I never knew how much I would miss women…

I have been working at my job for about six months now.  When I arrived there were exactly two women working here.  One of them part time.  They have both left since I have arrived (I’m pretty sure it isn’t anything I did). My organization is now 25 Men strong.

I just didn’t realize how much I would miss having women around.  I’m not only talking about the obvious (I may be married, but I’m not dead).  Being a member of my generation, I have never worked without women around.  Now, the only females I come in to direct contact with in a regular week are my wife and my babysitter (she’s 18 now, so I am allowed to notice that she is a woman). 

I don’t know what the purpose of this post really is.  I will not get in to a debate as to whether men or women are better workers (especially since I don’t like the men’s odds in direct competition).  I guess I am just posting to say, I miss women…

Is it better to know or is it better to ask?

I didn’t really intend this blog to become a place for me to air my many many many random thoughts and philosophies…no, that is exactly what I intended this blog to be.

I didn’t take a philosophy course in college.  For my “Philosophy” credit I took Logic.  I loved my Logic class and would not change to another philosophy credit given the chance, but now that I am older I have been pondering some of those important questions in life.  Like:

• Why am I here? 
• What is the meaning of life?
• Is there a god?

I am no closer to an answer than I was in college, but I find the mental exercise rewarding.

Today’s deep question is even more abstract.  Is it better to know or is it better to ask?  Is curiosity more important than knowledge?  Certainly all knowledge ultimately started as a question, but if all we have are questions, then there is little point to asking. 

Let me put this in to an example and use one of those “big phrases” that I am proud to know:

Technological Determinism is a theory that encourages the development of society based on technological advancement.  For example, A nuclear weapon is invented, and society changes to adapt to it.  Cold War, backyard bunkers and witch-hunts parading as patriotism are the result.  In the absence of “the Bomb” none of these societal changes would have taken place (or so the theory goes).  But prior to World War II, the greatest weapons advancement made was the invention of gun powder.  China invented gun powder centuries before the west.  Yet China didn’t descend in to war simple because black powder was around to make it more effective.  This is the best argument against Technological Determinism I have found.  Although technology can “nudge” society in a particular direction, it can not do so in a vacuum.

Back to my example (and why I have taken this detour).  China had black powder, but it took a westerner to ask the question “How can I make this in to a weapon?”.  That is when canons and rifles were invented.  China had the knowledge, but not the question.  Granted, the question and technological innovation that resulted could be considered negative.  But that innovation lead to another question and ultimately the use of combustion to do work (the steam engine) was the result which then resulted in the industrial revolution and everything that we see around us today.  There was a series on TV called Connections that used to explore all of these technological dominoes. 

So, which is more important, the question or the answer?  I don’t think there is an answer to this question (irony intended).  Although there can be answers with no questions and there can be questions with no answers, ultimately the most important impact is made on societies and individuals when the right question gets the right answer at the right time.

What a Waist…

When I was growing up, especially as a teenager, I thought that money was waisted on the old.  By the time a person has saved enough money to be “affluent”, for the most part they are beyond the desire for a Corvette or trips to Europe.  

To a certain degree, I still believe that.  But recently I have made another discovery.  Education is waisted on the young.

My bride and I were talking this last weekend about this subject because our wonderful babysitter is a senior in high school now.  She isn’t sure where she will be going to school, though there is a chance she will remain local (best news I have heard in a long time). 

So my wife and I both thought we made the wrong decision when we went to college.  That’s too strong a word.  We didn’t make the wrong decision, just maybe not the best decision.  For my wife, she wanted to be a doctor and got accepted in to a fairly prestigious medical school out of college.  She chose JMU because of the band.  Although she enjoyed the band, music is no longer part of her life.  But she is still interested in a career in medicine.

My decision was a little harder.  I found my skill before I found my passion.  Programming (my skill) has a small amount of invention.  But with few exceptions, nobody really knows what I do for a living.  Especially since I am not a programmer, I am a tester.  Testing is better for me because I get to use my imagination more.  A programmer is given a set of requirements and simply “translates” those English requirements in to computer code.  There is no imagination with the possible exception of a particularly elegant algorithm.  A tester is supposed to break the application.  The best testers not only verify the requirements are present in the final application, but also think of requirements that are misdefined or not defined.  In that way, I get to use a minute amount of imagination.

As it turns out, I want to be an inventor, but I didn’t figure that out until recently (within the past couple of years).  Most of the inventions that I have thought of (primarily in the area of robotics) involve the trifecta of Robotics:  Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Programming.  I have the skill now to do the programming.  Mechanical Engineering I think I could muddle through.  I may over-engineer something, but it should work.  However, I don’t have the first thought on Electrical Engineering. 

But I feel trapped.  I can’t go back to school, my family couldn’t live off my wife’s income.  It also would be difficult for me to turn my back on a well-paying job in IT to take an entry level job as an EE.

