abercrombie tech discussion

on tuesday april 6 i attended a discussion on the hawaii technology industry hosted by neil abercrombie (see http://twtvite.com/AFGTech). the discussion was moderated by burt lum of bytemarks and the panel included; jay fidel, dan leuck, dr. pat sullivan, and neil abercrombie. this discussion was said to be not part of abercrombie's campaign in anyway. it was purely a discussion for the betterment of the industry. there were about 20 people in the audience and it was broadcasted live on the internet. (see some pictures of the event here http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilabercrombie/4499296522/)


some of the discussion points were the following (note i'm not quoting anyone i'm just trying to paraphrase the discussions):

problems and issues with the current industry; capital formation and the brain drain

that we've made a lot progress in 25 years.

that its now or never for the tech industry

the need for a tech advisory panel to help aid the future governor and legislature

the need for a CIO to reform the state IT infrastructure

talked about the progress that act 221 made and some of the issues associated with that

talked about how the different industries are related; like hotel and tech.

talked about hawaii has a unique diversity and potential to make disruptive ideas

etc, etc...

there were a bunch of good discussions. and i really do appreciate the fact that it was held. i abercrombie a lot of credit for hosting it. and a big thank you to the moderator and panel. BUT i have some comments/suggestions/qestions

where were all the engineers?
i convinced two other engineers from my company to come because i think this is important. but i think we were the only full time engineers in the audience. the tech industry is made of business people AND ENGINEERS. engineers need to stop being lazy and come out to these events. or how about students!

what problem?
several times in the discussions people attempted to put a finger on what the problems were. i was really interested in what the panel responded with. but... that was from their perspective. it was problems that dan sees or problems that pat sees. valid for them. but maybe not applicable to the larger industry.

i left the discussion still wondering what the problem was. i first asked myself do we even have a problem? to know if we have a problem one must know what the expectations are. i don't know what that is, so i can't tell you if we have a problem. and for those of you following THAT IS A PROBLEM. what are the expectations? yes, i agree tech isn't as big as it should be. but, what have we done to expect more? have we committed more money to reach goal X? i'm not sure we have. we lack a baseline of to evaluate our status.

lets say that we use the number of tech jobs as a scorecard (i'm not saying this is a good measurement). well, then we have something to evaluate. we can frame our discussions around that. only when we have goals and expectations can we evaluate our progress.

jay and neil mentioned that this seems to be now or never (i'm paraphrasing) for the tech industry. hmm. i don't know what to make of that. now or never for what? i don't get what that means with respect to our lack of goals.

anyway... you get my point. actually, i just wanted to throw out there that i feel good about my little area of the tech industry. i'm really happy with my company, career, and role in the tech industry.

other cities and states?
i was hoping some one in the panel said something like, "new mexico and north carolina has similar problems as we do with regards to technology. their state government is doing these 5 things. we can learn from their progress and failures. and i think we can try this." to me it kinda felt like we were trying to figure this out by ourselves. there has to be other examples that we can learn from.

thoughts about the brain drain
one of the real problems that i see is the brain drain problem. everyone talks about it. everyone agrees that it occurs. but there doesn't ever seem to be a discussion about it. why is it happening? what can we do about it? so... here is my take on those two questions.

cost of living. plain and simple. its too expensive for a lot of new grads to start their life in honolulu. hawaii typically doesn't pay as well as the mainland and its more expensive than most cities. what can we do? hm... well how about we do more remote working? maybe these new grads can live somewhere where the cost of living is cheaper. and still contribute to a local company. we could provide tax incentives or something for that. thats probably a lame idea, so you think of something.

competing with mainland companies is definitely a problem. i know for a fact that local kids that move away to college have a hard time looking for jobs in hawaii cause its so hard for them to know what hawaii has to offer. hawaii companies need (maybe even with assistance from the government) make much bigger attempt to lure our top notch students back to hawaii. we need to market hawaii tech companies to our own kids.

we need to educate students on what type of job their education targets. the panel mentioned that we have a great Department of Electrical Engineering that attract many mainland company recruiters. i wonder if the career people in the department tell the students that most of the jobs they are studying for are on the mainland. if i was a student and i knew i wanted to live and work in hawaii, i would want to know the number of hawaii jobs available. teach students about our local industry. allow them to gear their studies to compete for local jobs. if the students don't realize what jobs we have, then their will always be a mismatch. there will always be a drain, because they have no choice.


summary
this was a great event. i don't think the discussions were ground breaking, but i think its awesome that this could be the start of a lot of great things. i really appreciate the leadership that is needed to want to hold such an event.

to summarize. i want real goals. i want someone to say, we need tech to grow by X amount this year and this much in 4 years. here is how we are going to evaluate it. and here is the plan to accomplish that. or maybe its not that simple....

