NVG which works in a similar fashion as the FLIR, as well as stimulated NVG which I think is really cool. For this the pilots wear their issued NVGs and we render an image that provides just enough light to stimulate the frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum that the goggles detect causing an image to be displayed that looks just like what the pilots would see if they were flying in the middle of night with their goggles on.

Anyways, I was hired to help install these systems and also to work on my specialty which is the communication between the flight simulator and the image generator. My goals going in were to write some software based tools that would make my job easier, and more importantly the costumers, by providing a tool that shows them how to communicate with the IG to meet all of their requirements. For those interested we send UDP packets over a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet connection between the IG and the flight simulator at 60 Hz (we send data 60 times a second). I got the basics for this tool done rather quickly and it has now evolved into something that Carlos enjoys playing with. I have it written now so he can use one of his Xbox 360 controllers to fly around (which isn't easy in 3 dimensions, check out the math) , fire missiles, fly with wingmen, etc. Through much of the process of writing this tool Carlos was my unknowing beta tester, finding bugs for me along the way.

In March we had our annual all-hands meeting at our main office in San Francisco. The whole family was invited but Carrie and I decided we wanted to go by ourselves since we hadn't been away alone together since our honeymoon and before that - never. We arrived early to tour the city and stayed late to tour a bit more. Oh yeah ... and we also conceived Jack there. Heh ... sorry if that's TMI, we're very open in my family. :) A few weeks after returning from San Francisco Carrie gave notice at ProLogic and decided to become a stay at home Mom for at least the time being. The first couple of weeks were rough for her (I've always maintained that this is harder than me going to work everyday), I think she was feeling kind of listless, but we talked about it a lot to make sure we understood each others concerns and expectations for the next few years. To keep herself busy she took up jewelry making and attended a few shows among other things.

A few months later we decided to finish our basement and decided that we mine as well get some estimates just to see if we could find something that was reasonable. We thought we had and to make a long story short we learned several lessons along the way and any contractor I deal with in the future will undoubtedly think I'm a dick because I'm not going to make the same mistakes twice. Once the basement was finished I was able to move all my work stuff down to my new office and we started getting Jack's room setup. In retrospect it's funny how I rushed to get a bunch of stuff done in his room shortly before he was born and he has yet to really sleep in there.

Carlos finished out the school year strong, and began worrying about the perils of middle school on the first day of summer vacation. He had a good summer vacation - going to Camp Choosy again and meeting up with some friends from the previous year. He also went to his old babysitter's house for a few weeks so he could swim and play with his friends from there.

Towards the end of the summer Carlos and I competed in a sprint triathlon here in Morgantown. I didn't train for the biking or swimming part and found I forgot how tiring swimming can be - no wonder I was in such great shape when I was a kid. The next week I made my first trip to Italy for work, which happened to be my first trip to Europe. It was pretty amazing, and I learned a lot about myself. I also learned how to drive stick shift with the best motivation possible - necessity.

This same week Carlos started school and decided middle school ain't no thang but a chicken wang. He made several new friends and has gotten straight A's the first two semesters. It's still a bit weird to see him getting ready for dances and talking about who's dating who, the fight that happened at school, etc. Fifth grade just seems too early for all that stuff...

After a few months of school I went in to Carlos school to give a career awareness presentation. I felt obligated to do so because my job is very exciting to kids (it's essentially like creating the most kick-ass video games imaginable) and is a good platform to talk about the importance of Math and Science (even English) in the Engineering disciplines. I also feel like I'd like to get more involved with the school system as a tribute to my father. My mom gave me a box not to long ago containing my Dad's eulogy and several writeups from periodicals, college newspapers (he was a Dean at a New York State college), the papers, etc. As I read these I remembered how involved he was with our school system (he was a school board member) and how many friends he had there. Do you ever have the feeling that your meant to do something in life? Besides my career I feel like I am supposed to be involved with my children's school to help both them and their peers. I feel like these are the things that God put me on Earth to do.

Anyways, Carlos was a bit nervous about having his Dad come in and talk to his whole grade. Luckily my ice-breaker jokes went over well and the kids were super stoked about my career. Carlos, by his own account, was the most popular kid at school and was absolutely beaming for a few days.

In December the most exciting thing of the year happened, which you are all up to speed on - the birth of Jack. Right now we are still dealing with the joys and pains of having a newborn in the house.

Looking forward to the new year my main goals personally are to continue to work on my deficiencies as a father and husband (nobodies perfect). As I've mentioned I want to look for more opportunities to get involved at Carlos' school. At work I have a finical goal (I know this sounds materialistic, but our companies success is reflected in our profits, so essentially I want us to be successful and I have a number that I would consider successful) and see some of the new software I'm writing put to use. I have also been brainstorming on some software that I'd like to write and officially open-source to get my name out there. I think the tool could be quite useful to a lot of people if I find the time to write it.