The Science of Music -- Part Three

So far we’ve learned about waves -- sine waves -- and complex waves made up of sine waves. You may know or have guessed that this has something to do with music. You are right. It has everything to do with music. Music is just a special kind of sound. Speech is a special kind of sound. Police sirens are a special kind of sound. The ocean roaring up the beach is a special kind of sound. And, MUSIC is a special kind of sound.

So what is “sound.” That’s a good question, and one we will answer with this episode of the “Science of Music,” or would that be “The Sound of Music.” Cue Julie Andrews:

If you want to follow me, you've got to play pinball
And put in your earplugs, put on your eyeshades
You know where to put the cork

Listening to you, I get the music
Gazing at you, I get the heat
Following you, I climb the mountains
I get excitement at your feet


So just what is music, or sound for that matter. Well, sound is a wave, a sound wave. Let’s start the explanation with a visual example -- in your mind.

Imagine a calm pool of water. Now mentally drop a stone into the center of the water. The stone causes a disturbance in the smooth surface of the water, and this disturbance spreads out in all directions from the point of impact. If you look very close at the “wave” spreading out from the point where the stone hit, you’ll note that it consists of a part that is a little higher than the normal water surface followed by a point a little lower. The higher part is called the “crest” and the lower part the “trough.” It is a wave, and it moves across the pond. In engineering speak, we would say the wave “propagates.”

If you look closely at the wave you can see it has a “wavelength,” the distance between two crests. You’ll also note that it has a speed of propagation, a velocity that it moves across the water. Finally, you may note that it will bounce off or reflect off of solid objects it encounters in its path. You may even see the result of the initial wave and the reflected wave adding together. Now this addition is quite interesting because, depending on the phase of the wave where it meets another, the crests may join and get bigger or the troughs may join and get deeper, OR ... a crest may add to a trough, effectively subtracting and resulting in water at the original pond level.

You have just experienced, in your mind, many of the characteristics of waves and wave propagation, and wave reflection including wave addition (which might end up being subtraction).

Sound waves have many of the same properties as these water waves you have been imagining. There is one big difference, however (in addition to the fact you can’t see sound waves). Water waves are "transverse," while sound waves are "longitudinal." Now there’s a couple of fifty-cent words! Transverse means they are “up and down.” The water waves were at right angles to the direction of travel or propagation. The water waves consisted of highs called crests and lows called troughs.

Sound waves occur in the same direction as propagation. To understand that, we have to understand what makes a sound wave. The answer is quite simple: vibration. It can even be that simple harmonic motion I mentioned earlier. Imagine a tuning fork. That’s a rod with a forked end that is made to vibrate by striking it. Then the ends of the fork will vibrate to and fro. As they do that, they will have an effect on the air around them. Viewing the tuning fork from one side, you can imagine the fork moving toward you and, thereby, compressing the air a little more than the average air pressure. An instant later the fork moves away from you and that has the opposite effect. It reduces the pressure of the air slightly below the average air pressure value. Now these “more pressure” and “less pressure” effects move away from the tuning fork just like the waves moved away from where you dropped the rock in the pond.

These “sound waves” which are alternations between air pressure higher than “ambient” or average air pressure -- call these higher pressure areas “crests” and lower air pressure which are the troughs -- are just like the ripples in the pond.

The difference is that the crests and troughs are in the direction the sound is moving: “longitudinal,” instead of up and down (transverse) like the water waves.

So there you have it. Sound waves are just pressure waves moving through the air. Now sound can also be conducted through water or solid objects, but -- unless you are listening to your iPod underwater or by putting your ear on a railroad track, we’re only going to focus on sound waves moving through the air.

Later we’ll talk about the ear and how it responds to sound waves. But, let’s dig a little deeper into these waves in the air we’ve just imagined.

First let’s turn to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, for a very precise definition of sound. Quoting from Wikipedia’s quoting from the dictionary, we read, “Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.”

