The power of doing your homework

Ok, this is going to be hard to describe without breaking confidentiality, but I think I can do it...

At work, I have a project for which I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking. After a lot of research and a few intense brainstorming sessions, all the potential ways to accomplish our objective can be broken into three general categories: passive systems, driven systems, and active systems. In my opinion, the driven systems are the most feasible, since they appear to respond better than passive systems but are far easier to implement (and probably also easier to obtain FDA clearance--but that's years off) than active systems.

After sifting through PubMed for days, reading pages upon pages of articles, I found a handful that were very promising. Eventually I realized that our objective had been all-but-accomplished using a device invented in the mid-1990's. I did all I could to track down this device, but the company that had made it no longer had any information about it on their website. Even Google turned up very little, just a few press releases and an article/advertisement from a trade journal about the FE software used during its design.

Next I searched for patents related to the device. I found the inventor, D.V., who had in fact been co-author on a few of the papers I had read. After Googling his name, I found an old alumni newsletter from MIT that had his email address. So I sent D.V. a message stating that I was interested in some of his work and had a few questions.

The very next day he replied, telling me that his company had sold the technology to another company, and he gave me the email address of R.K. to contact for more information. Interestingly, I had previously found the name of that company, but it appeared to be a dead-end: Google only had 3 pages of hits, most of which were sites that by chance had the company's name as a phrase in their text. Not even the Securities and Exchange Commission had anything about this company. But R.K. had a little bit of information spread around the web. He currently is founder and CEO of a medical device distribution company, and interestingly he holds a few exclusive licenses on certain technologies developed by NASA.

A day after emailing R.K., I received a phone call from him. I was pleasantly surprised at how willing he was to talk, and he was a friendly gentleman indeed. He seemed impressed that I had known about the NASA licenses and that he had previously (many years ago) dealt with St. Jude Medical through one of his other companies. I think the fact that I had really done my background check on him helped show that I was serious about this. We spoke for about 20 minutes, and I learned that he indeed exclusively controls the technology I am interested in, but he seems willing to "share" in a business sense. So from here, this is out of my hands and is a decision that management will make.

The moral of this story: know your shit, dig around on Google and elsewhere, and drop names. People will talk. People will listen. Knowledge is power.

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The Rock

My forearms are trembling as I type this. It feels as though my fingerprints have been scraped off my. I'm sweaty and dusty. And I had a great time after work today.

Earlier this week I took my shoes and a change of clothes and did a trail run before going home after work. Today I went to Stoney Point for some bouldering. This was my first time out on a real rock (as opposed to a gym), but I still didn't have shoes or chalk so I stuck largely with the "baby" boulders. It was grand just watching some of the people there, who make it look so easy, like they're part spider or part monkey or something. I now have something to aspire to, and I think I may have nailed my next outdoor gear purchase.

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Friends, friends, plugs for friends, and more friends

These last few days have been busy, fun-filled. Friday was a combined birthday celebration for Ro and two others from work, Mike and Roslyn. The evening began with wild sushi, sake bombs, and dancing waitstaff at Tokyo Delve's. Then off to the Greens, which is mini-golf in the sense that they took a real golf course including sand traps, water hazards, landscaping, natural grass rough, and contoured greens, and shrunk it down so every hole is 60-120 foot putts. Hung out with Ryan and his woman and a friend. Got home later than anticipated and went to bed.

Saturday David came to town from NYC, nominally for business but we did dinner and drinks and he stayed two nights by my place. Then hit Hard Rock where some friends of mine, Betas Lucas and Josh (and the other band members Peter and Derek), were playing a set and celebrating their demo release. Enter the first "shameless plug" in my post: their band, Warren Charles, sounded really good, and at their website you can get a few MP3s of theirs for free. After-party at Lucas' place was fun, and Dave and I met some new people and I caught up with some other Betas, namely Ho and Nic. Leading to plug #2, Nic's website, Heirloom Works, that describes the process he goes through while sculpting "heirloom pieces" out of wood.

