Dean's World

I do computer systems engineering for a major telecom company. Unfortunately in the computer field, everyone who resets passwords or reboots a server thinks they're a systems engineer because of a badly named certification. But I do real big E engineering: designing systems that meet a specific business goal, writing specifications, design, and implementation plans. Doing the software development and COTS installations in development, then QA environments. Writing documentation so that the system admins can easily do the installation of the entire thing in a production environment and support it. We hand it off to them and move on to the next business project.

I’m an electrical engineer, specializing in signal integrity, which is basically electromagnetics at its heart. I currently manage a product development and support team of 18 electrical and mechanical engineers. I’ve got 12+ Patents, and have designed many billion $ worth of product over the years, mostly electronic components and subsystems.

The main reason I try to remain quasi-anonymous on the web is actually related to my job. I have an easily identifiable name, and I am well known in my industry. I write a lot of technical papers and articles, and I am involved in some standards work. So people know me all around the world.

A few years back, I was involved in negotiations with a large customer over a potential $40-50 million contract. An unscrupulous purchasing manager at the customer googled my name, found a bunch of my political rantings, and did not like them. He told me the next day that he couldn’t do business with a person like me, and my company did not get the contract.

After that, I started going by my old DJ name from my college days, Jaymaster Jams, eventually dropping the Jams part. Yes, I have been a stereotypical geek for a long time!

Interesting backgrounds Zach, Jay (to me personally, especially yours Zach and Jay), Aziz, Chad, and DM.

This is a really good idea Aziz, one of the best on this blog as far as I'm concerned, though I don't think this should be limited merely to technical scientific capabilities, but rather everyone should be encouraged to say something about their background (as much as they are comfortable with, internet security concerns considered), regardless of what that background consists of. So I want to expand what Martin was saying and hinting at.

The reason I think this is that I think having an idea of the backgrounds of some, if not all of these people, might encourage some exchange of pragmatic and practical value, rather than just mere curiosity or interest (if I'm divining your true intent correctly). For instance say I am involved in a project, some research, a venture, etc. then it might help to have some idea of what other people around here are capable of in case they wanted to work with me on my projects, or I with them on their projects. This might even lead to profitable networking opportunities, or ventures. But if it is limited to merely scientific endeavors, not to mention specifically technically scientific backgrounds, then that will limit possible expertise and capabilities, not to mention the range of ventures possible, regardless of whether those ventures are profitable or personal.

So I'm all for this, but in my opinion people should put forth any expertise (though I'm not big on "experts") on any aspect of their background so that they can exploit those capabilities, and maybe help others exploit their capabilities. In business, especially international brokering projects, I learned early on the true value of networking and exploiting a full range of diverse talent. Regardless of the discipline(s) involved.

At the end of this entry I plan also to list a grouping of projects in which I am personally involved in the case anyone wishes to asset me with some of these projects, or in the case you have a similar project on which you are working and would like help, etc. If it involves a venture which you think might be profitable then we can exchange non-disclosure agreements and other documentation assuming you want to go that far. Regardless I am not the kinda guy who says to anyone, you have to have a PhD or be an "expert" to have a good idea worth pursuing. Indeed it has been my personal experience that people who are too intellectual rarely know how to exploit their own talents for best use, and therefore I am a big fan of the talented amateur. You can learn a lot from such a person (the dedicated and enthusiastic amateur) and in many cases such a person is far more profitable and valuable to his fellow man than the academic expert or the intellectual, and often the intellectual does very well to make contacts with such people, as they know how to exploit the talents of the intellectual and academic (this is not to say the intelligent are useless, just that many times they don't know much about how to make best use of their talents, that is to say the academic remains forever academic, instead of becoming practically useful). So as far as I'm concerned, everybody is welcome who has any kind of background and interest, and who has anything of interest to contribute.

That being said I'm gonna now disclose certain things about my own background, including some about my academic and personal and professional backgrounds. Please do not consider me an expert on anything, I just have a wide range of interests, and I don't care to be an expert anyways.

