Longshot City

On the first of July, my Dad comes to Portland/Seattle for some visiting and a folk music festival, along with of course I’ll be coming.  After that, on Monday July 6th, I start my new job at Sea Bird Electronics and turn back into a working stiff.

So… um… crap, this is my chance to travel!

So Krakow Poland it is, ‘cuz why not?  It was that or Istanbul Turkey, and I basically flipped a coin.

So, anybody been there?  What should I make sure to see and do?

The short list:

• Auschwitz Death Camp (‘cuz those were my people, you know… the Germans I mean)
• perhaps a side-trip to Brno Czech, which has a pretty bitchin reputation
• The Polish Aviation and Engineering museums
• __________
• __________
• __________

Phew!

I’ll soon be the new “Sales/Application Engineer” at Sea Bird Electronics in Bellevue Washington.

They’re the world gold standard for oceanographic sensors of temperature and salinity, the two super-key parameters that seem to drive and be driven by Mysterious Macro Climatological Transport Phenomena, and thus super-important for trying to better understand just what the heck the global climate is doing, and what it will do.

(The ocean has 1000X the heat capacity of the atmosphere, so it has forever been “the elephant in the room” of meteorology.)

Given the supercomputers we have, they’re just needing the right data to be able to look ahead into rainfall predictions and recommend whether Indiana (or Oaxaca or Vietnam or Zambia, etc) should plant corn or beans next year, and why, and when.  Atmospheric weather starts in the ocean, and this stuff is life and death for a lot of people, so better to see what’s coming as far ahead as possible.

(To add efficiency one must also add complexity, and the science of oceanography is the complexity in question here.)

What’s interesting is that this company was the first to deliver these sensors pre-calibrated to an almost baroquely exacting standard.  I’ve seen their calibration facilties (10X more floor space than where they actually make the things), so I know.  It’s like James Bond in there… low-budget fluorescent-lit worn-out-carpet James Bond.

So by being a source for perfectly-calibrated sensors, new scales of partnerships between institutions and governments are being made possible.  Before, everybody bought cheap sensors and calibrated them in their own way, so no one trusted the other guy’s data.  When the “other guy’s data” is also the “other 80% of the data available”, well that really Balkanized the science in a bad way.

But we’re fixing that.  I’ll be helping these institutions figure out which sensors they need for various kinds of science they’re doing, and help them understand how to use it.

And another thing… I’m not coding software!  Woohoo!  Permanent vacation!

And it’s not weapons either!  Get out!

A tear-jerking vignette yesterday as I walked across a public park to a barbecue with my church buddies:

I had driven straight there from my second (!!!) job interview at the surprisingly interesting Sea Bird Electronics in Bellevue WA, and was thus regaled in my rarely-seen “interview costume” of beige J-Crew “fancy pants”, button-down green shirt and black shoes.

I walked past a rather-scruffy group of adults, plus an innocent blonde boy of about five, worse for wear and barbecuing themselves nearby.  One of the men called out:

“There’s your daddy, Zach, hahahaha!”

…and the boy looked up at me, and around at the chuckling adults, bewildered… and I slowly figured out what they were teasing him for (not knowing who his Dad is, and by extension never getting to know)… and wanted to cry.  Or better yet, punch somebody and adopt him.

Tell your heart that the

fear of suffering is worse

than the suffereing itself.

And no heart has ever

suffered when it goes

in search of its dream

– Paulo Cohelo