Monday, June 30, 2014
Something
I make an effort to blog every weekday. Sometimes just showing up an saying something is enough to show you are still in the game.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Nolan's 14
I want to run Nolan's 14. I have for about four years now. This came to my attention, or I discovered it, at least by 2010 as I was getting into mountain running. This also has meaning for me because Mt. Elbert and Mt. Massive are two mountains that in 2002 and 2003 shaped the trajectory of my mountaineering career. It's not an easy hike. Simply navigating could be an issue.
Anton Krupicka tried to do it last year in under 30 hours, which would have dramatically beaten the 55 hour best time. However, I think he suffered from lack of sleep. He did post some great times for what he did do. I have thought for sometime that it could be done in under 48 hours, that would mean only one sleep session.
So my intentions are out there. When will I try it? I am not sure, but it would be fun this summer.
Anton Krupicka tried to do it last year in under 30 hours, which would have dramatically beaten the 55 hour best time. However, I think he suffered from lack of sleep. He did post some great times for what he did do. I have thought for sometime that it could be done in under 48 hours, that would mean only one sleep session.
So my intentions are out there. When will I try it? I am not sure, but it would be fun this summer.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Debt
Short thought today, and no I'm not going to complain about not paying off my debt vs. going to Everest for the 2014 disaster, is the reason the western world appears so prosperous because of easy access to credit and debt? Think about it, there is no way the average person in the US could buy a $150,000 house without a mortgage. New cars are very similar, $25,000 for something that depreciates at 10-20% per year? Even college educations, with all the discounts, and going in-state can still cost tens of thousands of dollars more than the average family can afford in cash. If we had to pay for things like this in cash, far fewer people would be able to afford them.
I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that less developed countries have not had the easy access to credit like we have. No one really likes debt, but it can be very enabling. I don't know if I would be an engineer without it.
I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that less developed countries have not had the easy access to credit like we have. No one really likes debt, but it can be very enabling. I don't know if I would be an engineer without it.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Women in Engineering and Technology
First of all, my sister is an engineer, and it's just the two of us kids in our family. So if what I say comes off sexist or racist, I'm probably more feminist than my sister, and for the record, being an even mildly feminist man doesn't help at all wooing the ladies. My sister just wrote a blog post on being a woman in engineering and it inspired me to write this. Only about one in seven engineers is female and that has pretty much been her experience. As for the racist part, you are welcome to call me racist if you want, but then again I'm trying to start Sustainable South Sudan, and you're not helping me. I am afraid that whatever I say as a white American male, anything I say will come off racist and sexist. Hey, I didn't pick my parents. On the other hand, and the reason I am going through with publishing this, if I don't talk about it, how will we ever encourage more women, and minorities, to get into engineering and technology?
I have been thinking about this for some time since Google released it's employment demographics a few weeks ago. When I first heard that Google was 30% female I was stunned! I was amazed! I thought, 'how in the world did they get so many women?!' It was roughly the same for their ethnicity, I thought, 'only 61% white?! Where did they get all the other ethnic groups?' That being said, 30% Asian actually makes a lot of sense between Japanese, Indian, and Chinese citizens or descendants. I think my reaction was actually somewhat opposite the mainstream media's reaction to "diversity" in the technology sector.
Since I originally wrote this post, I was letting it simmer so that I had time to revise it again before I publish. In the last week Yahoo came out with it's diversity numbers. Once again, the details, directly from Yahoo, are not actually that surprising to me. Basically 15% of the technical staff is female.
The company I work at is roughly the same person count size as Google, and from my experience has far fewer than 30% women. In my limited experience it seems we have about 10% women, but my experience is nearly all direct engineering, not marketing or supply management or manufacturing. When I was part of the FEA group, we had one woman, out of like 40 employees. How's that, a 2.5% ratio? For the record, it's a little hard to directly compare statistics at a place of work when accounting for contractors and contingent personal, also for a global company like mine with several working groups split into several countries but effectively reporting to the same person. Now, it's not that 40 people in several different countries actually report to the same person, but effectively they do. Global organizations are complicated to say the least. Yet as W.L. Gore has shown, clear organization is not necessary to stay in business. The point being, of those 40, maybe only 10 (including the one woman) would show up in the official statistics because the rest are contractors or work in a different company and have a different official reporting structure.