I attended four colleges and universities. I studied philosophy and religion, have undertaken preliminary studies to become a priest (with an interest in being a secular priest primarily). I also studied physics, chemistry, psychology, biology, and genetics. For a brief period (about two years) I studied literature (mainly English and Ancient), and journalism. As for foreign languages I studied Greek, Latin, German, a little Italian. Right now I am studying ancient Hebrew, and trying to better master street Spanish, for investigative purposes. I'm thinking seriously about studying Arabic to confirm translations.

I have worked in the past, or do work now, as a psychologist, non-fiction writer - freelance (I have been a writer since a teen when I used to help edit some papers), freelance journalist, in the field of criminology and criminalistics - but most of my work in that respect has been detective and field oriented, as an analyst, and in communications, among other things. I have been a detective, and a private investigator. I have had my own business in the past which involved business brokerage, contacts networks (national and international), and consulting. Occasionally I weir business security or anti corporate espionage assignments. For a brief time I lived as a monk. My background concerning my involvement the military, which was and still is non-standard, was mostly in the fields of Civil Defense, and Security, and Intel.

Right now I earn my living as a non-fiction writer (mainly tehycnical and scientific work and papers), inventor, sometime consultant (depending on the project), agent (again, depending on the project), and business investigator and analyst. I am attempting right now to become a published fiction writer, something everyone tells me I should do, but up until recently have had little interest in. But that's changing and so I'm gonna go ahead and try it. Eventually I plan to publish the music I compose and some of my artwork too. But first things first.

My personal interests, or the fields in which I experiment, do analytical work, or work by contract include psychology, genetics, chemistry, physics, criminology/criminalities, detetective work, invention, the military, analysis, Intel, and weapons development. I also am deeply personally interested in personality theory, comparative religion (I studied Raja Yoga for years under a real yogin), Christology, the Kabalah, Sufism, and mystical and metaphysical religion. I am an amateur industrial archaeologist, and sometimes go on archeological expeditions. I love art, and by that I mean I love painting and sketching, at which I'm told I'm pretty good, but don't have the time to pursue it full time. I like taking photographs and making photographic studies and that probably goes back to my earliest scientific experiments, as record keeping, and to my early investigative work. I Vad (urban exploration) for pleasure and sometimes make films of or take photographs of both my archeological expeditions or my Vadding expeditions. I do a lot of personal, professional, and scientific research and conduct personal experiments in fields ranging from prayer and mediation, to genetics and breeding to cryptology/cryptographic/steganography to chemistry. I also am involved in, or undertake Mission (Christian) Projects.


Some of the Personal Projects with which I am Involved:


Anticipation of Criminal Activity - developing good ways to anticipate and thwart criminal and terrorist activities. By this I mean true anticipation and true thwarting.

Breeding and Biological Parallel Intelligence - the breeding of more intelligent animals with parallel (not identical) intelligence (to man) and the creation of beneficial chimeras through genetic manipulation.

Cancer - the taming and domestication of cancer and transforming it into a beneficial cell type.

NLWD - the development of truly effective and efficient non-lethal and less than lethal weapon's systems.

CADOS and HUMAN- the development of combined (and probably at least partially biological) analogical and digital Operating Systems, and AI.

EE- Environmental encoding and encryption.

GT - the development of ever more complex and useful God Technology.

General Invention - everything from consumer projects of immediate and practical benefit, to new energy sources, to more complex inventions for use by the general consumer, the military, and the government.

Renaissance Education - development of both a better general and individual education system and the elimination of the current system of public education.

Encryption and Steganographic projects.

PT and CA - the development of more accurate and useful personality theories and systems for character analysis, covering the abnormal and advanced individual to the subnormal and criminal personality type, and the full range of normative personality expression(s) between those two poles.

Research and experimentation on Mediation, Contemplation, Prayer and transcendent psychological states.

Mnemonics and the development of superior techniques for Mental Enhancement, Problem solving, Innovation, Creativity, and Genius.

Holoicon - the development of holographic Icons and virtual reality scenarios involving famous religious scenes and events.

TSS - advanced gaming and gaming theory, including virtual reality, as related to practical and useful Skills simulations and Simulated Training.

Sainthood - the training of and development of Saintly capabilities.



