Still Alive

Wow,

This blog still exists?  Well, I guess I will make good use of it, then.

First, catching up from the last post.  We did indeed qualify for the National Qualifying Event for the DARPA Urban Challenge.  We went and we did quite well, but not quite well enough to qualify for the actual race (only 13 of 35 entries qualified).  It may be sour grapes talking, but it seemed to me that the teams that DARPA pre-selected with $1M grants were able to get into the race more easily than the grass-roots teams.  But since when has anything been fair?

OK, so since 2007, I have been doing a lot more robotics work.  I have been a panelist for both NDIA and AUVSI conferences.  I am the software architecture lead for several autonomous vehicles being applied to Army logistics applications (but I can't be too much more detailed than that).

I am currently on-site where one of the robots is to be deployed, and will be doing intensive testing and tuning for a high-profile demonstration on Sept 18th, 2013.

So far, so good.

Just thought I'd update the BLOG with respect to the Urban Challenge. Our team did very well at the site visit (that's where DARPA folks come out and see if your car really can drive itself), so we are expecting to go to the National Qualifying Event. We won't hear officially until mid-August, but since we passed every test they threw at us, I am pretty confident.

To see the 5-minute video we submitted to earn the right to a site visit, see the company website.

BAD Chinese food

So I was in Lansing, MI today, keeping my Mom company while my Dad had "minor" heart surgery. Mom and I went out of Sparrow medical center to try and find some Chinese food while we waited. We found a place called Linsing Chinese Express, and thought we'd give it a try. My recommendation in hindsight: Don't.

The portions were large, but I'd classify it as "all-you-can-eat," since I really couldn't eat more than a few fork-fulls.

The flavors were muted, nearly bland. The tea was, well, pekoe (read: Lipton).

The atmosphere was sort of cafe-like, but the tables were dirty. ENough. Just thought I'd vent because now I am 25 bucks poorer and still hungry.

Urban Challenge

I seem to be the software lead for a DARPA Urban Challenge team. Much work to do!

Wow!

Well, I fell off the wagon about two weeks ago. I have been playing WoW every day since then for at least a couple of hours. Like smoking, the exact old patterns of behavior have re-asserted themselves.

I think about the game all the time when I'm not playing it. It's strange, because over the past several months, I didn't.

Why restart then? A bunch of little reasons, really. My dear friend Claire told me she was playing. South Park's WoW episode. A guy at work said they needed a fifth for questing. The impending release of the expansion. The *sweet* looking druid talent tree.

In fact. I think I'll go play right now.

Nothing to say?

Sometimes, I just can't think of anything to say. That sort of explains why I didn't write much during September. Here are some things I thought about writing, but didn't:

I went to Orlando where I met Aidan and Yvonne, two lovely people from Dublin. We went down to the Lucky Leprechaun pseudo-Irish pub (it's really a karaoke bar) every night for the duration of my stay. Aidan is a pretty decent singer and a very good drinker. Yvonne is a wonderful conversationalist and a very good drinker. This photo was taken the day after they had spent too much time in the Florida sunshine.

Things I learned about from them were Magner's Cider and Sudocrem. According to Yvonne, Sudocrem will cure everything that is red or itches. According to Aidan, Magner's will cure everything else.

White and Nerdy

Weird Al Yankovic has just released "Straight Outta Lynnwood", featuring a parody of this song:




Here is Al's version


The sad thing is that I understand Al's lyrics, and I'm pretty sure that half of Chamillionaire's "lyrics" aren't even words.