night time internet is awesome

a few of us (austen and james) at work started something called "night time internet". i think it basically started because we were working on proposals and side projects after work at home. so, we would get home from work, eat dinner, etc and get right back on the computer and work on stuff; instant messaging each other to communicate. eventually, it just became part of our routine and habit to come onto night time internet. a lot of times we would be working on totally different things and different projects. i would be reading and writing blogs as austen hacked away on hackystat, while james pretended to be online. haha. (okay well we don't do this every night, just when we have stuff to do; i suppose we have lives...)

anyway, now its part of our culture. we have a few people that are part time night time interneters. and even people from different companies. but, i think the cool thing is we use a lot of this time to learn from each other.

i'll just focus what i get out of night time internet...
1) i use this time to do a lot of just talking story. a lot of times i'm pretty busy at work so i don't get a lot of time to talk to my engineers. i'm probably able to talk to a large majority of my engineers on night time internet. and the discussions tend to be really good. whether its me offering advice or trying to solve work problems, i view night time internet as a really time to do this. it really does seem to work for us.
2) night time internet is an opportunity to experiment and learn about things that i don't get to at work. i do a lot of digging into new ideas and technologies at night time internet. i read a lot of blogs and try to learn more about things that i'm interested. its awesome because i can share them with others and get feedback.
3) internet networking. um.. you all probably know i spend a lot of time networking. and night time internet allows me to learn about the different people and organizations out there.

those are some of my initial thoughts...

pro bono publico

just by chance i started on a pro bono publico project for a good cause. a few weeks ago i got a call from the University of Hawaii Center of Disability Studies. i was confused at first... my contact was going on about how my name was recommended by Gerald Lau from the ICS Department (thanks Gerald) and that she couldn't get any students interested in doing a project for her even though they were going to pay. so, during that phone call i decided that i'd help in whatever way i could. but there was a catch... the catch was that they were desperate to get something working ASAP.

their needs were simple. the Center of Disability Studies were putting on the Pacific Rim Conference on Disabilities, a major international conference, but they didn't have an automated online system for their call for papers. instead, they had a PDF form that required them to manually extract information and manage the paper submissions. the conference can attract up to 350 paper submissions, so a manual approach is obviously not ideal. the task wasn't really that big or complicated.

i pitched the idea of working on the project to my company and i pitched it to some of my programmer buddies. but... i had a feeling that waiting to line up either option would take too long. whenever you have to pay someone something it becomes a much lengthier process to get started. so, i pretty much decided to do whatever i could for free; pro bono style.

so, what do you think is the first thing i started to do? i bet you are saying, "you started to hack". thats a safe guess, but that would be WRONG. the first thing i started to do was start the project management process. i started to note the problem, features, requirements and tasks. i don't have my original document, but here is my living project management document

last week friday was my customer demo. i showed off what i was able to accomplish over the weekend and at night. i even had someone QA my work. but... i found a bug during my demo, apparently my project management skills aren't that great. (just in case you are wondering, it was a minor bug that i fixed in 5 minutes. and we didn't release yet so no big deal). i release the system on saturday and monday is the big integration day at UH. hopefully things go well...

the people at the center of disability studies have been really nice; saying thank you way to much. they have been trying to get me on as a side contractor, i've been considering but i think thats best left to the "professional side contractors". i'm much more interested in pro bono work. its much more inline with my thoughts about socially conscious programming and paying it forward.

anyway, i've done programming for free before mostly for friends and family, but never for complete strangers. so, this was a new experience for me. what made it really possible was that i had a feeling that i could accomplish it or that i could ask my coworkers for help. that really lowered the risk and made it much easier to commit to. in all this was a lot of fun! it was great to work on something that meant so much to someone. i enjoyed this experience a lot and hopefully i'll get to do it again soon.

my academic journey

this is my academic journey

little kid days
i was a sports and outdoors kid. i wasn't allowed to have a nintendo and i couldn't watch tv during the week. so, that meant i found myself outside almost every single day after school from when i was in elementary to high school. i didn't need to be told i couldn't watch tv; i didn't want to. i played ayso soccer and little league baseball, played basketball and football with my friends, went surfing, hiking, bike riding, camping, fishing, etc. you name it we did it. it was a lot of fun.

i did okay in school;

i was a very curious kid; asking why about everything

i liked math and science and did everything i could to get out of reading

in elementary i won two science fairs for my demonstrations of magnets and the ozone.

for some reason i still remember winning a lei making contest and winning second place in our chess tournament.

i also remember taking two computer programming classes. one was in my elementary school where we learned logo. i really liked hacking logo on the macintoshes. next in my intermediate school we had a graphics programming class where we made animations. i remember these classes pretty well. i must have really liked them.