This isn't really my thread, and so I have no real or absolute right to expand the parameters of what Aziz asked, but I suspect that what I have described is really a modification of his actual intent that he might approve, and so I encourage anyone with any useful background information and/or current projects of interest to post. If he disapproves of the expansion of the parameters of his post then he can just tell me to kiss off, and never mind. Nevertheless if someone has an interest in projects such as I've outlined, or juts has an idea which strikes them as useful, then just let me know.

Well, I'm off to a party this evening and so I'll be looking in on this later to see what others have posted about themselves.

I'm a nuclear engineer, currently managing a nuclear research reactor. I have been a reactor operator in the USN and at a commercial nuclear power plant, and an engineer and ES&H manager at a large nuclear research reactor.

The reactor provides tools for education amd training in nuclear engineering/operations, testing and processing with radiation, neutron imaging, and trace element analysis. The latter three items are not particulalry nuclear; supporting experimental programs across a wide variety of disciplines ends up providing a lot of information in a lot of areas with very little depth, kind of "jack of all trades, master of none."

Aziz,

I don't do any terahertz, no, although I have friends who do! it's not tomography, more point sampling spectroscopy of microscopic samples, reading the Raman and Mie signiatures from individual cells or organelles. Though you could array many point samples in a matrix to get a hyperspectral image.

one of my groupmates is actually working on near-infrared absorption spectroscopy, trying to increase the reliability of the signals to push the technique as a competitor to fMRI for cerberal hemodynamic monitoring. do you do much fMRI work or are you mostly involved with the structural imaging aspects?

Wow, there's some real talent here! I'm just a lowly chemist. I analyze pharmaceuticals and quack medicines for the Feds.
Jan

Aziz,

I mostly work with high speed data, basically making sure it gets from point “A” to point “B” in a useable form. I’m working from DC to 50 GHz or so, dealing with issues like crosstalk, impedance mismatch, loss, &EMI. I do lots of simulations with 3D field solvers (Maxwell’s equations) and circuit simulators like SPICE, and a ton of lab testing.

In addition to design and development work, my guys also characterize our components, and create and validate models for our customers to use in their systems. We also do some simulation work for customers.

Typical customers would be Cisco, Apple, SUN etc. Telecom, computing, defense, medical test, instrumentation, etc. Basically anyone who moves around high speed data, or noise sensitive signals. We've got more than 15,000 active customers.

We actually make a semi-custom assembly that goes into an MRI machine (manufacturer name starts with a “G” and ends with an “E”), and its pretty typical of the kind of stuff I get involved with.

A couple of my guys worked pretty closely with their design engineers. I’m not sure exactly where it goes in their system. It’s a coaxial cable assembly, with around 60 individual cables with some special connectors on each end. It is constructed with zero ferromagnetic materials. DC to 4 GHz bandwidth. Crosstalk and shielding specs were unusually tight.

The design work was pretty straight forward. But the manufacturing is a bit tricky. But the most challenging aspect of the project was that we had to develop electrical models for it that were about an order of magnitude more precise than a typical model. It took about 3 months to create the model and validate it to their engineer’s standards.

The only reason we got that business was because we were willing to develop the model for them. I think they buy around $3-4 million worth a year, and we’re being designed in to the next generation system too. So it was worth the effort.

On a basic level, I understand how an MRI works, and I can understand how it could be a major headache moving signals around in such an environment. But in the end, I just got involved in that one little aspect of the system.

I’m working from DC to 50 GHz or so, dealing with issues like crosstalk, impedance mismatch, loss, &EMI.

Basically anyone who moves around high speed data, or noise sensitive signals.

It is constructed with zero ferromagnetic materials. DC to 4 GHz bandwidth. Crosstalk and shielding specs were unusually tight.

I assume you're talking about passing data through an enclosed or secured transmission medium, so are you hinting at ambient signal interference in the form of disruptive noise (environmental signal distortion penetrating your transmission medium) or are you talking about general electromagnetic field resonance disruption? Or do you mean something else. Like at point of origination?

