almostrational

I was Born in Los Angeles, California in 1960. I went to Birmingham High School, and completed my BFA in Music Composition; under Barry Schrader, Stephen Lucky Mosko, and Morton Subotnick, at CalArts; in 1982. My graduate studies were in Computer Science at Portland State University. The best part of my career so far was when I worked as the project manager for several television station infrastructure projects at Grass Valley Inc. where I was gainfully employed for 24 years before making the stupid decision to leave. Yet, from this act of irrationality I have learned a lesson that I now unconditionally live by, which is: "the grass may look greener on the other side of the fence but don't climb the fence unless you have great faith in the gardener". This leads me to another rule that I live by: "Mistakes are okay as long as you learn from then and don't repeat them!" I am a Past President of Beit Haverim / SMJC in West Linn Oregon. I also serve on the Boards for the CalArts Alumni Association, Friends of Chamber Music, and the Oregon Area Jewish Committee. A couple years ago I was elected a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery. I am also a member of the Society for Business Ethics and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Over the year's I've spent time as a member of IEEE, AES, SID, NSCA, and SMPTE. The things I know the most about are Video Wall technology, Image Processing, Media Asset Management, Video Server Technology, Enterprise-wide video routing and facility control systems for broadcast facilities, Newsroom Automation, Kilnformed glass techniques, 20th century music composition and theory, art and music history, Austrian economics and business cycle theory, Electric power control rooms, and NERC compliance. My personal mission statement focuses on these core values: Compassion, unconditional love for others, self-reliance and personal responsibility, ambition, being proactive, open-mindedness to people with religious and philosophical views that differ from mine, and absolute unconditional integrity at all cost. I tend to side with my intellectual mentor, Robert Nozick, in the notion that after the holocaust, the human race has lost its claim to worthiness. And I tend to agree with Lou Reed who, in "Magic and Loss" tells us that" "...if the building's burning move towards that door but don't put the flames out. There's a bit of magic in everything and then some loss to even things out." All that really means is that I believe that we'll never remove all the suffering there is in the world. But like the Talmud of Judaism teaches: "You need not complete the task but neither can you refrain from pursuing it". So, I might not always be optimistic but that does not stop me from being 1000% dedicated to my core values. The people I most admire are Robert Nozick, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Benoit Mandelbrot, Ludwig von Mises, Nassim Taleb, Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Anne Sexton, John Lilly, Gregory Bateson, Douglas Hofstadter, and John Locke. My philosophy of life can be seen in some of my favorite quotations: "After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked — as I am surprisingly often — why I bother to get up in the mornings." — Richard Dawkins "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P J O'Rourke "I felt as if my legs were doing the praying" - Abraham Joshua Heschel (after marching in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr.) "Go, go, go said the bird. Humankind can not bear very much reality" - T.S. Elliot (from Burnt Norton) "It is a privilege to be part of the ongoing realm of existing things and processes... we identify with the totality and, in the calmness this brings, feel solidarity with all of our comrades in existing" -- Robert Nozick (1989) "They say that heaven is like TV. A perfect little world that doesn't really need you." - Laurie Anderson "Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice." - Ayn Rand