i remember my parents going over my report card with me every term. i was always upset that my friends got money for good grades and i didn't. my parents used to say my grades were for me and only me; and that i should do it for myself. this is where i eventually learned to be responsible for my education.

high school
high school centered around two things; baseball and having fun. i played for aiea high school JV and Varsity teams. baseball consumed a lot of my life and homework did not. i still got really good grades, but didn't do nearly as much studying as i probably should have.

i didn't learn trigonometry. i wasn't interested and it showed.

when we had reading assignments; i would do all i could do to fake it. i don't think i read one fiction book in high school.

i didn't learn anything about using the computer, i didn't even know we had a computer lab.


i'm not sure that i learned a lot in class, but i made sure we had a lot of fun. high school was a blast... but with all that, i still got pretty good grades. i graduated with honors. i even got a scholarship to the university of hawaii.

baseball
i really learned a lot about life playing baseball. i played baseball all my life, but things changed when i started playing at the high school level. we played baseball year around and my game changed and my roles on the teams changed. i went from a bench warmer to the veteran starter. i went from a freshman follower to a senior leader. these experiences were real. i learned a lot about being a leader. and i learned a lot about being a mentor.

i think the valuable thing about baseball was that i was able to really focus on baseball. i wasn't going to back down and i wasn't going to give up. competition drove my constant improvement of myself and my team. every practice meant something. every game was a stepping stone.

i mention baseball in my academic journey, because there is nothing quite like high school sports. for me, it was one of the most important academic experiences that i've gone through.

university
my first semester in college was shocking... my techniques for getting by at aiea high school wasn't working. i was playing to much... i couldn't BS my way through the tests by just being there in class. ha! i was actually pretty surprised. but, i wasn't playing baseball any more. so, i kind of lost focus. but, luckily some how one flunked pop quiz and a few family problems kicked me in the ass and i regained focus. this time i was focused on school. i was self driven. i didn't have a team anymore, i had to do this by myself and i better kick some butt. this was an important lesson for me.

agriculture
but! i was an agriculture major in the college of tropical agriculture and human resources. besides a scholarship, what the heck was i doing in there? this is where i made my second realization that i HATE WORKING OUTSIDE (but i love playing outside), i really don't care how plants drink water, and i really don't care about bugs and soil.

so, i quickly left CTAHR and ventured out into taking ICS (Information and Computer Science) 101 and ICS 111. i took these classes just because i remembered that i used to like computers when i was a kid. i really had no clue what programming was.

the internet!
this was right about the time when i got my first computer and got the internet! woah.. i was 19 years old learning about all this crazy internet stuff. i would ask my friends what does "www" mean and what does this yahoo site do. they'd laugh at me, but i was soaking up like a sponge. it was really interesting particularly because in high school i didn't geek out like this.

i did well in ICS 111 and i enjoyed learning java. so, i figured to keep on going. so i took another class. eventually, i told my CTAHR adviser i was out of the college and moved to ICS. the only problem was that i wanted to work with people and help people and i didn't know how would do that in ICS.

ICS
i got a few computer jobs, learned a lot more and realized that i really liked working with computers. i got good grades in my ics class, but i wasn't learning that much. i was a senior in college taking 400-level ICS classes and i began to think what i was going to do with my life. the scary thing was that i was pretty much getting a 4.0 in my major and i had no idea what i was going to do or where i was going to work. my initial thought was that i needed to work for a web company. thank goodness that changed when i took ICS 413 ...

ICS 413 taught by Dr. Philip Johnson turned my university education around. for the first time, i learned what it was like to write real software. imagine that... i took ten ICS classes and didn't know what it was like to write software. this class changed my life. i felt like i just learned what computer science was all about, so i couldn't bear graduating right after that ICS 413 semester. it tuns out that Dr. Philip Johnson convinced me to do my Honors Thesis. committing to this meant that i delayed my graduation for at least a year. i was in no rush, so i did it. (now, i realize that everyone should do an honors thesis).

during my honors thesis work, i started to see that software was all about people. wring software is people management; its peopleware. AHA! i found out that i can help people with my geek knowledge. geek + people is awesome! i found my calling! i found myself using the same people techniques i learned in baseball.

i eventually finished my honors thesis; The design, implementation, and evaluation of CLEW: An improved Collegiate Department Website.

grad school
now, i was about to graduate with my bachelors of science in information and computer science with high honors and was faced with another "what now". i still had no clue where i would working in hawaii. so, i applied to various graduate programs around the country, but i got rejected from all of them. luckily i was offered a spot in CSDL as a graduate research assistant. i jumped at that opportunity.

i did my graduate research working on the hackystat system. while working on that project i got to be part of a few publications:

Comparing personal project metrics to support process and product improvement

Practical automated process and product metric collection and analysis in a classroom setting: Lessons learned from Hackystat-UH