In college in my aerospace engineering class of 2008, I think of about 40 graduates three were women. Those are approximate, because I'm not 100% sure who was aerospace versus mechanical engineering with aerospace concentration, but you get the picture. Materials science was very different, maybe 30-40% women, pretty stunning actually. In my graduating class at semester there were only two of us, and the other graduate was a woman. These are all anecdotal of course, your experience in engineering and technology will vary of course.
Why is it this way? Well, first of all, I think that there will never be an equal 50% split between men and women in science, technology, engineering and math fields. I feel that way because I know enough women and their husbands, and a lot of women make the decision to stay home and raise the kids. Yes I know two stay at home dads too, but they are in the minority. Still, why is it not 45%/55% women to men or at least 40%/60%? There were always more girls than boys in my high school advanced classes like calculus and college biology and physics. In fact, in my high school physics class of about 18 people, only two of us were male. Why did the two of us go into engineering while I think all the ladies in that class went into less technical careers? I feel that it has to do predominately with cultural expectations, and to a lesser extent the college support structure. Men are engineers that go to the office and do math, by themselves, and sit at a desk. Women work with people and collaborate in team environments, like a nurse on staff. Honestly, I think that cultural expectations are the major reason for the disconnect. There is also an attitude of competition in science and engineering, not necessarily direct, but the curriculum is tough and teaches you how to solve problems. A lot of people, men and myself included, often dove into the work alone for hours at a time, and while obviously working in teams and getting help from others is necessary, I am afraid that women see the system and don't want to do the solitary number crunching that college presents as "engineering". Now, actually in industry as a design engineer I spend probably 15 hours a week in meetings, another 10 hours a week talking to people informally about my projects, and then maybe 15-20 hours a week actually doing work at my desk. It is so different than college, there is very little on your own technical work, at least in my view. Design engineering is more like art meets sales. We create some art and then try to sell it to the rest of the team, making changes as they recommend until it is very functional art.
On the college support side, classes are not like the real world. There are similarities, but the differences are dramatic. I am afraid that throughout the formal college education process many possible engineers are not supported well enough. In other words, people skills don't get you strait A's in an engineering college, but they might get you CEO in a company.
I should really have high school job shadows now, because some days I feel like all I do is go to meetings and talk to people, Thursdays especially. True story, today I was running a machine in the morning to show a function to some South Koreans then in the afternoon I was running an impact gun changing worn bolts on one of the designs I am responsible for. I always enjoy asking women in engineering how we can get more women in engineering. I mean, I think in some small way I helped motivate my sister into it and I would like to get more women to try out science and technology. The way I think of it is, with an engineering degree, you can teach school, you can go to medical school, you can get an MBA, you can go to law school, you can start a business, and oh yeah, you can be an engineer too. Without an engineering degree, you certainly can't engineer, and chances are your degree will be much more limiting.
A standard argument for a liberal arts degree is that it expands your mind and shows you different ways to think about things, no one says that about a science or engineering degree, but those people obviously haven't sat through Compressible Fluid Dynamics or Intermediate Physics Mechanics II, not to mention studying relativity. I'm biased of course because I have two engineering degrees. I feel that there should be more engineers in the world. We get stuff done. Science is just amazing! Gears for example are simply fascinating.
Looking forward, I won't always engineer. At some point I would like to teach. I also have some other career goals which don't involve engineering. Yet, engineering is fulfilling, and often social, and there is no other education path which I feel would have developed my career and progressed my life like engineering has. For those of you that think, 'people like me don't go into science, technology, engineering, or math.' We want you! We want you to come to our meetings and say something we had not thought of, yet was actually realistic.
I have been thinking about this for some time since Google released it's employment demographics a few weeks ago. When I first heard that Google was 30% female I was stunned! I was amazed! I thought, 'how in the world did they get so many women?!' It was roughly the same for their ethnicity, I thought, 'only 61% white?! Where did they get all the other ethnic groups?' That being said, 30% Asian actually makes a lot of sense between Japanese, Indian, and Chinese citizens or descendants. I think my reaction was actually somewhat opposite the mainstream media's reaction to "diversity" in the technology sector.
Since I originally wrote this post, I was letting it simmer so that I had time to revise it again before I publish. In the last week Yahoo came out with it's diversity numbers. Once again, the details, directly from Yahoo, are not actually that surprising to me. Basically 15% of the technical staff is female.
