The Next Chapter

I just finished watching "The Social Network" and have been attempting to internalize the thoughts that have been running through my head since. Although I feel like my life is on the verge of another chapter entirely I feel a sense of stagnation. A sense that I need to move onto something new something greater. I have had this feeling a lot in my life I suppose i should give it tribute to most of my career decisions to date. Part of the reason I joined the Marine Corps among many others was my in ability not to embrace this fleeting emotion. Apparently locking myself into a law binding contract really helps with overcoming it.

My thoughts of late have given me more pause, Although I can not fully embrace these Ideas I can however begin to plan to put myself in a position to better execute them when I am in a position to do so. I want to be able to create and build and express design however feeling confined in my current state it creates a bit of claustrophobia.

I leave in a few days. I wont be back for 9 months, and when I do it will not be the same person who wrote this string of text. It will be a new more evolved state of me, I just can't help but wonder what he will look like and how he will act. Will he be more energetic? or perhaps stronger and faster? I fear at times he will degrade over these coming months though optimistically push those thoughts out of my mind. All I know is I can't wait to meet him and if all goes well show him off to my family and friends.

Splice: Macro Aggregate Electronicus meets Information Accumulus

Lately I have been feeling a lot like a sponge lately attempting to soak in every ounce of knowledge possible. Mostly centralized around the subjects of Technological Development in the areas of space flight and cloud computing; as well as in Economics regarding employment and centralized banking.

In the past couple years I have been following Elon Musk's company Space X and its endeavor to privatize space flight. Recently they have made several break though accomplishments with their launch of falcon 1 in order to deliver on a private contract to put a satellite into space; and the successful orbital launch of falcon 9 (their platform designed to ship supplies and personnel to the international space station). With all these success it brought me to ask who else is out there competing for space flight contracts (It seems that it is no longer just national super powers competing these days). I discovered that Lockheed Martin and Boeing formed a joint venture under the title of United Launch Alliance, LLC. That has developed several launch vehicles already and despite close ties with existing government contracts lost the bid to Space X. However they continue to develope technologies in hopes to win future bids. Also in the race is Blue Origins and Orbital. Orbital seems to be going off the same platform as Space X. Cheap reliable launch platform with smaller scalability than the historical launch platforms. Meanwhile Blue Origins is in an entirely different market that is set out a little further in the future, trying to develop take off and landing technologies. Of course I can't leave out Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and their Space Ship Two, which is really in its own industry (space tourism). All in all its pretty exciting to see where these companies might take their ambitions in the next decade. Private ventures in space flight are long overdue, we are just now entering the "Space Race" part deuce.

The world of cloud computing is also continually accelerating and a faster and faster rate the fact that when I post this blog it the RSS feed from this site will also post to various social networking sites that I belong to is proof enough. Also the twitter feed at the top of this blog that receives updates from my phone and posts them on twitter, Facebook and here all instantaneously. The fact that I now store 90% of all my personal and school documents on Google Docs. I don't even store much of a personal music collection anymore, I have 5 or 6 songs physically located on either my phone or computer. Thanks to Pandora, Last FM and Slacker Radio I no longer have the need to constantly hunt down and buy album upon album of music from my favorite artists when they can be accurately delivered to me via internet radio. All this and other observations have brought me to consider who is profiting from these markets. Well obviously we have all the Social Networking sites on top of that you have Google, Apple, and Microsoft as pretty big players. One of the ever more increasing characteristics that define choices in cloud participation is the consumers phone platform. An individual with Google's Android is more likely to take advantage of cloud computing supported by the applications within its OS. Counter to that Microsofts new Kin encourages its users to participate in Microsoft's Live community. Of course Apple continues to build on its iPhone platform not really taking full advantage of its opportunities but still doing well for itself. The success of these three cloud computing giants is going to drastically be determined by its mobile user base. As society continues to become more mobilized we should start to see a heavy dependence on cloud computing. I expect to see a surplus of jobs available in fields ranging form communications, database management, software development and wireless infrastructure development.

