I know it's been like six months since my last post.  No excuses. ;)

First things first -- we moved to Staunton, Virginia in October and have been there since.  But next week (March 20) we are moving to a much different locale, namely Portland, Oregon!

We've had fun in Staunton but it lacks some key ingredients that I've lately decided are required.  That's the main reason that we are heading to Portland, because there's an amazing educational opportunity out there for me.

Ever since I was a kid I have been fascinated by flight.  From about the age of nine I dreamed of becoming a pilot.  However, because I had less-than-perfect eyesight as a child I became discouraged.  I couldn't fly for the military (as this was before the days of LASIK), nor could I figure out a way to pay for the uber-expensive civilian flight training.  So I put my dream on the back burner and became a software engineer instead.  If you go back in time a few years on this blog you can read all about my many ups and downs in the software world.  Nowadays -- with the exception of my modest involvement with Ninut -- I'm basically retired from the software grind.

So, long story short ... I now have the time, freedom, and financial means to resurrect my dream of becoming a pilot.  Specifically, I want to become a professional helicopter pilot.  The "financial means" portion will be substantially aided by the fact that this program in Portland allows veterans to use GI Bill benefits to pay for training (including flight training).  So instead of having to come up with $100,000 I only need to swing like 15-20K ... and that's downright doable! :-)

The birds and instructors of Hillsboro Aviation

I will start class on April 1, but initially I'm only going to take 4 hours per week (at least until the end of June).  At that time I will start a full-time schedule and get cracking towards earning an Associate of Applied Science degree in aviation.  More importantly, I'll be going after the following FAA part 141 certifications:

• Private Pilot
• Instrument Rating
• Commercial Pilot
• Commercial Flight Instructor

I will be earning the AAS from Portland Community College (PCC), but the bulk of the training will actually take place at Hillsboro Aviation.  These two institutions work together to enable the GI Bill deal that I mentioned above, and this can cover up to 100% of tuition, flight training, and indeed the whole shebang!  With the "Post 9/11" GI Bill, I will also get a (decent) monthly housing allowance and an annual stipend for books.  Not many flight schools in the U.S. have this kind of arrangement, at least not in places that Rebekah and I would be comfortable living for a couple of years.  The folks at PCC & Hillsboro have figured out a way to package it such that -- at least as far as the VA is concerned -- it looks like a regular collegiate degree rather than vocational/flight training. :-)

I'm currently working with the Veterans Administration bureaucracy to get the correct level of education benefits.  If you have less than 36 months of active duty time then they do not cover 100%.  So far they have approved me for 60%, but I should actually be getting 80% (and possibly 90%, depending on whether they count my initial entry training or not).  Note that initial entry training (IET) is the combination of basic training and advanced individual training (AIT).  Anyway, I have 27.9 months without IET and 30.6 months of active duty time including IET.  >24 months = 80% covered and >30 months = 90% covered.  Obviously the 90% would be the best outcome, but I'll be happy with 80% if that's how it eventually shakes out.

So that's my big news.  There's exciting stuff going on with Rebekah, too.  At the end of April she's going to Taos, New Mexico to attend the Earthship Academy!  Basically she's going to learn how to build a renewable, self-sustaining home from the ground up.  She'll be in Taos for 6 weeks and then she will have another 6 weeks of training somewhere else (self-directed study).  It's quite possible that this latter portion may be in an exotic locale, as the Earthship folks have builds all over the world!

One of the many cool Earthship designs

The overarching plan is that we're going to build an Earthship (obviously spearheaded by Bekah) while I work as a pilot to fund the build.  My pilot income will also enable us to more easily afford the perfect patch of real estate.  We've already looked at dozens of properties in several states, but we still haven't found the ideal match.  This new schooling strategy will give us 2-3 more years to find the best place.

It will take 2.5 - 3 years to qualify for a higher-paying helicopter pilot gig, because most require at least 1000 hours of flight time.  During the first (nearly) 2 years that I'll be in the PCC / Hillsboro program I will rack up a little over 200 flight hours.  Then I'll need to land a job as a flight instructor and work toward building the remaining 800+ hours.  Everything I've heard so far about this flight instructor "transition phase" makes it sound quite rewarding, especially if you like to teach (which I do).  Finally, once I've attained sufficient cockpit time, many exciting career possibilities will open up -- though it's still too early to determine exactly what type of position will be the ideal match for me.