The Hackystat-JPL Configuration: Round 2 Results

Hackystat MDS supporting MSL MMR

Hackystat MDS supporting MSL MMR: Round 2 Results

Hackystat-SQI: Modeling different development processes

Hackystat-SQI: First Progress Report

Improving Software Development Management through Software Project Telemetry


one of the awesome things that i got to do during my graduate studies was an internship at the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena california. it was a great experience and was really useful as a talking point for interviews, etc. not to mention a really really really really cool place. i got to see the mars rovers, went into the mission control rooms, saw them testing the mars rovers, saw them building the next satellites, watch cassini fly through saturn's rings, and talked to a lot of rocket scientists!

after my internship i finally finished my masters thesis; Priority Ranked Inspection: Supporting Effective Inspection in Resource-limited Organizations. yay! school is over. (actually i got into the PhD program, but i decided that i was done for a while. write a thesis is a lot of hard work).

work work work
i entered the job hunting with relatively little information. unfortunately, my time at the ICS department didn't teach me about our local high tech industry. so, i applied to places were my friends worked. and it turns out i accepted a job where i didn't know anyone; Referentia Systems Inc was my new home.

i've been working at Referentia for the past 3 years now. i was hired as a software engineer and now i'm a engineering supervisor. at the end of it all, i rely on much more of my soft skills, outward thinking, and the wonderful paradox than my technical skills.

moral of the story
i don't think there is a moral of the story... its just the way that i did it. its has been a long journey and i feel really fortunate and grateful to be where i am now.

i think its ironic that some of the most important lessons that i use today in the real world comes from times out on the baseball field.

there is so much yet to come. i've recently become really interested in helping others through their journey. i've learned this from leaders like ian kitajima. i've just started this next chapter but some things are already in motion;

making students awesome

Dept ICS TopCoder Software Engineering Competition

ics alumni association for real this time


wish me luck!

ahead of the majority

In 1965, Patsy Takemoto Mink became the first woman of color in the U.S. Congress. Seven years later, she ran for the U.S. presidency and co-authored Title IX, the landmark legislation that opened up higher education and athletics to America's women. PATSY MINK: AHEAD OF THE MAJORITY is the story of this dynamic trailblazer who, battling racism and sexism, redefined American politics.



Ten reasons why you should know about patsy mink

She co-authored Title IX.

She was the first woman of color to serve in the U.S. Congress.

She was one of the first women to run for president, entering the Oregon presidential primary in 1972.

She ran in 22 elections, more than any other politician from Hawai'i then or since. She is the only Hawai'i politician to serve at the county, territorial, state and federal levels.

She introduced the nation's first comprehensive Early Childhood Education Act in 1971. Congress passed the legislation, but President Nixon vetoed it.

She authored Hawai'i's "equal pay for equal work" law in 1957. The national law was passed six years later.

She defended a strong civil rights plank at the 1960 Democratic National Convention.

She was the first Asian American woman elected to public office in Hawai'i.

She was the first Japanese American female lawyer in Hawai'i. She originally wanted to be a doctor but was rejected by all the medical schools she applied to in 1948.

She led a crusade in college against the the University of Nebraska's segregated housing policy. The school rescinded the discriminatory policy because of her efforts.




Patsy Takemoto Mink is my grand aunt. aunty patsy has been a guiding force in my life to help others and standing up for whats right. my life goal is to help people and i hope continue my aunty's legacy.

i feel greatly honored and humbled by Kimberlee Bassford's work on her documentary PATSY MINK: AHEAD OF THE MAJORITY. the documentary is going to be debuted this month in the hawaii film festival. we are really looking forward to seeing the movie and participating in the events.

learning a lot from the geekdads

geekdad is a blog from wired magazine; "Tech toys, science projects and other nerdy things to do with your kids." its a pretty good blog especially when they talk about cool things parents can do with with their kids. for example, this posting making fireflies, or 10 websites for geeky kids. this blog is fun.

but, there are other geekdads and geekmoms out there. and i'm finding that i'm learning a lot about being a good dad from their blog postings, web pictures, and twitter messages. i really appreciate the view into their family activities. i really do appreciate it. i gives me new ideas of what i can do with my family. their posts reminds me that i need to stop working and start playing. i've made it a real point to stop working during the weekends and instead take family field trips (well, i should have said try).

like this blog posting from geekdad ryan:

We got Blake a guitar for his birthday... the reason I thought a guitar might be good for him is this... I secretly believe that he has some sort of hidden musical talent.

i've been thinking about getting my kid a drum set. he totally loves listening and dancing (or what seems to be dancing) to music. he has one little drum that he plays all day and goes into a total fit if i take it away. he knows how to play different sounds on the drum too. i've been thinking about getting him a little kid drum set. but, i didn't know if people actually punished themselves with that sort of decision. maybe i'll buy it and take it to grandma's.

or like this twitter from geekdad russel:

swam in the pool with the kids. so fun! no one else around

i can't wait to play in the pool with my kid. sounds like good times!

these geekdads share their stories of awesome family times; whether its a trip to the zoo, a surprise weekend at a hotel, or taking the kids to the park. technology makes sharing these stories possible. cause lets face it, geekdads' don't typically sit around the lunch table and talk about family outings.

i look up to geekdads like pavel, ryan, and quinn. i'm learning a lot from their example! thanks guys.

i try to do my share of sharing with my family blog, posting of videos and my picasa web album.