To continue with my outline I have also been reading the works of Murray N. Rothbard, and I have been discovering quite a few simple truths from his writings regarding monetary policy and centralized banking. He talks about the historical implementations of centralized control and its abuses along with the common sense of having market driven commodity based currencies. Also the dishonesties of banking based on a pure fiat currency and its contribution to mass inflation and consequential market corrections that would ensue. I recommend picking up his book What has the government done with our money? as well as looking into other authors such as Ludwig Von Mises, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell.

I sometimes come across as a gold nut or a tea party fanatic. The term tea party is just the medias attempt to bring several movements under one name for easier definition the reality is that I am a pro limited government libertarian who believes in common sense government. The upholding of laws and regulations. That concludes this blog posting or better titled rant. Thanks for reading.

It has been some time

Well, lets see its been a while since my last post and a lot has transpired. Since my last post I have graduated from my school in Pensacola Florida, taken leave to Oregon, moved to Hawaii, and have enrolled in courses at Hawaii Pacific University. I also met an amazing girl while in Florida and had an awesome time with her and with the friends I made in my 8 months living there. I look forward to recreating a similar experience while living here in Hawaii.

I graduated from my Marine Corps A school with a 97% at the top of my class. (Bragging a little I know) I found the course material to be somewhat informative however lacking in overall competence. Memorizing a bunch of random technical specifications about a varied grouping of comm equipment really doesn't make you effective at employing and troubleshooting said pieces of equipment. I did think however the sections on networking and server administration were somewhat well spent.

I continue in short summery onto this girl that I met in A school. Her name was Tanya and she was from San Diego, she was short being half Korean and full of energy. I met her on a random date that actually wasn't too eventful, well minus the drunken ending. We went to dinner and then ended up the night at a bar near base... while at the bar my friend and I refrained from drinking too much however the girls proceeded to indulge. As the night came to a close we took the girls back to their dorms and as we where walking through the parking lot Tanya put on my coat while I was still wearing it... After laughing for a bit about it I took it off and lended it to her for the remainder of the walk back. The next day she in a bit of embarrassment returned my coat to me. After that we began to spend the remainder of our time in Florida spending the weekends camping and a trip to New Orleans etc... It was a refreshing way to finish out my last 3 months in Florida and I was glad for it.

While in Oregon I ran a bit, visited as many friends and family as possible. I started out by flying into Portland and heading down to Corvallis where I spent a week there and then proceeded to Hermiston to spend an extended amount of time with my parents while arranging some of my remaining affairs. While in Hermiston I had the opportunity to teach a quick little history class on the Marine Corps to my moms 5th grade class. The class was very responsive and paid a lot of attention to what I had to say I quizzed them at the end and passed out candy to all the individuals who answered correctly.

I have recently moved to Hawaii and have been exploring the Island only to be interrupted by the occasional work day and gaming binge. The most interesting place I have been so far is a series of waterfalls outside of Kailua that are a short hike into the mountains. They are fairly entertaining to jump off of being only about 45 feet in height. I have also been getting licensed on a range of military vehicles that I find large and cumbersome.

In other news I have recently been reading extensively on entrepreneurship and its effect on the economy. which reignited my thoughts on finishing my degree so I went down to the Joint Education Center here on base and applied at Hawaii Pacific University, I was surprised with how fast my approval to the school was processed but considering they work closely with the Marine Corps I guess there shouldn't have been any surprise. I declared my major in Business Admin Computer Information Systems and take my first class this may. The course I selected was Human Resource Management 3400 should be a good course and it is an accelerated term so I plan on putting forth a fairly high level of focus and energy to hopefully build momentum going into finishing the rest of my degree.

Physical fitness: while all this has transpired I have also been working on my physical fitness. I have been seeing fairly decent results, having a lower body fat percentage and achieving higher max lifts across the board. However I do feel like improvements could have been made at a faster pace I am satisfied with my current progress and aim to do more.

In summery I would say the last months of absence have been spent in a major effort to improve my self and maximize my life. however there has been too little self reflection during that course of time and although it is pretty cliche to write this I am going to make more of an effort to keep this blog up to date. It is something fairly near and dear to me even if it is only a collection of ramblings it is still a piece of my conscience written in plain view and stored for later reflection.