Okay that's probably enough babbling for now!  I'll post again once we get settled in Portland.   :-)

Traveling

So Rebekah and I have been cruising around the past few months, looking for the "perfect" place to settle.  So far we've mainly concentrated our efforts in AL (near Birmingham) and the FL Panhandle.  Today we're in Monticello, FL (near Tallahassee), but we're about ready to move on tomorrow.  After a planned brief stop in Lincoln, AL, we will likely be heading up to VA.  Then I think we might head out to Northern CA again.

In Paymesh news, in early September we were out in San Francisco for TechCrunch Disrupt 2012.  We had fun, talked to something like 1000 people, and met some valuable contacts.  We're still processing that adventure and following up with various folks that might want to work with us.  Hopefully in the coming weeks and months I'll have some big news to share here related to all of that. ;)

Otherwise, everyone is fine.  Rebekah and I are having fun with our traveling, but frankly getting a little road-weary and tired of crashing with friends and family and staying at hotels.  The cats are also kind of "over it" and would like to settle down somewhere (at least that's what they tell me).  :-)

With this state of flux I haven't done anything lately with writing or my charity work for Shinzen Young.  That's another reason that I'd like to get settled somewhere PDQ -- so I can get caught up on the commitments I made to others (and myself) before we left Austin.

But don't get me wrong ... things are great and I can't really complain.  We have some pictures from recent adventures, some of which you can see on my Facebook page or on the Ninut Facebook page.  If you don't use Facebook you will have to wait for me to upload them here, I guess.  Sorry about that!  :-P

I guess that's it for now.  Be well out there, and I'll write more soon.

Moving

Wow has it really been 3 months since I last posted here?  Sorry about that, (once) faithful readers, but I have no satisfactory excuse.  The reason for this post is to let y'all know that we are moving this week.  We are leaving the "city life" of Austin for the "country life" of rural Alabama or the Florida panhandle.

The reason I'm not sure of our exact final destination is that we haven't found the right property yet.  We want to buy a house with some acreage in one of these areas and start learning cool stuff like gardening and hunting, and generally just want to learn to be more self-sufficient.  To facilitate all of that we need to move closer to our target area, and we will be staying with family and friends and renting until we find our perfect country dream house.

Beyond that awesome news, here's what else I've been up to lately...


1. Work

We are making significant progress on Paymesh.  In addition to completing our first mobile (iOS) prototype, we've also improved the backend functionality quite a lot, focusing lately on security and infrastructure related to the epic title "real money".  For this version we are supporting account I/O with credit cards and ACH (e.g. bank accounts).

We also recently recorded some educational videos about Paymesh.  Unfortunately we haven't had much time to edit and publish them yet.  To give you a flavor, here's one I did from mid-June:

Also related to professional efforts, Ninut has applied for some software competitions and funding entities.  The main one is TechCrunch Disrupt (San Francisco) 2012.  We also applied for Mission: Small Business and Microsoft BizSpark.  We're seriously considering applying for Bing Fund as well.  And we had our first news story / product review about Paymesh by TheIndustry.


2. Meditation

Rebekah and I attended a Vipassanna retreat in Virginia at the beginning of June.  It was amazing!  This was our first residential retreat, and it has motivated us to get much more serious about our daily practice.  I sit for at least an hour every day, and usually more like 2-3.  Here are some stats for the past little while:

June: 71.5 hours, average 2.38 hours per day.
July: 28.5 hours (so far), average 1.36 hours per day.

Naturally part of the reason for the high numbers in June was because of the 7-day retreat, in which we meditated 4 hours per day (sometimes more).  I am definitely going to try to maintain this level of intensity because I don't want to backslide on the progress made in improving my concentration power, sensory clarity, and gentle equanimity.  :-)


3. Charity

I also began donating time to help Shinzen Young's organization to develop his meditation expert system software.  I am so happy that I am qualified to help them out, namely by writing code and otherwise helping them to implement their technology stack.  It's an exciting opportunity to help Shinzen expand and deepen his student-base and providing that population with a great coaching tool.  Of course he has already done amazing work spreading his teachings the traditional way (books, lectures, retreats) as well as his innovative Home Practice Program (telephone-based retreats).  The computer-based version that I am helping them finish should take it to a whole new level!