The company I work at is roughly the same person count size as Google, and from my experience has far fewer than 30% women. In my limited experience it seems we have about 10% women, but my experience is nearly all direct engineering, not marketing or supply management or manufacturing. When I was part of the FEA group, we had one woman, out of like 40 employees. How's that, a 2.5% ratio? For the record, it's a little hard to directly compare statistics at a place of work when accounting for contractors and contingent personal, also for a global company like mine with several working groups split into several countries but effectively reporting to the same person. Now, it's not that 40 people in several different countries actually report to the same person, but effectively they do. Global organizations are complicated to say the least. Yet as W.L. Gore has shown, clear organization is not necessary to stay in business. The point being, of those 40, maybe only 10 (including the one woman) would show up in the official statistics because the rest are contractors or work in a different company and have a different official reporting structure.
In college in my aerospace engineering class of 2008, I think of about 40 graduates three were women. Those are approximate, because I'm not 100% sure who was aerospace versus mechanical engineering with aerospace concentration, but you get the picture. Materials science was very different, maybe 30-40% women, pretty stunning actually. In my graduating class at semester there were only two of us, and the other graduate was a woman. These are all anecdotal of course, your experience in engineering and technology will vary of course.
Why is it this way? Well, first of all, I think that there will never be an equal 50% split between men and women in science, technology, engineering and math fields. I feel that way because I know enough women and their husbands, and a lot of women make the decision to stay home and raise the kids. Yes I know two stay at home dads too, but they are in the minority. Still, why is it not 45%/55% women to men or at least 40%/60%? There were always more girls than boys in my high school advanced classes like calculus and college biology and physics. In fact, in my high school physics class of about 18 people, only two of us were male. Why did the two of us go into engineering while I think all the ladies in that class went into less technical careers? I feel that it has to do predominately with cultural expectations, and to a lesser extent the college support structure. Men are engineers that go to the office and do math, by themselves, and sit at a desk. Women work with people and collaborate in team environments, like a nurse on staff. Honestly, I think that cultural expectations are the major reason for the disconnect. There is also an attitude of competition in science and engineering, not necessarily direct, but the curriculum is tough and teaches you how to solve problems. A lot of people, men and myself included, often dove into the work alone for hours at a time, and while obviously working in teams and getting help from others is necessary, I am afraid that women see the system and don't want to do the solitary number crunching that college presents as "engineering". Now, actually in industry as a design engineer I spend probably 15 hours a week in meetings, another 10 hours a week talking to people informally about my projects, and then maybe 15-20 hours a week actually doing work at my desk. It is so different than college, there is very little on your own technical work, at least in my view. Design engineering is more like art meets sales. We create some art and then try to sell it to the rest of the team, making changes as they recommend until it is very functional art.
On the college support side, classes are not like the real world. There are similarities, but the differences are dramatic. I am afraid that throughout the formal college education process many possible engineers are not supported well enough. In other words, people skills don't get you strait A's in an engineering college, but they might get you CEO in a company.
I should really have high school job shadows now, because some days I feel like all I do is go to meetings and talk to people, Thursdays especially. True story, today I was running a machine in the morning to show a function to some South Koreans then in the afternoon I was running an impact gun changing worn bolts on one of the designs I am responsible for. I always enjoy asking women in engineering how we can get more women in engineering. I mean, I think in some small way I helped motivate my sister into it and I would like to get more women to try out science and technology. The way I think of it is, with an engineering degree, you can teach school, you can go to medical school, you can get an MBA, you can go to law school, you can start a business, and oh yeah, you can be an engineer too. Without an engineering degree, you certainly can't engineer, and chances are your degree will be much more limiting.
A standard argument for a liberal arts degree is that it expands your mind and shows you different ways to think about things, no one says that about a science or engineering degree, but those people obviously haven't sat through Compressible Fluid Dynamics or Intermediate Physics Mechanics II, not to mention studying relativity. I'm biased of course because I have two engineering degrees. I feel that there should be more engineers in the world. We get stuff done. Science is just amazing! Gears for example are simply fascinating.
Looking forward, I won't always engineer. At some point I would like to teach. I also have some other career goals which don't involve engineering. Yet, engineering is fulfilling, and often social, and there is no other education path which I feel would have developed my career and progressed my life like engineering has. For those of you that think, 'people like me don't go into science, technology, engineering, or math.' We want you! We want you to come to our meetings and say something we had not thought of, yet was actually realistic.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Talking about Everest
This continues to be a strange experience. Everywhere I go people want to talk about Everest. They all lean in when asking about it too. Maybe I talk too quietly. The conversation seems to follow the business at hand, before returning again to climbing Mt. Everest. It feels like I have talked about it so many times.
