My Life in TLAs

I go to church at IBC. Bible translations which I have read in their entirety include JPS, KJV, and NIV.

I have two degrees from MIT. I have memberships with AAA, ACM, ADC, and NRA, and an Open Water Diver certification from SSI.

The airports I’ve visited the most are TPA, FLL, BOS, IAD, and DCA. I drive a 4WD 2006 FEH and usually get between 29 and 32 MPG.

I work for PTR at NRL, which is under ONR (part of DOD, of course). My computer is an LED-backlit MBP running OS X (pronounced “oh ess ten”, not “oh ess ex”; it’s the version after OS 9). I write software for its BSD layer and compile it with GCC. Other software I write against the JDK’s API, which I then compile with ANT and run in a JVM. Sometimes I run Scheme code with PLT or MIT/GNU. I have also worked on software to control robots from MHI and ASI.

I store files on AFS and money at BOA and ING. I communicate via AIM and my ATT cell phone. I spend far too much time browsing the WWW and reading RSS feeds. I listen to music in AAC format. I watch TV shows and movies on DVD. TNG and TOS are my favorite Star Treks. SG-1 is my favorite Stargate. TAS is my favorite Batman. My favorite comic book characters are the members of the JLA in the DCU.

I live in the USA.

I am JRH.

Prayer Is Essential

This past Saturday, my old friend Carl Philip “Phil” Carlson was on the radio. He is now a campus missionary in Texas, and he was on the air sharing his testimony and talking about the work he does at his alma mater.

I already knew some of his testimony, from reading things he’s written and from talking to him about it (and I’m in Phil’s Facebook Group), but this was a whole different experience. When we’ve conversed recently, it’s been phone conversations that last maybe ten minutes; this was almost a half hour of Phil pouring his heart out. It was heartbreaking and sad and beautiful and powerful and amazing and challenging.

It’s hard to believe that this is the same guy I used to talk Star Trek with in high school as we’d study the latest screencaps from Pedro’s Shiporama (which still exists, wow!). Back then, Carl Phil struck me as a little stiff when it came to matters religious, but I just chalked it up to him being a Methodist (and it was actually kind of a welcome change from the people at the Pentecostal churches I attended); I had no idea of the kind of pain he was hiding, or its magnitude. We mostly stuck to lighter fare in our conversations, like science fiction or complaining about the latest stupidity inflicted upon us by our English teachers (not you, Mr. Wolstenholme).

But now, he’s a warm, sincere, outspoken, eloquent, mature man of God (with a hint of a Texan accent). Look at how he expounds upon 1 John 4:10:

It’s “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” In there we see that two-sided element: We’ve sinned. Sin is evil. It requires a price to be paid, it requires a just price. But at the same time, it’s love that he sent us a means of redemption. And that love is far greater than anything we can do on our own, it’s far greater than any human being can do, although the love of God can be poured through human beings… The key to life is the combination of the Law of God and the Good News of God. The Truth is so important that we need to show people, look, this is our situation, this is how we got here. And here’s how God is taking us out of it.

Or when he’s talking about forgiveness:

Forgiveness is a process: it has a starting point, but it doesn’t have an ending point while we’re alive. It really is something where we have that first moment, we say, look, I forgive you. But tomorrow those emotions are going to come back again, the memory’s going to come back, so we have to remember, okay, look, I am going to choose to forgive again today…

Wow. It’s not every day that I hear a testimony which actually impacts me; it’s usually just “I did bad things, blah blah blah, and then I found Jesus and now my life is different.” But this dude’s for real, you can hear it in the enthusiasm in his voice. God has touched his life, and he’s excited and wants to tell everybody about it.

It really gives me pause, because I realize that I don’t always share his enthusiasm. Am I complacent? I hope I’m not like the seed that fell among thorns. Sure, I try to live my life in a way that would be pleasing to the Lord (and routinely fail, of course), but I really don’t reflect on my salvation the way I should. I take it for granted, when I should be constantly thrilled and amazed and grateful and eager to tell others. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Are those just words to me, or do I comprehend them as a statement of fact and a demonstration of unconditional love? Forgive me, Jesus. And thank you.

I highly encourage anyone to listen to Phil’s message, I’ve listened to it like four times now.

Bob and Jamie's Adventures in Hong Kong, Day 0

Saturday, 8:00AM EDT:

There's a Balducci's in Terminal 7 of JFK! And, just like the one in Alexandria, the food is good but costs far more than it should. My English muffin breakfast sandwich (egg, cheese, and bacon) and Snapple green tea cost $10.

Saturday, 10:35AM EDT:

This plane (a Cathay Pacific Boeing 777) has regular American-style AC outlets at every seat! If only there were a little more legroom.

Saturday, 4:07PM EDT:

We just passed over Greenland(!) Who would've thought that Greenland, of all places, was on the way from New York to Hong Kong? Clearly, Mercator Projection maps have heavily skewed my perception of Earth geometry and geography.