That is a good definition. Yes, sound is a mechanical wave, often called an acoustic wave. Also it is an oscillation or “vibration” and it is transmitted by pressure waves. To be very clear, sound is frequencies we can hear. There is also sound we can’t hear, often called ultrasonics, and they can be heard by other animals like dogs, porpoise, and bats, as well as they can be used to clean jewelry. Finally, to classify as sound, it has to be audible. That means loud enough to hear. You know what? This paragraph probably has at least five episodes of this series contained in it. We will come back to many of these ideas. This sound is some “Good Vibrations.”

While we’re being so scientific, we can mention that the waves propagate or move at, get ready for it, ... the “speed of sound.” That’s about 1,000 feet per second or one mile in five seconds. That’s pretty fast, although light is much, much faster. Light and electric signals travel at 186,000 miles per second. Also, sound level or loudness can be measured as a “sound pressure level” or SPL, which is the difference, in a given medium, between average local pressure and the pressure in the sound wave.

If we go back to the pond example, if the pond is very large, then the intensity of the ripple waves will decline until it just disappears. On a large pond, a rock dropped in one end may not even show waves at the other end. Same with sound waves. They gradually lose their intensity and die out. You can hear someone talking at the dinner table, but not someone talking down the block -- unless they’re really, really loud. We referred to this gradual loss of intensity a couple of articles ago when we talked about a damped waveform. Remember the swing. If you don’t keep pushing it, it will eventually stop swinging.

Also recall from the pond example that, just like water waves, sound waves can be reflected by hard surfaces and bounce back and add (or subtract) to other waves. All these effects of reflection and sound wave interaction (called, among other things, vector addition) can produce all sorts of interesting “acoustical” effects. That is why the physical design of a concert hall is so important. That’s also why you can hear an echo when you yell “hello” into the Grand Canyon.

One final topic for today: Sound vs. Noise. Now, just as one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure, the difference between sound (or music) and noise is what you want to hear. At that concert, the sound (or music) is coming from the band or orchestra. The noise is coming from those people in the seat behind you that know all the words and insist on singing them loudly. It’s all relative. After all, it might be your brother-in-law in those seats behind you. (Oh, humor: argh argh.)

When we start recording and amplifying and storing sound (or music), the electronic devices may add noise of their own. Hopefully, the amount of noise (or random signal) added will be too soft to hear. Remember the definition of sound is what is loud enough to hear. So what matters with noise is how loud it is relative to the sound we want to hear. We call that the “signal to noise” ratio or “S/N.” One solution is to have a very high or loud “signal” to drown out the “noise.” Even better is to have very little “noise.” Note that, when you amplify a small or quiet or soft signal to increase its volume or loudness, you are also amplifying the noise. So noise in the “front end” or input part of our sound system matters the most.

Now, for the conclusion, which should be expected. All sound (or music) AND noise, are just made up of sine waves. They are complex waves, for certain, but we already know that all complex waves are just made up of a fundamental frequency plus harmonics. Complicated sound (or music), like that from a band or orchestra, will contain lots of individual tones, each with a fundamental frequency and harmonics. So it gets very, very complicated. Separating the sound (or music) from the noise is often done by selecting certain frequencies. You know, the “tone control” or as we engineers call it, “equalization.”

And that will be the topic of the next episode of “The ... (echo, echo), Science ... (echo, echo), of ... (echo, echo), Music ... (echo, echo.)

The Science of Music -- Part Four

Originally written on Feb. 17, 2012 during a visit to my Dad's home in Hillsboro, Oregon and posted on Facebook. During my two week visit with my dad, I wrote an article a day. I started with a long series on the Science of Photography which had thirteen individual articles. I then started this series on the Science of Music. It isn't finished and I have a lot more to say. I hope to add to this series in the future.

The Science of Music -- Part Two

We started the discussion in the first part of this series with a description of a sine wave, named after the trigonometric function that can be used to model the wave. We learned that this simple wave could be used to describe something called “simple harmonic motion.” I showed how this kind of motion was involved in bouncing springs (just like that old Cadillac in front of you that needs new shocks) to playground swings to pendulums on a clock. BUT, I said it didn’t apply to musical notes, even a very simple and pure note. No, all “real” musical tones are complex and contain harmonic overtones.