UPDATE. i just recently saw this website http://hawaii.momslikeme.com/ from the honlulu advertiser. whats the deal with that. is there a dadslikeme site?

pono: do whats right

an excerpt from maui news, an invitation to do what's right: PONO.

On June 22, 2004, their 3-year-old son, Pono Viela, died from injuries sustained when the all-terrain vehicle he was riding with his father flipped over.

In death, the pono campaign was born. Since then, the couple and their daughter, Jrae, and son, Jai, have adopted the “Pono Do What’s Right” motto and performed good deeds throughout the community, such as adopting a portion of the highway near their home for cleanup, staging a golf tournament that has raised tens of thousands of dollars for local nonprofit organizations, running sports programs, accepting invitations to tell their story in the hopes of helping and inspiring others to do good.

why am i writing about this? well, it is a tragic story but a lot of good has come of the Pono movement. and i'm so proud to say that my cousin dana and friend jen has been heavily involved with pono.

In printing the T-shirts, Paracuelles went to the same company, Spread Pono Co., that designs and prints T-shirts for the Vielas. In addition, owners Jennifer Tengan and Dana Kagawa print shirts using environmentally friendly water-based ink.

The reef T-shirts, which are $18 for adults and $16 for children, will be sold at the event and are available at Working Mommies.

During Reef Night, the Vielas will hold a “Pono Fashion Show” at 7:50 p.m. to unveil their new T-shirt designs. In handing over the Pono T-shirt lines to Tengan and Kagawa recently, Maile Viela said she was hoping to use the talents of the young graphic artists to design shirts attractive to the younger set.

The Pono T-shirts are $18 for adults and $16 for children. They can be obtained at the Reef Night, at Working Mommies in Wailuku and from the Web site www.spreadpono.com.

i'm sporting my pono t-shirt today, but i try to live pono every day. i wish i made the trip out to maui today, because for some reason i feel like i need to learn more about Pono Viela, his family, and more about the pono movement.

embrace your imagination

Somebody much smarter than me once said that pessimists are usually right, optimists are usually wrong, but all the great breakthroughs in history were done by optimists. - Thomas Friedman.

i just read an awesome blog about The most important competition is the one between you and your own imagination. here are some excerpts:

In the latest edition, I added a whole section on why liberal arts are more important than ever. It’s not that I don’t think math and science are important. They still are. But more than ever our secret sauce comes from our ability to integrate art, science, music and literature with the hard sciences. That’s what produces an iPod revolution or a Google.

One thing we know about creativity,” he says, “is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other. --Marc Tucker

the messages that i take away from this blog post is to not give up on my imagination. i just so happened to be thinking about this recently and have been posting random ideas that i have:

an firefox extension idea for copying links

an idea called moody

wordle for my blogs and an idea

an idea for twitter

an idea for ESPN

i've always practiced communicating my thoughts. now, i've found my self trying to practice to communicate my imagination. its somewhat different to formalize imagination.

i'll make sure that i give my imagination a fighting chance.

lucky we live hawaii

(right outside my hotel room in kona)

our buddy Ian always keeps on reminding us that we are lucky to live in hawaii by posting his sunset pics. he's right! we are really lucky.

there are so many reason why i love living in hawaii. as i was looking through some pictures, i was reminded of one reason. i really like to play tourist and stay at hawaii's nice hotels. its kinda like going on vacation without having to leave the island. for some reason its really refreshing to watch the sunset from my fancy hotel room.

here are some of our favorite island hotels:

halekulani - really nice hotel rooms, great service and lots of very good food.

kahala resort (formally the mandarin) - swim with dolphins, free scuba lessons, and a secluded beach

ihilani - huge rooms, huge bathrooms, jacuzzi rooms, friday hula show

hilton hawaiian village (alii tower) - free sunset pupus, great service, good views

turtle bay - nothing to do except relax

(some of my hotel pics)

there are some tips and tricks to doing this. for example, try the turtle bay escape club, its a lower than kamaaina price. or try the spa room at at ihilani, it is awesome (and is not very well known). playing tourist is a lot of fun!

yup, i agree... Lucky we live Hawaii

my company's hawaii food bank drive

for the past three years, i've been helping to organize a food bank drive at my company. from my estimations, i think we raised about 2,300 pounds of food!