Sunday Dave and I drove around so he could do some work, and then we went to snack and the beach at Santa Monica. Home and then the weekend exhaustion set in. Only for me to wake up super-early for work this morning.

Today evening I got a call from Jared, and so now I'm excited that two more friends (he and Marc) are coming to visit in a few weeks while they're road-tripping through Cali.

Yeah, my posts lately have been bad. But my life has been good. Who has time to sit in front of the computer and type away??

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Independence Weekend

Collection of memories from the long Independence Day weekend. Happy Birthday, America!

Ten thousand sixty-six

The initial plans for the weekend were a 2-night backpacking trip in the vicinity of Bridge To Nowhere, but G had an unfortunate biking accident (caution: graphic photo) and couldn't make it--though happily he is alright after some stiches. So, in lieu of packin' it, I got into a small group of folks from work who were climbing Mount Baldy in the Angeles National Forest. After taking the wrong Mountain Ave exit from the Interstate, I eventually found where I was supposed to go (another Mountain Ave 15 miles or so down) and drove the winding roads up to the ski lift terminal. When the whole party had arrived, we took the lift up to about 7800 feet to start our hike. A few things of interest:

• There was a group of probably two dozen septuagenarians starting the hike about the same time as us. I was really impressed that so many people of such advanced age were is such good shape to climb a mountain.
• It was a really pretty hike. Apparently Baldy is one of the highest in the Angeles NF at 10,066. At its peak, which was actually more like a bald rocky dome, there were quite a lot of hikers. But just a half mile further west and at only slightly lower elevation was West Baldy, where nobody sat. So part of our group made the trek over to feel a bit more isolated.
• Snow. July. California. 'Nuff said.

And of course, I've posted the requisite photos of the trip.

Ode to John

So after I'd unofficially called "timeout" in our recent game of phone tag, I had an experience Sunday that reminded me several times over of my friend. I decided to try to bike from home to work, doing it on a weekend as a trial to see how hot I'd be when I get to work, so that I'd know if it were feasible for me to ride on an actual work day. Turns out that long gradual hills may seem like nothing in a car going 50 mph but they're killers on a bike. I thought to myself that I hadn't busted my ass so hard on a bike since the summer prior when I rode a few times with John (on his "off-days") while he was training for the triathalon. Anyway, I elected to turn around before I made it all the way to work, since at that point I still knew I'd have enough in me to make it home.

It was something like fate that had me turn around when I did. And now I feel like I've got some good karma as well. There was a car pulled over on Sierra Highway, pretty obviously a flat. The guy was squatting near the front passenger tire, the girl (pregnant probably four or five months) standing next to him. Out of courtesy I smile and ask if everything is ok. She asks if I'd mind helping out, and of course I stop, half-joking that I was looking forward to taking a break anyway. Turns out the guy is pretty clueless about changing a tire, which is fine really because I wonder nowadays how many people really do anything for themselves anymore (I'm guilty too, of wishing I knew how to do a lot of things that I don't) so I got the spare on and directed them to a nearby service station. Funny, as I was almost done another biker passing by stopped to see if everything was alright, but not a single motorist even slowed down this whole time.

Finally, let's all congratulate John on his first July 4th as a citizen.

Fireworks

Geoff, Ro, and I grilled some food at my place then went over to G's new apartment to watch some fireworks. From the parkway we could see both the Valencia show and the Magic Mountain show. Neither were spectacular but they were both pretty good, and I really liked Valencia's finale. I really enjoy fireworks in general, but I realized that this time of year is also associated with fireflies, which were certainly lacking here in Cali.

Suprises

I surprised myself this morning by being able to wake up early and actually do something productive. The primary reason for getting up an hour earlier than usual was that I wanted to call K and wish her luck on her first day of clinical in TN (damn I miss her) but I figured that while I was up I may as well go for a run. So I knocked down about four miles in the riverbed before 6 a.m.

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