And that is where we left off. So what are these complex waves and what kind of sine waves are they made up of? Who thought up all this stuff and how can I calculate these musical waves? Yeah, right, you want to know how to calculate these musical waves. What would be the formula for “Day in the Life,” and which term is John and which is Paul? Well, we will use some math so you are convinced that this stuff really works. There are some more things named after dead white people and reference to calculators and graph paper. But amongst all the obfuscation, will be some pearls of wisdom and some steps along our journey. There’s a bit of a jungle we have to hack through, so let’s get moving. Grab your machete and prepare for thick math vines ahead. Just hope we don’t encounter any head hunters.


There are a lot of interesting waveforms floating around in the air and the airwaves. These are called “complex waves” by mathematicians and physicists. There are square waves familiar to computer designers and sawtooth waves familiar to oscilloscope designers and triangle waves well known to trianglers (that is people that fish with three poles) ... alright, I made that last one up, but there really are triangle waves.

Waveforms

And if these waves seem complex, well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Here is a sample of the wave from a selection of music.

Waves

What all these different examples of waveforms have in common is that they are all made up of a combination of sine waves. The sine wave is the only wave not made up of a combination of other waves. That is why it is called “fundamental.”

Before we dig into these complex waves, there is one additional measurement I want to describe. Remember when I talked about "frequency" which was measured in “cycles per second?” Well this new measurement is just another way to measure frequency. You flip the fraction over and measure “seconds per cycle.” When you flip a fraction upside down by interchanging the numerator and the denominator, this is called the reciprocal and the reciprocal of the frequency is called the “period” of the wave and it is also called the wavelength. The idea of wavelength comes from a view of the wave propagating or moving through a medium such as in the air for sound waves and music. Wavelength depends on period and the speed of sound. It is important when you are designing speaker cabinets.

The waves you’ve seen in the pictures are either plots of a wave from the mathematical formulas or viewing of actual waves on an instrument called an oscilloscope. These “pictures” of actual waves clearly show the repeating structure of the waves and it is easy to pick a point on the wave and note the distance (which is actually a measure of time) before that point is repeated. We usually start with the point where the wave is at zero. Since the wave is represented as an alternating voltage, it goes from zero to some positive value, back to zero, then to some negative value, and back to the starting point at zero.

This is very much like the swing that starts out swinging down and out, reaches the bottom of the arc and then climbs up the opposite side until it stops. It then reverses direction falling back to the bottom and then back up to the point where it started. If you want to be accurate, the zero point is the bottom of the arc. After the swing gives up all its energy to friction and wind resistance, it will end up at the bottom -- and that’s zero.

If you examine carefully all the waves in the two pictures above, you can see there is a fundamental wavelength or period. It is very obvious that there is this main or underlying period or frequency. That is the fundamental frequency. For example, on a piano, A above middle C has a fundamental frequency of 440 Hz.

Now comes the marvelous part. You can show that all complex waveforms are a combination of that fundamental frequency and other sine waves that are a multiple of that fundamental frequency. That is, frequencies twice the fundamental and three times the fundamental and four times ...  These multiple frequencies are called “harmonics” or “overtones.”

From a musical perspective, we’re talking about a single note on the musical scale. If there are multiple notes, like in a chord, then there are some very interesting phenomenon called “beats.” But let’s keep it simple and just talk about one note like when you pluck a single string on a guitar or violin. For example, A above middle C is made up of 440 Hz, plus 880 Hz, plus 1760 Hz plus ... you get the idea.

This breaking down of a complex wave into its component parts, the fundamental sine wave and the harmonic sine waves is done mathematically using something called Fourier Analysis.

In mathematics, Fourier analysis is a subject area which grew from the study of Fourier series. The subject began with the study of the way general functions may be represented by sums of simpler trigonometric functions. Fourier analysis is named after Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), who showed that representing a function by a trigonometric series greatly simplifies the study of heat propagation.