Okay I think that's it for now.  Once we get settled in the new digs I will write about our journey and probably upload some photos related to the move and/or new house.

April Fools

So our little world played sort of an April Fool's joke on Rebekah and me last night -- or maybe we were inadvertently playing the fools ourselves.

It was a beautiful evening, and around 7 p.m. we decided to go out for a walk in a neighborhood nearby.  Across the street from our place is a fairly large Apple Computer campus, as well as other businesses and several apartment complexes.  We were walking near all of that and spied a trail next to a building that I hadn't seen before.  In the spirit of adventure we decided to take it.

This led into a woodsy area with many additional trails.  Most of these were closer to deer trails than the sculpted park variety, but that was fine with us.  Again, we were having an adventure.  Maybe an hour later we finally emerged from this amazingly beautiful forest into another residential neighborhood.

Rebekah and I looked at each other and said, "Where the hell are we?!?"  Not only was it a neighborhood that we'd never seen, but there didn't even seem to be any streets that we'd even heard of.  "We're not in Kansas anymore." :)  A little ways along we saw an old fellow in his front yard and stopped to get our bearings from him.

I said, "We were just walking on those amazing trails over there and we got a little disoriented.  Can you point us toward Parmer Lane or Riata Trace Circle?"  He looked at us like he thought we might be on drugs or something and scratched his head.

"Parmer?  Are you sure that's where you want to go?  That's really far from here," he said.

Rebekah had spied the top of a large office building beyond some trees in the distance a few minutes earlier.  She thought it might be a Schwab office building that she'd seen before.  If so, she knew where that was so she asked, "Is Research Boulevard near here?"

Now the old guy seemed a little more comfy with these weird kids on his sidewalk.  "Sure," he said, pointing, "just take that road until you hit Duval and turn right, then you'll run into Research."

So we started walking, and walking, oh, and walking some more.  It turns out that we were miles from our place, like three or four.  But, at least we knew where we were now.  Another hour or so later and we finally stumbled back home.

Now you might think that this would cause some irritation or maybe frustration, but it only caused us to feel a little exhausted.  We planned for a casual walk and ended up with an adventure and quite a workout, but it was actually really fun.

It gave me an opportunity to "become friendly with the present moment," as Eckhart Tolle likes to say.  When you do that, so called "problems" just seem to melt away. :)

March Madness

Hello!  I guess I've been slacking on the blog front lately.  I've been pretty busy.

Since the last post I had a trip to Florida and another trip to New York.  I've been helping out a few companies with a variety of tech issues here and there.

For the most part I've been working on my main effort, the [not very] secret project at Ninut!  The backend for MVP 0.2 is mostly done, and now we're just wiring up the completed UI with the API.  We ended up with several attractive user designs and are now entering the final stretch for this first closed-beta.  I'm hoping that we will be able to go live with it in just a couple of weeks!  BTW Michel also ordered beautiful business cards and tee shirts.  Here's a pic of the latter (with a shameless plug for our new product)...

Michel modeling our new Tee Shirts ... Nice!

Otherwise Rebekah and I have been sticking to our meditation practice and learning more concepts to aid us in our spiritual journey.  I'm up to an hour a day of formal sitting in mindfulness (so I'm almost caught up to Rebekah ... not that we're keeping score). :-P

For the past week or two we've been watching Oprah's A New Earth series with Eckhart Tolle.  Most of the concepts are similar to what we already learned in The Science of Enlightenment, but there are a lot of good Q&A's on the Oprah series and we really like how Tolle gives lots of practical advice for just about every situation you can imagine!

Okay, I think that's it for now.  Namaste. :)

Right Hemisphere

Wow, this is one of the most amazing talks I have ever witnessed:

.

Absolutely amazing!

Interestingly, my last post on silence has some relationship to this.  I suspect that the mindfulness practice that Rebekah and I are trying to cultivate is all about redressing the imbalance between hemispheres.