from the start, we had an idea of buying our can goods cause a lot of the engineers didn't really have a lot of spare can goods lying around in their homes. so we raised some money and went to costco. we did some calculations and bought a lot of vienna sausage, because it had the most weight per cost and it was a meat product. the food bank has a top five wish list canned meats first, then canned meals, then soups, vegetables, then fruits.



anyway, so the first year (2006) we bought 50 something cases of vienna sausage. here is what that looks like. being engineers we had a lot of fun making different formations of the vienna sausage blocks. and no it didn't fall down.



this year we tried to kick it up a notch. and we did! we raised a record amount of money and i think we'll actually donate much more food than previous years. but, food is a little more expensive this year. for example, vienna sausage went from $6.44 to $6.99. anyway, like i said we raised a lot more money this year. so we bought vienna sausage, pork and beans, tuna, soup, stewed tomatoes, and corn. we piled all that up into two trucks and brought it back to our office. here is some pics from this years food drive



its always a lot of fun the organize these sorts of things. the great thing is that i'm always really blown away by my co-workers generosity and willingness to help. i have some of the best co-workers ever (and i'm not just saying that)! our employee culture of giving and helping is really quite inspiring!

here are some hunger facts from hawaii food bank

The Hawaii Foodbank network serves 131,862 different people annually

The needy face tough choices: 32% have had to choose between food and rent or mortgage bills, 27% between food and medicine or medical needs .

48% of all clients served by the Hawaii Foodbank are classified by the U.S. Government's official food security scales as experiencing hunger.

Among households with children, 67% are food insecure, including 31% who are experiencing hunger.

25% of all households served had one or more children under age 18 (32,965 children); 6% of all households served had one or more children age 5 or under (6,581 children).

visit http://www.hawaiifoodbank.org/ for more information on how you can help. its really not that hard to do and i hope other companies big and small will start their own food drive. not to mention its a lot of fun.

next year, i'm going to shoot for 2,000 pounds of food. not sure how i'm going to pull that off, but its a great goal! wanna help?

my 100th post

this is my 100th posting to this blog. i started this blog way back in august 2007 while i was on two week vacation from work. my blog started out as a engineering log about my hackystat development but quickly morphed into something else. i'm actually really surprised that i made it this far.

the turning point was when i was recruited by google (i'll write a separate blog about that). it was a time of uncertainty for me. the fear of wanting to leave hawaii for "bigger" opportunities re-focused me. i was a bit confused at this point. honestly, i was a little upset that i was even considering moving away from hawaii. after the google opportunity faded, i focused my attention on the students and the high tech industry.

with this new goal, i set out to make a difference. not knowing how to go about doing this i started writing things like, why you NEED to do a Honors Thesis and we need a Fog Creek in Hawaii. i think at this point dr. johnson sent my blog around to his students. another turning point is when i visited the local office of 21csi for their "grand opening". during that event i really tried to do some networking to learn more about hawaii's high tech industry. the result of that effort was meeting ian kitajima. a week later i wrote a post about knowing your industry. i learned a lot about the dual use group. but, i didn't really know what to do with that information.

for the next few months i worked on hackstat stuff and tried to help write posts that students would like. here are some examples:

twitter, sharing, hackystat ideas

work on your soft skills

why i work on hackystat

re: blogging, open-source software, and rockstars!

think about things other than code

don't be afraid to speak up

outward thinking

student portfolios

finding what you are passionate about

those are just some examples. but, i found that i really like blogging about things that i actually helped in. for example, lacy veach and helping kids with scratch. or going to career fairs; i love going to career fairs cause you can talk to the students and help them. and my wiimote demonstration was a lot of fun! talking with the honors students was also very enlightening. and most of all i like helping to make students awesome!

i had the idea of helping students learn more about the people in our industry. hawaii has a lot of great people! i wanted to show the world how awesome our people were. so, i started my blog interview posts. to date, i've done 7 interviews.

interview with lynn fujioka - this interview was really successful and got a lot of attention from the techhui group. hopefully a lot more people know about lynn's efforts.

interview with randy cox

interview with ian kitajima - this interview was pretty inspiring and it was cool to see it posted on oceanit's website

interview with dan leuck

interview with russ tokuhama

interview with ryan k

interview with austen

i learned a lot from doing these interviews. hopefully, people read them and got to know these awesome people.

those of you that actually follow my blog, have probably noticed that i tend to think a lot about a lot of different things; hackystat, the environment, being socially conscious, hawaii's tech industry, sharing information, and other random things.