I fondly recall when I first learned of Fourier’s work. I was in EE103, taught by Dr. Melvin Capehart (1935 - ). I had learned about these concepts in Navy electronics school, but technicians just get it described to them, and they don’t get the underlying mathematics because it requires Calculus. So this was when I was first introduced to the magic of the Fourier series and Fourier analysis (as well as Taylor Series used by the Taylor guitar ;-) ... just a little math/musician humor). Later, in more advanced electronics engineering courses, the topic came up several times. It is powerful and fundamental stuff and I really dig it. If you would like to dig some too, here is an excellent online course by Dr. Osgood at Stanford. Give it a try. You might like it. It's free.

http://academicearth.org/courses/the-fourier-transform-and-its-applications

If that is a little too intense for you, don’t worry, we only need a little bit of these ideas to arrive at our intended destination. Now back to some serious math. Recall, I stated in the first installment of this journey, if you are going to compare two different sine waves, you need to also worry about “phase.”

If you’ve ever been to the automobile drag races, you may have seen one car given a head start. That’s a form of handicapping. If two cars from different racing classes compete, the car from the lower performance class gets a head start. Usually the faster car catches up and wins anyway. But, with these waveforms, they all go the same speed: the speed of sound (or speed of propagation down a wire). So if one wave gets a head start, it keeps that advanced position. Here is a picture of two waves that are the same frequency, but different phases.

Phases

If the two waves are different frequencies, but are harmonics (that is frequencies that are multiples), then they will have a repetitive phase relationship. That is, they will cycle through combinations and return to the same point. That point is in sync with the fundamental or lowest frequency wave.

A bunch of gobble-d-gook that just says that phase relationships of harmonic waves are constant.

We have to make our math a little more complex to deal with phase. One way to do that is to introduce the cosine function. It is identical to the sine function except it is 90º out of phase. So now our formula becomes y = A cos(x) + B sin(x). Using different values for A and B, including negative values, you can get any phase relation from -180º to 0º to +180º, and that is all there is. (There are many other useful forms or equations to model or describe phase, but this is a simple one.)

I’m going to start with a very simple complex wave. It is called the square wave and it is common in computer circuits. It is also very similar to the output of a fuzz box connected to a guitar, and I’ll get back to that idea in a future installment.

Here is a picture of a square wave:

Square Wave

And the formula:

y(t) = A (sin(t) + 1/3 sin(3t) + 1/5 sin(5t) + 1/7 sin(7t) + ... )

(Remember, I said in the first installment that the sin(2x) is twice the frequency of the "sin(x).")

Some observations. 1) A square wave is made up of a combination of a fundamental sine wave plus the odd numbered harmonics of that fundamental frequency. 2) The amplitude of each harmonic is reduced by one over the harmonic number and is, therefore, decreasing with harmonic number. 3) There are an infinite number of terms represented by the infinite number of odd integers. 4) Number 3 is not significant from an engineering point of view due to number 2. In engineering, we call that “close enough for government work!” In other words, you only need the first few terms to get a result that is accurate enough.

How many terms are needed depends on situations, but we usually specify five to ten terms to get a very accurate answer, and where the human ear is involved, the value added by the seventh harmonic is probably not even noticeable. But exactly how many harmonics are required in order to faithfully reproduce the sound to the human ear and mind is a matter of some controversy -- that's EXACTLY how many are required. No-one thinks you need more than ten harmonics, and most people believe it takes less than ten -- even with the best speakers and amplifiers made.

/joke.Two super heroes are chained to the wall at the end of a long hall. A beautiful women is standing at the far end of the hall. The villain's voice comes from a loudspeaker over their heads and explains that the beautiful girl will walk half the distance from where she is toward the two heroes. Then she will walk half the remaining distance. And this will continue. The first hero, a mathematician very familiar with infinitesimals, says, "Oh no, she'll never get to us." The second hero, an engineer, responds, "But she'll get close enough!"/ejoke.

The formulas for other complex waves often include the “A cos(x)+B sin(x)” form I mentioned earlier to indicate phase. The square wave is pretty simple since all the component waves are in phase. That's why I chose it as an example.