I don’t know what the purpose of this post is really.  I would love to see a societal change that would prevent this from happening in the future, but how would that occur?  Communism is the only thing I can think of that might approach an “ideal” situation.  But humans being humans means that Communism only works if there is an abundance of everything.  Otherwise, some people will always “jump the gun” on a high-paying career that maybe isn’t their ideal career, in order to get ahead in “life”.  Which I think is more likely a jump on the trip to retirement, when a person has money to do what they want, but has passed the time they can enjoy it.

State Secrets

It has been absolutely nuts the past few weeks.  Not only have I started working on a cool new project at work, I have also been working on a Morgan Family web site, projected release date is somewhere between December/2008 and December 2099.

Anyway, I have been thinking again.  Always a dangerous prospect.  Anyway, I was thinking about the United States.  Not the country, the actual states.  Why do we have states? 

The founding fathers had an idea about a weakened national government that was only really in place to settle arguments between states, and provide a unifying front for external nations.  Prior to Lincoln, that is exactly what the United States of America was.  Not “One Nation…”, but a loose conglomeration.

But for 7 score and 5 years, the United States has been a unified nation, with state governments simply providing a layer of government.

That brings me to my point.  The driving laws are essentially identical nation wide.  Yet we have 50 different state trooper organizations and 50 different DMVs.  The taxes are pretty close to each other in each state, yet there are 50 different state tax organizations.  Each of these has some overhead.  Combining states would eliminate some of this overhead…leading to a more effective use of our tax dollars.

However, I am not advocating eliminating all states.  States do have a purpose.  California and Virginia are good examples of what I mean.  California is a forward-looking state that is almost always the first to implement any wide-sweeping social reform.  In IT, we call this a beta release.  A trial run of new software to see if it works or not.  Virginia is more of a wait-and-see state.  They gauge the results from other states, and adapts the changes that they feel are improvements.  Having a mixture is probably a good idea.

So, here is my plan:

Staying the same:

• Alaska – 663,661
• Hawaii – 1,275,194
• California – 36,132,147
• Texas – 22,859,968

These constitute the largest states, and the states that are not a contiguous.

Now, we start combining some stuff:

• Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa (Illiminnowiscowa – ILL) - 26,398,705
• Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska (Wyodaknebidawashorigomon – WASH) – 15,974,272
• Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah (Colariznevutnewmex – COL) – 17,417,245
• Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana (Kanoklarkmisslou – KAN) – 19,395,663
• Indiana, Ohio, Michigan (Indohmich – IND) – 27,856,875
• New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut (Newmassrhoconvermhampyor – NEW) – 33,494,354
• New Jersey, DC, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania (Jerdelmapenn – JER) – 28,141,974
• Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina (Carolikenvergitenn – CAR) – 32,459,010
• Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi (Georgalaflorimiss – GEO) – 34,341,336

By the constitution, the Senate takes 2 representatives from each state.  That would reduce the size of the senate from 100 to 26.  A much more manageable size.  The House has 435 members right now.  That is much more than was originally intended.  The house was supposed to be based on population.  The original total was for 65, divided by the original 13 colonies.  Although I didn’t plan on it, the Combined states happen to add to 13.  So, we can reduce the number of representatives to 65.  Hawaii and Alaska would each have one representatives.  The others would also be based on population, per the Constitution.

State	Population	# Reps	# Senators
California	36,132,147	8	2
Georgalaflorimiss	34,341,336	7	2
Newmassrhoconvermhampyor	33,494,354	7	2
Carolikenvergitenn	32,459,010	7	2
Jerdelmapenn	28,141,974	6	2
Indohmich	27,856,875	6	2
Illiminnowiscowa	26,398,705	6	2
Texas	22,859,968	5	2
Kanoklarkmisslou	19,395,663	4	2
Colariznevutnewmex	17,417,245	4	2
Wyodaknebidawashhorigomon	15,974,272	3	2
Hawaii	1,275,194	1	2
Alaska	663,661	1	2
Total	296,410,404	65	26

That would reduce the number of people in the government.  The founding fathers wanted deadlock in the house and senate.  They wanted that to make it difficult to pass legislation unless it was important.  But I think we have gone too far in that direction.  A little smaller would allow for some bold decisions to be made.  It would also have the unfortunate result of making Reps and Senators more important, but maybe that will get more people to the polls on non-presidential election days.

As usual with my wild theories, there are some major problems.  California has a lot of power in the current setup.  They would continue to be powerful in the new system, but not quite as powerful.  Getting California to agree to give up power to reduce government might be difficult.  And it would be difficult to make these changes without the approval of California.

Also there are states that are way outside the “norm”.  New Hampshire is proud to be odd, having no state taxes to speak of.  How would they do merging with the high-tax states like New York and Massachusetts?

I also like the idea of a recombining of Virginia and West Virginia, but I’m not sure if West Virginia would like it (nor, for that matter would Virginia like it).  But even when states are philosophically similar, there can still only be one state government and state capitol.  So, which one?

I doubt that this could ever happen in my lifetime, but it makes sense to me.