I'm glad my children will grow up in a world with tools like Google Earth. Dead tree globes are, of course, also great (I especially like the ones with brown oceans... that old skool age of exploration style); I had one (with blue oceans... don't worry, Mom, I liked it ;-)). But with the spindle running through the poles holding it in place on the stand, it's still difficult to get a good feel for what Earth looks like from arbitrary orientations.

Actually, my first computer way back in 1995 (a Macintosh Performa 637CD - 68k power!) came with a 3D atlas CD-ROM from Electronic Arts (IIRC it was cleverly titled "EA 3D Atlas") which was very much a progenitor of Google Earth. In fact, it had some things GE doesn't have, like maps showing political borders or rainfall statistics rather than satellite imagery (it had that too, though not to the level where I could zoom in and see my back yard).

But its downfall for me was that it was slower than Google Earth on dialup - probably a consequence of running it on a computer with no FPU and only 1MB of VRAM. So, I never devoted the requisite hours to discovering that a Great Circle connecting New York to Hong Kong passes over Greenland.

My loss.

Saturday, 7:46PM EDT:

We're flying south over northern Russia now, pretty much due north of Chengdu, China. We came over a peninsula which sticks up into the Arctic Ocean. Noril'sk is to starboard, Jakutsk is (further) to port. Krasnojarsk is coming up on the right, and Chita will be on the left. This plane tracker in the TVs is pretty cool. 6:14 to go.

Sunday, 2:00PM HKT (Sunday, 2:00AM EDT):

We're there!

Monday, 12:00AM HKT (Sunday, 12:00PM EDT):

After getting our luggage and going through Customs, we went to one of the four Burger Kings in Hong Kong (three of which are in the airport). I had a teriyaki burger, which tasted really… different. It had too much mayonnaise, I thought.

Then we took the Airport Express (which is an amazingly silent-running train… they should teach the MBTA about track and train maintenance) to our hotel. After checking in and verifying that there were two beds in the room, we marveled at the view of the harbor as well as the gigantic neon advertisement for ING which is about 25 feet away from our window on the roof of the (shorter) building next door.

We left the hotel at about 5:45PM HKT and took the tram to Central and made our way to St. John's Cathedral (an Anglican church) where we participated in choral Evensong with The Cornell University Chorus and Glee Club. Their performance was very good, but Bob and I were both really tired and jet-lagged from our flight so we didn't really get a whole lot out of the service spiritually. Sorry, Jesus. The first hymn was "Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia", and it was just like the Mr. Bean sketch: as we were trying to find it in the hymnal, I didn't know the words so I just kind of hummed along (so did the guy next to me) until they got to the part where they sing the word "alleluia". It's not the same hymn that Rowan tries to sing, but it's very similar.

After the church service we took the ferry across the harbor to Kowloon. We walked along the waterfront and saw the Avenue of the Stars, which is Hong Kong's answer to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We found stars for Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, John Woo, and Chow Yun Fat (among others). Then we decided to stop at the ATM, but it was temporarily out of cash. :-( So, I don't have much money right now. Hopefully we'll find one tomorrow (today, as I post this) that's more accommodating. Anyway, then we came back to the hotel.

La Vita È Bella

My life is pretty good right now. In fact, it's very good. I've been happier recently than I had been in a long time.

There is a high likelihood that no one other than myself will ever read this, and I'm perfectly OK with that. I'm writing this for my own personal benefit, so that when I find myself feeling down, I can refer back to this and remember to praise God for being so faithful. (And thanks to the marvel of Teh Intarweb, I don't have to be at home to do the referring back.)

It's actually a very sobering realization, that as much as I try to be faithful to Him, God has been so much more faithful to me. I started thinking about it the other day after I got back from Hershey. On the way back, Lux was talking to me about how she wants to see the young people in her fellowship learn to put God first, rather than money; she doesn't want to see them become workaholics out of a desire to amass wealth at the expense of spending time with other Christians (and, when they get married, their families).

It made me think, because I spend more than 40 hours at work every week. How am I assigning my priorities? I came to the conclusion that I am not, in fact, spending a lot of time at work out of a desire to hoard money; I'm spending a lot of time at work because I love my job. I truly think that right now, I have the ideal job for me. I work with a bunch of great people, I get along with everybody, I'm learning a lot of new things, AND I GET TO PLAY WITH ROBOTS.

Three years ago, when I was getting ready to graduate, I had absolutely no idea what I would be doing after that Commencement ceremony. I had been accepted to the EECS Master of Engineering program, but I wasn't sure if I would be doing it; I didn't want to go any further into debt than I already was, so I prayed about it and decided that I would only go through with it if I found a paid position as a research assistant.

When classes ended, I still had nothing, but I kept praying about it, trusting that God would show me one way or the other what He wanted me to do. And then during the week or two between finals and Commencement, I found out about a position working for a professor in Course I, doing wireless network stuff. After an interview that I didn't personally think too highly of, I found out that the position was mine. Praise God! I get to defer the dreaded job search for another year.

The next year, as I was working on my thesis, my former roommate told me about a company that was looking to hire for work in DC which had contacted him. I sent them my résumé, and after an interview that I didn't personally think too highly of, I found out that I had a job. Praise God! I get to avoid the dreaded job search.