It is possible, using Fourier analysis, to write the formula for any complex wave, but no-one is writing the formula for the sound of a Cello playing “B-flat above middle C.” I suppose it could be done, but that is not the point. Further, even digital representations of music don’t do the analysis, they just represent the waveform with a bunch of numbers similar to how digital cameras capture color images as a bunch of numbers describing discrete points called “pixels.” When we get to digitization of sound waves, we won't care about Fourier and his stuff. We'll just take snapshots of the instantaneous signal value and assign that a numerical value. However, Fourier and his stuff will be invaluable as we analyze whether that snapshot captures all the essence of the music.

What is important is the fact that we have to capture, at least, some of the harmonic overtones to capture full fidelity. The human voice only goes to about 3,000 Hz, but you had better capture higher frequencies, or else Ella Fitzgerald is not going to sound natural and true, and she won't get any r.e.s.p.e.c.t. That's the point of learning all this Fourier stuff, to understand what frequencies are there and what frequencies you have to capture and reproduce to make a good quality, high fidelity recording -- whether analog or digital.

That's why we went so deep into the math jungle. We need some tools to help us later understand the "high" in "high fidelity," (although there are some other highs in music which Fourier doesn't address). Fourier will provide those tools to determine whether the digital music representation is as good as the original and how it could be improved, if not. We're slowly getting to that conclusion, but it'll take a few more episodes.

Also note that, Fourier may require an infinite range of frequencies, but we may not need them all. We will have to talk about some other engineering and human physiology to fully understand what is needed.

Anyway, for now, we know that all complex waves, including music, are made up of combinations of sine waves, and that the lowest frequency called the “fundamental” is the primary wavelength (or frequency) we see in the oscilloscope or a plot of the wave. Further, we know all the other sine waves are multiples of this fundamental frequency. Finally we know some waves may require an infinite series of sine waves with higher and higher frequencies, but these highest frequencies contribute less and less to the total wave, and so they can be ignored -- or can they?

Aha, the plot thickens. Since music is for the enjoyment of people, not dogs (sorry Dr.), we are really only interested in frequencies within the range of human hearing. Or are we? What about “transient response?” Oh, this plot is really getting thick. So, like any good serial, I’ll leave you at this point until next time. Tune in tomorrow to see how our hero escapes from certain death. For now ... roll credits.

The Science of Music -- Part Three

Originally written on Feb. 16, 2012 during a visit to my Dad's home in Hillsboro, Oregon and posted on Facebook. During my two week visit with my dad, I wrote an article a day. I started with a long series on the Science of Photography which had thirteen individual articles. I then started this series on the Science of Music. It isn't finished and I have a lot more to say. I hope to add to this series in the future.

The Science of Music -- Part One

There were still topics I could have written about in the Science of Photography series. I could have described lenses and issues such as chromatic aberration or lighting and color temperature or lens bokeh and aesthetic blur. Lot’s more photography to talk about, but, instead, I’m starting a new series I call “The Science of Music.” Again, there are many topics to discuss including scales and chords and tunings, but my goal is quite focused this time. I want to describe enough about music (and sound) to make a transition from analog to digital. I promised a friend long ago to write about music CDs and how they work and why many aficionados, including my friend, prefer records.

So let’s start building a body of knowledge of music and what it is from a physical perspective and take the journey from records to tapes to CDs to whatever may be next. We can talk abut compression and expansion and tone controls and dynamic range and frequency response and timbre and color and tonal richness. There won’t be any Bach or Beethoven (or Beatles), but plenty from Edison to Berliner to Goldmark to Ray Dolby and Bill Lear to Amar G. Bose and Henry Kloss. Of course, we’ll also talk about Jonathan Livingston Digital, the person who invented the modern CD or “digital” recording. What, there was really a guy named “Digital?” No, I just made that up, but it made you think ... didn’t it?


Let’s start with the fundamentals. That would be something from nature called “simple harmonic motion.” It’s all around us. Take a spring held at one end with a weight on the other end. Pull the weight down and it will start to oscillate or “bounce” up and down. If you carefully plot the oscillations, they will plot out a simple harmonic motion.