There's a part of each of us, an area in the brain, which says, "I am" -- that represents our ego.  This part lives in our left hemisphere.  The TED talk above is about a brain scientist who had a massive stroke.  The part of her brain that was damaged included this area of ego.  Her insights into consciousness and life in general as a result of this experience are startling and inspiring.

Silence

Back to work.  I really needed that break last week, but it's great to be back in the saddle, so to speak.

One thing that Rebekah and I have been trying to incorporate into our lives over the past year or so is meditation.  Actually, she's been working at it longer and more effectively than I have.  The thing that we're really trying to do is to develop and maintain a mindfulness practice, but it's quite difficult.  If you've never tried it then you probably don't believe that it could be terribly hard.  I mean, what do you do ... you just sit there and do nothing, right?  But what you're really trying to do is to STOP.  To stop doing or thinking anything and instead just start being.

Try this.  Set aside 5 or 10 minutes when you are alone, with nothing to do and nowhere to go.  Be sure to silence your cell phone and prevent any other kind of interruption.  In the beginning, try to avoid noises.  Maybe put in earplugs and sit in a dark room.  Be sure to set an alarm or something so that you know when the duration has elapsed.  Then just sit in a comfortable chair and close your eyes.  Finally, for that 5 or 10 minutes, try not to think.  You will quickly discover that this is almost impossible.  I'll give you a tip that will help.  It really helps to focus on something -- like feeling your breathing -- but regardless the problem is that your mind will not shut up and will keep clamoring to speak and be heard.

If you repeat this simple exercise say 5 days a week for an entire month, you might be rewarded with a few brief respites, maybe lasting a handful of seconds.  If you are lucky enough to achieve this brief state of silence, you will be startled by what happens.  I won't spoil the surprise, but I will tell you that this has a profoundly positive effect on your mood and health.

Think of it like this:  It's as if you've been running a marathon in your mind for your entire life, but you didn't even realize that you were running. So only by trying to stop, and then practicing this stopping diligently until you actually succeed, will you then be able to step out of the race for a few seconds and catch your breath.  It's amazing what you start to notice once you catch your breath.

Anyway, there's a great audio series about all of this that I think I may have mentioned before on this blog.  It's called The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young.  If you're a left-brain kind of person like me, this series will appeal to you and explain it all far better than I can.  If you have trouble with mood regulation and stress management like I do, then I cannot recommend it enough.  It may even save your life ... remember that stress kills.  Even if your particular stress picture doesn't kill you, it can have deleterious effects on your health and happiness.

Alright I'll get off my meditation soapbox now.  And don't fret, this is not about religion or me trying to get you to join a cult or something.  Notice that a key word in the series that I referenced above is science, after all.

Peace! :-)

A Week of Rest

I'm taking a week off from my various work (eCampusTutors and Ninut).  For the former, I haven't really started yet, so no big change.  For the latter, I found myself getting needlessly stressed out and so was becoming unproductive.  I don't know, maybe it's just residual stress from all those years of "death marches", but whatever the cause the break is doing wonders.

Anyway I've been doing some more reading.  I took a break from the Malazan series after book three to read George R.R. Martin's amazing Fevre Dream.  Now I'm heading back to Malazan with House of Chains.  This series is really something -- truly an original mythos, a fantasy series that feels completely different from anything I've ever read.  It seems a lot of fantasy feels like Lord of the Rings, but Steven Erickson really did something unique with the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.  Even though it's ten books long, I don't want it to end (thus the break for Fevre Dream).  I'm already on book four, so I've got to pace myself. ;)

You know, I might write an in-depth review of the Malazan books here on this blog, since they have such a complex and rich tapestry to explore.  We'll see.  Oh and on the non-fiction front I may also check out some Timothy Ferris books recommended by Michel.

One last thing.  The Facebook S1 filing was big news in the land of tech last week.  One of the most interesting articles that I've seen related to it is this one, by Jolie O'Dell of VentureBeat.  It's an exploration of whether Facebook truly embodies 'The Hacker Way', from the perspective of a variety of hackers out there.  It's a good read, so check it out!

Update-

So just a few quick updates...