But then the original project I would have been working on for this company fell through, so I had a company but no job. Here I was with two degrees and no idea what I'd be doing with them. (At the time I was spending the summer back home in Florida.) So, I went back to praying about my future, and I started talking to a couple other companies, but then I got a call about a different project in DC, which sounded more interesting than the original one I'd signed up for: I would GET TO PLAY WITH ROBOTS. Could I wait a couple more months? Hmm… more time in Florida, now that's a tough decision. So I ended up taking the position and started working at the end of January 2006.

All seemed to be going okay until last October or November, when my boss told me that, due to several setbacks throughout the year, he intended to shut down his company and move away from DC. So now I had a job but no company. So, I went back to praying about my future again. I liked my work and wanted to stay with the project, but I needed to find somebody willing to give me paychecks for it. I ended up talking to the company of one of the other guys on the project, a smallish private engineering firm called The PTR Group, Inc. After an interview that I didn't personally think too highly of, I found out that I was PTR employee # 26. Praise God! I can go home for Christmas vacation and have a job when I get back. The entire process from first contact with the company to my first day as their employee took one week. I was the fastest hire in the history of the company.

Which brings us back to the present. I'm twenty-four years old, I have two degrees from MIT in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, I work at a well-thought-of private company which is small enough that I know everybody and everybody knows me, and I GET TO PLAY WITH ROBOTS.

My (civil servant) project supervisor (our resident robotics supergenius) is a terrific guy and we get along very well. We both have a computer science background, we both claim Mac OS X as our operating system of choice, and we have very similar senses of humor. Either of us can make a joke with Biblical allusions or Douglas Adams references and the other will get it. Professionally, I've developed a rapport with him such that I feel free to ask him about robotics stuff and he comes to me about programming. He's been assigning me increasingly important software responsibilities, and I think he's decided that I either know or can quickly figure out how to do pretty much anything he asks of me.

Even in this long exposition, I've glossed over so much about my work (and about how I wound up at MIT in the first place). In the past year and a half, I've learned about network programming, threads, 3D simulation, nonlinear optimization methods, trajectory planning, computer vision… and I GET TO PLAY WITH ROBOTS. I love my job.

On top of all of this, I'm more involved with my church than I've ever been before. I'm in a Bible study with some great guys and I've been doing sound engineering for youth group on Wednesdays and my own service on Sundays. Because of that, I met the people who do sound for the Hispanos en Cristo (Spanish language) service, and through them I've gotten involved with the young Latino group. I finally feel like I belong, and I hadn't been searching for any of it.

It had been years since I had the opportunity or necessity to practice Spanish in earnest, other than conversing with my grandmother, and I did vaguely regret not having a reason to use it, but I wasn't actively seeking to change the status quo. I'm reticent as it is in English; I certainly didn't think my Spanish was good enough to inflict upon a genuine Latin American (at least not one who wasn't a relative with a familial responsibility to tolerate my inability). But God saw fit to meet a need I wasn't asking about, and the end result has been that I've met a bunch of new friends and have been having fun with them. And practicing my Spanish.

When I stop and look back at all the little seemed-insignificant-at-the-time events (and the few big ones) which have led to where I am right now, it's as plain as day how God has been directing my path. Which is totally awesome, but also makes me think about how many times I know I've disappointed Him, even in the past year. It's not that He's been faithful to me because I've been faithful to Him; even while I was screwing up royally, He was engineering things to my benefit. Wow. What an amazing and merciful God He is.

And that makes me happy.

Mmm... The Land of Chocolate...

Ayer yo fui a Hersheypark en Hershey, Pennsylvania, con un grupo de Latinos (y algunos gringos) de mi iglesia. Hersheypark es un parque de diversiones como Busch Gardens, pero con chocolate en vez de cerveza. Hay montañas rusas, un carrusel, y también un parte que es parque acuático. Yo no fui por allí porque no había traído traje de baño, pero sí fui a las montañas rusas, y el carrusel era muy divertido. Lo del parque que no me gustaba era que la tierra no es llana; no sé cuantas millas caminamos, y me parecía que siempre caminabamos hacia arriba.
Hacía mucho calor por el medio del día, y pasé un rato en el aire acondicionado de Chocolate World, otro lugar al lado de Hersheypark donde se explica cómo se hace el chocolate. También tiene tienda muy grande donde se puede comprar una tableta de chocolate que pesa ¡cinco libras! En Chocolate World me refresqué con un gran banana split.
Después regresé al parque y pasamos por las montañas rusas hasta muy tarde cuando comimos y entonces miramos a los fuegos artificiales. Pasamos la noche en acampar al otro lado de la calle y hoy regresamos a Virginia.
Me disfruté mucho de ir allá con esa gente. Podía (o sea tenía que) practicar mi español y conocí a muchos nuevos amigos. Todos son amables y espero pasar tiempo con ellos otra vez.
Pero en este momento estoy muy cansado y me voy a dormir. Estoy feliz porque mañana es Memorial Day y no tengo que trabajar; puedo dormir y descansar por todo el día.