The look on people's faces show they are mesmerized and stunned to even think about it. I have spent so much time thinking about it, and the corresponding death and danger, both before and after the accident that to me it basically seems business as usual. It is not business as usual, 16 people died in one minute. Plus, I guess most people don't try to go climb Mt. Everest.
I mean what is there to say? Oh there is a lot to say I suppose. The details of returning, in other words, will I return and under what conditions would there have to be? The only reason I went after Everest is the reason everyone goes after it, it's the tallest. There is only one.
Yet my experience is so tainted by tragedy, how do I reconcile myself with all of the negatives of this experience?
 |
| April 16th on the hike to Pumori C1 |
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| April 24th Press Conference |
Tonight on the Heritage trail as I finished my run for the day, a man said, "Keep it up Mr. Everest!" I don't know who he is. I told him to keep it up too. Last night I went out to eat on a business dinner with some colleagues from another company, and country, after hearing I just went to Everest, they would turn the conversation around back to Everest every 25 minutes. I'm happy to share. It is just a little painful to talk about. Many of the positive parts are hard to talk about, like running with snow balls in my hands in freezing weather to train, the Gorak Shep mile, an easy 21,000 foot mountain. My perspective on what is easy and what constitutes effective training is often so far beyond what almost anyone else will do that even admitting these basic simple things they stare at me in disbelief.
Here is a nice article written by Ang Tshering Sherpa, Dawa Steven's dad, who owns Asian Trekking, who yes I did meet at Dawa's restaurant and saw again at the April 24th EBC press conference.
Monday, June 23, 2014
I Live in Iowa: Week 157
I'll call this a long week. It started Sunday in Massachusetts. I had breakfast with my hostess for the weekend and we had a nice hour and a half chat about life, where we are, where we are going, what has all happened, and specific events. Then I went to the church I went to in college and quite a few people were excited to see and, and of course I was thrilled to see that much of what I left was the same as when I was there. Getting from Worcester back to Dubuque ended up being more of an adventure than I anticipated. I left my host's house, went to church, stopped by another friend's house in Worcester to pick up a book, back to my host's house to drop of the loaner car (Thank you!) and walk to the commuter rail station. Catch a trail with eight minutes to spare, then switch to a bus (subway) south station and get to the airport with maybe 90 minutes until take off. Then we had a delay, before boarding the plan because of wind in the windy city. After maybe only half an hour we boarded and were quickly in the air. The whole flight I spent talking to a recent Dartmouth grad who was now back in business school at Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kind of nice to be a little social sometimes. Lading I made my way out to F lot to pick up my van. A quick drive through the city to Busse Park for a five mile run before the sun went down then a long drive back to Dubuque arriving close to midnight. Travel…
Work went well this week. The biggest event to report was that we were getting ready for one of our coworkers from India to visit for six weeks. Otherwise, it's business as usual. We did have a golf outing on Friday to celebrate one of our own taking a promotion and moving to North Carolina. That's the one golfing outing for me for this year.
Running went well, with 91 miles for the week including a 20 miler Saturday morning. I also had a 45 mile bicycle ride with the group Wednesday night and we averaged a whopping 20.5 miles an hour! Overall nothing to report on the workouts or racing scene. I need to do lateral exercises more often! I have weak hips, which causes other issues…
Saturday evening I was back out at Park Farm Winery for the first time this summer. I worked a wedding, it was actually pretty quiet. The interesting news is they have two dark dry red wines out there new this year that I have not tried yet. I'm thinking I might need to stock pile a few bottles because they are getting more experienced and better at making quality wines every year.
In general news, I need to go to a physical therapist and get my whole body tested to find out exactly where I am weak, because even now, running 90 miles a week I know I am not 100%. I hate shopping for medical professionals. It's so personal, and so often they are trying to sell pills, orthotics, surgery, or some other medical device or service I don't want.