a hundred posts is a lot. and i really learned a lot about what i value from actually forcing myself to write. hopefully, other people thought it was valuable too. i have no idea. its really hard to what i do helps, so i don't really concern myself with trying to please other people. but.... i have been keeping track of my analytics with google. here are some my very low numbers (but i don't really care about popularity);




moving forward i will continue on my quest to help people. i know that is a general statement. don't worry about me. i'll figure it out... i'm at a good point in my life and i really feel lucky to be able to do what i do. i'm appreciative of so many things and have the overwhelming urge to help people. i suppose my blog is supposed to be a small representation of that.

let me know what you think by adding a comment!

rubiks cube conquered

i've conquered the rubiks cube. i can solve any cube in less than 3 minutes; the first two levels in less than a minute and the last level in 2 minutes. but thats with the slow/beginner algorithm. i'll work on the advanced algorithm and be even more awesome.

solving the rubiks cube was really fun. i suggest that you give it a try. we have had many discussion about visualization, math, and algorithms because of the cube. haha. i told you it was fun!

i guess it seems like one of those geeky things to do. right up there with juggling and playing hackysack. any self respecting hacker gotta to be able to do one of the three. (by the way, i don't count ultimate frisbee)

where did aaron go

wow... i haven't blogged as much as i want to these past few weeks. i'm like pretty busy (haha. a 007 quote there). yet, i do feel a revolution coming soon. i know its coming. stay tuned.

a global warning

i just watched, a global warning? on the history channel. this show was pretty good.

one of the more striking ideas that i learned from the show is that there are natural global warming/coding cycles. a lot of people have said that our warming is just natural. but, what i learned from the show, is that scientist believe that earth should be in its cooling cycle now. but, we are getting hotter. they said, that this proves that man made global warming is real.

the danger is if we destroy the natural global cycle who knows what is going to happen. the belief is that our pollution will amplify the cycles. extreme code and extreme hot - levels that we haven't seen since the massive weather changes that killed the dinosaurs.

there are a lot of new programs on global warming hitting tv now days. National Geographic has some good shows. like this one coming out: Six Degrees: could change the world (feb 10). CNN, Discovery, 20/20 and 60 Minutes have also put out some shows.

as steve would say, now we just have to do something about it. the more i think about it, the more i'd like to work in this area. i started to think how i can contribute. one way, i think is educational software (something i know nothing about). not sure where to start.

rising sea levels

inspired by Hawaii Climate Crisis documentary, i started to look at some ways to do some simulation of rising sea water. i'm in the early stages of learning more about the crisis and how software can help spread awareness and maybe even help stop the environmental problems we are having.

here are some links that i found and are kind of interesting. if you have more, please leave them in the comments section:

animation roundup: rising sea levels, filling grand canyon, global clouds

watching the sea level rise, virtually

mapping sea level rise on kauai

flood maps (using google maps)

chlimate change and sea level

risingtide

univeristy of hawaii energy efficiency (google groups)

this list is in no way complete. i'll start looking more. we need some sort of hawaii tech industry coalition to look how the software, engineering, and research industry can help.

outward thinking

i've been growing a concept called outward thinking. outward thinking is pretty easy to understand; its opposite of inward thinking. (that was a joke). here is what it really means.

outward thinking is the ability to frame your thoughts in a larger context. that means thinking about how your actions might affect other people or even other concepts. here are few examples:

it is the ability to identify that a project task maybe a duplication of another task on another project. and then doing something about it.

it is the ability to think of including bob the developer in a discussion because you remembered that john sent you an article about the subject.

it is the ability to evaluate the design of a framework in the context of the larger problem.

it is the ability to commit yourself to helping other people realizing their dreams.

i believe the world needs more outward thinking and outward acting people. i'm constantly amazed at the level of people naive sense of the larger issues. i've seen this in many areas, whether its my friends having no clue why al gore just won a noble piece prize (like it or not). or whether its fellow programmers getting lost in the mundane tasks, they lost the ability to come up for air and really evaluate the problem.

a good analogy for this concept is the blinders that are used on horses, so that the horses are only focused on whats in front. blinders make you lose sight of your neighbors. blinders make you lose sight of the larger problem. blinders trick you into thinking that the next mundane task is the only possible next move. basically, i think blinders suck. but, yet there are too many people with blinders on.

i try to outward think as much as possible for several reasons:

i have the utmost respect for the people around me. i rely on them to help me grow as an engineer and as a person. you have to take off the blinders to appreciate and utilize that opportunity.

i want to help others, but to do that you must first be aware of their goals, aspirations, and needs. you need to have the ability and commitment to the people around you.

i know i can't the problems alone

i know that i don't know all the problems.

i know that i don't know all the success stories to learn from.

i know i can't create success with blinders on

and its just way more fun

outward thinking is very important to me. its something that i've been working on these past few years. its maybe something that i grew when playing and coaching baseball all these years, but was too blinded to see it.

don't be afraid to speak up

(i have been doing a lot of self reflection lately.)