• The Ninut team is doing great.  Our secret project has progressed quite a bit in the past couple of weeks.  We're still looking for a designer, but found a great addition for the facilitator role who will be starting soon.  

• The JM thing didn't work out, but I landed a CTO gig with an Austin startup called eCampusTutors.  I tend to think these things happen for a reason, so I'm feeling really good about the recent development on the "day job" front.  I'll be starting in a few weeks.  Putting my tech skills to work helping kids is something that I'm jazzed-up about! :-)

• In other news, I bought a Kindle Fire, which should arrive on my doorstep tomorrow or so.  Rebekah is keeping busy and doing fine.  The cats are as ornery as ever.  Austin is surprisingly pretty in the winter (it has been raining a lot -- so even thought it's colder, everything is green and beautiful).  

• Oh, and I've read half a dozen books since my last post.  Rework by DHH, the Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins, and the first two books of the Malazan Book of the Fallen decalogy. All great! 

• One last thing, I got an invitation to the closed beta of Path of Exile a while back, but just started playing in earnest.  Awesome game!  If you like the Diablo franchise, you will love PoE ... and it's free!  I think the open beta starts soon, so check it out. :)

Vanity Domain

I broke down and bought my domain, http://www.joewurzburger.com (which currently just points to this blog).  I've set a low-priority task to aggregate my various online profiles/connections into a single site, both for my own convenience and that of anyone who might like to learn more about me.  I am thinking this will have all of my social media connections, photos, CV, blogs (or links to blogs), and whatever else makes sense.

I'm still waiting for a DNS zone update so that http://joewurzburger.com redirects to  http://www.joewurzburger.com.  As of this moment (2012.01.16 1515 CST) it's still blowing up, but I'm thinking it just hasn't propagated yet.

Anyway aside from a vanity domain and back-burner tasks, for the past couple of weeks I have been keeping busy.  I had an in-person interview at JM Family Enterprises last week.  I thought the nearly 4 hours of talks went quite well, but now it's a week later and I have yet to receive a shiny new offer.  I suspect that one of the half dozen folks that I spoke with must have given me a thumbs-down.  I bet I know who it was, too.  Drat!

Oh well, frankly it's out of my hands now, so I'm not going to fret about it.  And speaking of work gigs, I got an e-mail from a former colleague asking me to do some consulting work for him this morning.  While intrigued, I responded with a request for more info.  Once I find out what he has in mind, I'll see if it makes sense to proceed.  While I don't mind helping him out, I don't want to get mired down in unnecessary headaches.

In more pressing news, the Ninut MVP project is coming along nicely.  While I was in Fort Lauderdale last week we got together to reset our timeline and solidify some requirements.  Now we're doing weekly milestones, the first of which occurred last night.  We didn't quite finish everything that we had planned, but it was close.  Hopefully we will be fully back on track by tonight so that we can identify the highest priority items for next Sunday's milestone.  The near term master plan is for us to begin user data collection with the MVP sometime in early-to-mid February, in the form of a closed (invitation only) demo (or possibly a series of demos).  Aside from the engineering work there are several related tasks that Michel is dealing with (hiring, video production, and some biz stuff).

Sometimes I think that we should just breakdown and get seed funding, so that all of us could devote ourselves to Ninut 24/7.  That's just my impatience talking, though.  At the outset we decided to be judicious and see if our first invention gets some traction before everyone quits their "day jobs."  If traction occurs then we will probably be self-sustaining rather quickly, so there's good reason not to muddy the water just yet with angels or VCs.  On the other hand, the right group of angel investors could catapult interest and awareness about the mysterious gadget and also help us to find talent and form strategic partnerships more easily.  Hmm, I'm vacillating -- it's kind of a catch-22. :)

So other than work and more work, I've been reading a lot lately (hardly unusual).  Over the past week I plowed through a couple of William Gibson novels that I hadn't read before, including the awesome All Tomorrow's Parties.  I've been on a cyberpunk kick in recent months. :)  Right now I'm about halfway through James Gleick's amazing biography of Richard Feynman called Genius.  I've also been trying to track down some high quality video lectures by Feynman, and just got an interesting line on them that I hope will pan out.

Okay, that's probably enough babbling for now.  Laters!