Worth noting, I was charged a bank fee of $12 this month! I just found out one of my checking accounts instituted a new fee schedule. Another bank recently started charging me $6.95 per month, but was strangely paying it, until last month. So I will be closing a number of accounts over the next few weeks and moving most likely to just my Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) which still has free checking, and I will probably be opening a credit union account. I don't like the thought of paying a company for the privilege of allowing them to hold my money. I understand that a checking account costs them money to operate, but why can't they have a fee schedule like Paypal? This is a much deeper subject, I'll stop here. Happy week 157 living in Iowa!
Work went well this week. The biggest event to report was that we were getting ready for one of our coworkers from India to visit for six weeks. Otherwise, it's business as usual. We did have a golf outing on Friday to celebrate one of our own taking a promotion and moving to North Carolina. That's the one golfing outing for me for this year.
Running went well, with 91 miles for the week including a 20 miler Saturday morning. I also had a 45 mile bicycle ride with the group Wednesday night and we averaged a whopping 20.5 miles an hour! Overall nothing to report on the workouts or racing scene. I need to do lateral exercises more often! I have weak hips, which causes other issues…
Saturday evening I was back out at Park Farm Winery for the first time this summer. I worked a wedding, it was actually pretty quiet. The interesting news is they have two dark dry red wines out there new this year that I have not tried yet. I'm thinking I might need to stock pile a few bottles because they are getting more experienced and better at making quality wines every year.
In general news, I need to go to a physical therapist and get my whole body tested to find out exactly where I am weak, because even now, running 90 miles a week I know I am not 100%. I hate shopping for medical professionals. It's so personal, and so often they are trying to sell pills, orthotics, surgery, or some other medical device or service I don't want.
Worth noting, I was charged a bank fee of $12 this month! I just found out one of my checking accounts instituted a new fee schedule. Another bank recently started charging me $6.95 per month, but was strangely paying it, until last month. So I will be closing a number of accounts over the next few weeks and moving most likely to just my Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) which still has free checking, and I will probably be opening a credit union account. I don't like the thought of paying a company for the privilege of allowing them to hold my money. I understand that a checking account costs them money to operate, but why can't they have a fee schedule like Paypal? This is a much deeper subject, I'll stop here. Happy week 157 living in Iowa!
Friday, June 20, 2014
Unwanted
On one of my recent 100+ minute "recovery" runs I was thinking about my life and how strange it can be. In 2010, I applied for over 400 jobs, I had seven in person interviews, and out of that netted only two job offers. No company wanted to touch me.
The thought that sparked this post was thinking about my encore Everest presentation at work. The first one I gave a few weeks ago was attended by probably 100 people including people online. The second one was another maybe 40-50 people including the online attendees. As far as I know, no other presentation, except for company business, has had two showings. I presented to my supervisor, her manager, and his director. In short, my boss, boss's boss, and boss's boss's boss. I have had quite a few compliments about how well the presentations went. In addition to the recent presentations, I have had two raises in the last nine months and I have all sorts of design authority. Sometimes I think my work should be better checked.
I feel that I am very wanted. When I walk down the hall, someone stops me to talk or someone I don't know says, "hi Isaiah". It's very strange to me. I still have a chip on my shoulder because of how difficult I found it to break into industry. Yes, I know it was the Great Recession or recovery from the Great Recession. Yet the contrast between giving an encore presentation or getting a raise and being turned down again for even a phone call interview is bewildering to me. I don't have any great lesson from this dichotomoy. I'm the same person that gets complimented and rejected, even for the same thing! Life is strange.
The thought that sparked this post was thinking about my encore Everest presentation at work. The first one I gave a few weeks ago was attended by probably 100 people including people online. The second one was another maybe 40-50 people including the online attendees. As far as I know, no other presentation, except for company business, has had two showings. I presented to my supervisor, her manager, and his director. In short, my boss, boss's boss, and boss's boss's boss. I have had quite a few compliments about how well the presentations went. In addition to the recent presentations, I have had two raises in the last nine months and I have all sorts of design authority. Sometimes I think my work should be better checked.
I feel that I am very wanted. When I walk down the hall, someone stops me to talk or someone I don't know says, "hi Isaiah". It's very strange to me. I still have a chip on my shoulder because of how difficult I found it to break into industry. Yes, I know it was the Great Recession or recovery from the Great Recession. Yet the contrast between giving an encore presentation or getting a raise and being turned down again for even a phone call interview is bewildering to me. I don't have any great lesson from this dichotomoy. I'm the same person that gets complimented and rejected, even for the same thing! Life is strange.
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