You know I worked on a non-lethal weapon idea once which used sub-sonic vibrations to achieve effect but the thought occurred to me that insulating counter-frequencies could be used to interfere with transmitting efficiency and so I toyed with the idea of making the signal reactive to environmental disruption through a resonance feedback system. That is to say a monitor would analyze ambient conditions and the signal would be reactive to field conditions in which it operated rather than merely having it operate at a constant pitch of attunement based on basic power output.

Anywho if I'm reading you right you might consider creating a testing and analysis scenario (depending upon transmission medium to signal distortion pattern) which would either buffer noise by analysis of signal interference and thereby modify data or signal flow correspondingly, or harden the data stream by insulating it within materials which are reactive (that is counter-resonate against incoming disruptive signal interference) to signal interference. Then experiment with materials available and see if you can't create a new or hybrid materials type. Of course I understand you're in manufacturing, not research, but if you've got some patents, then you've done some experimentation.

Anyway the general idea I am pitching based on my own experimentation is using the signal itself to create a shielding field (of course that can cause frequency distortion itself and would depend upon the project) or using reactive materials to counteract ambient distortion (I'm assuming some of your work must be to rather high specs) to reduce scatter, loss, and bleedover (from external sources). That is creating reactive shielding rather than static and passive shielding. And of course I could be misunderstanding the idea of what you're shooting for because of lack of real details, but you did give me a couple of ideas as well.

For one thing using the energy signature of the device itself (and this is somewhat similar to environmental encoding) to create resonate signal fields to either insulate or boost signal transmission. That is using the background energy signature produced by operations to create conditions I mentioned in the above sentence. Another thing that occurred to me was using the background operational energy signature of any given device to make any particular device a transceiver (or at least a transmitter) for encoded sub-signals.


The main reason I try to remain quasi-anonymous on the web is actually related to my job. I have an easily identifiable name, and I am well known in my industry. I write a lot of technical papers and articles, and I am involved in some standards work. So people know me all around the world.

A few years back, I was involved in negotiations with a large customer over a potential $40-50 million contract. An unscrupulous purchasing manager at the customer googled my name, found a bunch of my political rantings, and did not like them. He told me the next day that he couldn’t do business with a person like me, and my company did not get the contract.

I fully understand your skepticism of the internet, for both professional and personal reasons. It once got me involved in a corporate espionage matter with my client as the target, not through me, but through one of my contacts. If you decide to blog, keep that in mind, and in my opinion, maintain a pseudo-identity (fully developed). It would be a wise and advisable security precaution and anti-corporate espionage precaution in any case, regardless any PR matter related to sales.

one of my groupmates is actually working on near-infrared absorption spectroscopy, trying to increase the reliability of the signals to push the technique as a competitor to fMRI for cerberal hemodynamic monitoring.

That's very interesting. Could the same general idea, applied along different wavelengths possibly, be used to monitor electrochemical activity along synapse clusters? I've always thought that magnetic imaging would naturally interfere with electrical activity in the brain and that some distortion of the real activity patterns might be evident in such scans. Of course every form of measurement will interfere to some degree with what is actually being measured, but I'm interested in the idea you presented in relation to monitoring things like CJD. And maybe even cancer cells. I have a personal theory that the closer you can come to monitoring cellular activity in a homeostatic state, the more might be discovered about biological functions that are now going mostly unnoticed. That is to say that excitation through monitoring might itself be triggering biological reactions which interfere with the perception of other activates that a cell undertakes when it is not being observed. If that makes sense to ya. But if those other state conditions could be analyzed with passive detection systems then new forms of biological activity might be discovered which are currently unknown because the reactions to active scanning systems are triggering masking reactive activity within the cell (the same thing might be said of atomic and subatomic materials as well).

I'm just a lowly chemist. I analyze pharmaceuticals and quack medicines for the Feds.

No good work is lowly, especially if it is practically useful. Besides, I have a real soft spot for chemistry, especially bio-chemistry, and medicinal chemistry.

For my day job I'm working on developing and testing a new algorithm for calculating nuclear reaction networks, esp. for the purposes of astrophysical simulations.

Also very interesting.

Well, I'm off to bed. I enjoyed this immensely and my head is swimming with ideas.