one of the things that i keep on noticing is that some people are quiet, some people say things, and some people say interesting and thought provoking things. i notice that people that speak up, are more recognized for their thoughts. duh... the opposite is true, people that don't say anything aren't asked for their thoughts.

i think i speak up and i think i say interesting things. well, that is my goal. i don't care if i'm right or wrong. its the learning experience of being able to share my thoughts and being able to communicate it effectively that drives my out outspokenness.

the other day at work, a consultant pointed out that i ask a lot of very hard questions. that made me feel good; because that demonstrated my level of understanding and being able to push that understanding to new levels. after a little while of feeling good, i reflected...

i began to think about other people. i began to think about who (taking a cross section of all sorts of people that i know) also asks interesting and thought provoking questions. i began to categorize these people. i noticed some interesting things.

people that ask more of the interesting things are able to think outside of the box

people who don't really speak up, probably wouldn't be able to write their thoughts out either.

some people will dwell on what they know really good; asking sometimes inappropriately detailed and irrelevant questions.

people that ask good questions are able to draw their knowledge from varying sources; making connections that other people cannot.

those are just some of my observations about other people. i speak up a lot of times, because i just want to know more about things. my bottom line is that i want to learn, and i want to be able to practice my communication skills, and my thought process. i get better at that sort of things every time i ask a question. every time i pose a question, i challenge myself to ask a thought provoking question. i challenge myself and i challenge the presenter, meeting group, or whoever the question is directed at to be my level of thought process.

here is a big hint. asking good questions is one of the better ways to demonstrate that you can critically think about concepts. this is a very good thing to show off. :) especially in interviews, to your supervisors, and to anyone else that will notice.

spreading good things

free rice
because of my recent post about the XO laptop, someone mentioned that Free Rice is also a good cause. check it out.



haha. those words are hard. try it out and send this to a friend. andrea has already beaten my top score. i guess i suck.

green your work
from treehugger.com check out how to how to green your work. i like the suggestion of satellite offices to reduce commute waste. i'd bet that could work out cheaper for some companies. imagine making a 3 people small offices in wahiawa, ewa beach, kapolei, waimanalo, etc. i'd bet it would be cheaper than renting one big office in downtown. not to mention instantly improving the quality of life for your employees that live in those areas by saving hours of commute time everyday!

socially conscious programming

here is a thought... we need more programmers to help solve social problems. i've been reading the book Giving: How each of us can change the world and one of the things that i immediately thought of is that technology can change the world. duh... industrial revolution and the information age.

socially conscious programming is something that i just made up, to express the idea of applying technology to problems like AIDS, hunger, extreme poverty, disaster relief, environment education, etc. all of these causes need technology, yet i bet little funding is made available to pay for cutting edge technology.

philanthropy is becoming more main stream now days with the likes of bill gates and warren buffet. and its cool to see things like google.org. its great to see big money and big companies helping out the major social causes.

but, what about the community level issues, for example helping the Hawaii Education of the ARTS, and organization who is asking for help right now. there are probably hundreds of thousands of NGOs that need minor technology help; from access databases, websites, to information packets. we could and should help. but, i'm not sure how to organize that. hackers are afraid of the constant nagging computer-illiterate friends that need help with stuff.

going back to the major social causes. wouldn't it be cool to work on something that has a major sociological benefit. something that truly changes the world. my love for hacking is secondary to my love for helping people. an awesome job would be to create cool innovative technology that saves the world from global warming (just an example). i would love that job.

oh.... and how do i do that without taking a big pay cut. haha. just joking, well maybe not. that is a problem. maybe that separates the true givers from the rest.

bottom line
making a little money on the internet is pretty straight forward now days. making a small positive difference in the world on the internet is a lot harder. my prediction is that is going to change soon. it needs to.

life design decisions

this is my first ever life posting in this blog.

shit, where am i going to live?
the hawaii housing market is crazy. $650K average! thats just fricken CRAZY. i'm going CRAZY thinking about it. CRAZY, CLUELESS, FRUSTRATED are all words that describe how i feel when thinking about the whole subject. it sucks.

but...

note to self: relax. there are much more important things in life. i'm adopting the following motto: if your place sucks compared to your aunty's house, then just spend as much time at your aunty's house as you can. haha.


finding a balance
i work hard.. probably too much. i'm not a workoholic, i actually like working. haha. i'm brainwashed.

anyway, my new goal is to work harder. work so hard that i can find a balance in other things. i just had a great weekend full of family activities. wouldn't it be great to not worry about working on the weekend. haha. i haven't had many of those weekends. in fact, i actually worked tonight, so i still don't know whats thats like. anyway... the point is that i want to find a balance; enough time to satisfy my fun work and enough time to have other types of fun. oh and maybe actually work out a little here and there.