Jack,

the passive monitoring mechanism is precisely the question i'm trying to build an instrument to answer. you're not the only one with this theory! the question of how much we really know about how a cell works in the absence of the mechanisms we use to measure their function is very much an open question in biological research. What I do is basically using means of measuring cell processes without harming the cell or potentially changing its function through adding exogenous fluorescent labels. However, these methods have a host of their own problems mostly related to chemical specificity and SNR or they would be state of the art rather than fluorescence tagging.

as to the question about electrical signals, there is some literature that shows that NIR absorption spectroscopy is sensitive to (i think, this isn't exactly my field) calcium fluctuations preceding electrical activity. Claims of seeing this in vivo (with the brain still in the skull) are controversial, at best, though. The technique as a whole has serious SNR issues both in terms of low numbers of photons reaching your detector as well as confounding signals from non-neural sources (eliminating these from the measurement is the specific subject of my group-mate's research). But I would say the prospects of using this particular optical technique as a sensor for the fast electrical signals across neurons is certainly well beyond the current state of the art. I'd probably be pretty pessimistic about it even in the future, but technology is too hard to predict to say that with any confidence.

Jack,

the passive monitoring mechanism is precisely the question i'm trying to build an instrument to answer. you're not the only one with this theory! the question of how much we really know about how a cell works in the absence of the mechanisms we use to measure their function is very much an open question in biological research. What I do is basically using means of measuring cell processes without harming the cell or potentially changing its function through adding exogenous fluorescent labels. However, these methods have a host of their own problems mostly related to chemical specificity and SNR or they would be state of the art rather than fluorescence tagging.

as to the question about electrical signals, there is some literature that shows that NIR absorption spectroscopy is sensitive to (i think, this isn't exactly my field) calcium fluctuations preceding electrical activity. Claims of seeing this in vivo (with the brain still in the skull) are controversial, at best, though. The technique as a whole has serious SNR issues both in terms of low numbers of photons reaching your detector as well as confounding signals from non-neural sources (eliminating these from the measurement is the specific subject of my group-mate's research). But I would say the prospects of using this particular optical technique as a sensor for the fast electrical signals across neurons is certainly well beyond the current state of the art. I'd probably be pretty pessimistic about it even in the future, but technology is too hard to predict to say that with any confidence.

Thanks Zach, you've pointed me in the direction of some things I think I might be able to research and pursue.

Extremely interesting.

Oh yes, several.

But I also have access to several research facilities, and some online databases (mostly medical, genetic, biological), as well as some buddies at universities like MIT, facilities like the JPL, the NRL, the ARL, and so forth.

So if you want to suggest some research papers, white papers, analyses, theory papers, etc. please feel free.

Same for anyone else who would like to suggest some interesting research, R&D projects, or on-going experiments you think I should check out. If I can't act on it immediately I often return to such matters later when I have the time to devote to a given project, and until then it goes directly into my own personal research library, which is rather extensive.

If I can't lay my hands on a source directly chances are I got some buddies who could.

So suggest away.
I always appreciate the help and suggestions.

If someone wants to contact me privately then go occu77@gmail.com
It's one of my private addresses.

These are the general areas I keep up with by the way, in which I have a personal data library of developments, research, new inventions, experiments, theories, and so forth in case anyone wants to suggest something I might want to pursue:

Archaeology and Anthropology
Architecture and Design inclosing new materials for construction and large scale engineering projects
Biology and Genetics
Criminology and Criminalities/Forensics, with a special emphasis on Criminal Psychology and Behavior, Deviant Behavior
Chemistry and Bio-Chemistry
Computing/Communications/Encryption/Encoding/Biological Computing/Sciences of Intelligence, and Artificial Intelligence
Defense/Military/Intel/Security/Espionage matters and Non Lethal Weapons Development and Asymmetrical Weapons Development and High Tech warfare
Education
Medicine and Pathology (and sometimes surgery depending on the techniques involved and how it is conducted)
Psychology in this sense I primarily mean both mental and behavioral and personality and character matters
Physics
Nanotechnology
Music Theory
Art Theory
Game Theory and Simulations and Virtual Reality and Alternative Reality Gaming
Invention
Metaphysics and Mysticism, and a whole range of religious and psychological (in this sense related to the soul) matters


Thanks again.