Or, consider a pendulum or a swing. Pull the swing all the way back and let go, it will swing to and fro in simple harmonic motion. Let’s analyze this swing motion carefully. When you let it go, it was still for just an instant, but then gravity started it falling. As it passed though the bottom of the swing motion it was going the fastest it will go. It then starts to swing up on the other side of the arc and now gravity makes it slow down until it reaches a point almost exactly as high as the point you let it go. At that instant it stops, and then starts falling back the other way. Again, as it passes through the bottom of the swing it is going maximum velocity and it climbs back up to the point where you let it go.

This isn’t quite simple harmonic motion because there is some friction. The wind resistance robs the swing of a little bit of energy and it won’t come back to quite the point you let it go. It will swing back and forth several times, each time a little less height until the motion dies out. It is call “damped” harmonic motion because the friction slowly dampens out or reduces the amount of swing.

Now, think of a guitar string and give it a pluck. Simple harmonic motion? No, in this case it is not. That’s because the guitar string adds harmonic overtones. We’ll get back to that in an article or two. For now, let’s stay with the simple harmonic motion, although now you know why I started with that physical phenomenon. It is related to sound and music.

Before we try to make the connection, let’s talk about the pendulum or bouncing spring. Pendulums are used in clocks to keep time. They have a mechanism that is typically a wound spring or an electric motor that gives the pendulum a tiny push each time to keep it from dampening out. That is true harmonic motion and it produces a very simple motion as I described earlier. Physicists model that motion with a mathematical equation that contains the sine function. You remember the sine (and the cosine and the tangent, etc.) from Trigonometry ... Remember? ... High school? ... Math? ... Ah yes, now it all comes back.

You probably first learned about the trigonometric functions as ways to work with right triangles. This is the same sine function, but now we work with harmonic and circular motion.

The complete formula that describes simple harmonic motion of the spring is "y = sin(x)." The formula can get a little trickier if if we add amplitude and phase and throw in a few greek letters for flavor. A version I like is "y = A sin(t)." That formula ignores an important characteristic called phase which I’ll address at some future time. For now, let’s focus on two important characteristics of this sine wave or “sinusoidal” wave.

First is something called “amplitude.” You could also call it something simple and non-scientific like “volume” or “loudness” and you would adjust this amplitude with the “volume control” or “gain” on your radio or guitar amp or sound system. In my formula, the amplitude is represented by "A."

The second important characteristic is the frequency. It is the “t” in my little equation, but to really form a good mathematical equation you would have to write the value of “t” in some form such as “radians per second.” Most of us think of frequency as cycles per second which are called “Hertz” (abbreviated "Hz") after Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894), the German physicist. Musicians call frequency "pitch."

There are different ways to indicate this as part of the sine function, but we don't need to get into that in great detail. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to dig into the math, but we're here to learn the science of music so we can understand records and tapes and CDs, not to get involved in the math any more than needed. I'll try to keep the mathematics at the 20,000 foot level, and hopefully it will make sense and add to your understanding, not snow you in like a Colorado blizzard.

It is important, however, for you to understand that this fundamental building block of all music (and sound) is a simple sine wave. AND NOW YOU DO!!!

For a basic, “pure” sine wave, that’s all you need to know: the amplitude and the frequency. If you have more than one sine wave or you’re measuring in respect to some instant in time, there is a third parameter called phase, but I said I’d save that for later.

Now here is some simple math. If sin(x) is a particular frequency, say 440 Hz, then sin(2x) is twice the frequency. We’ll use that idea later too. Not too painful, eh? Well, that was math. It didn't hurt at all. At least not yet!

Getting back to the guitar string, I’ll bet you’re wondering why the sine wave formula doesn’t work for it. Well, it does, but we have to get fancy. You see, if you pluck a guitar string, you don’t get simple harmonic motion, you get a very complex motion (and sound) that contains more than one sine wave at different frequencies. We’ll get into that soon, although it may have to wait for the next installment. It is a good thing there are these extra frequencies, because a very pure sine wave is not very musical or enjoyable.

There are no musical instruments that create pure tones (at least before the invention of synthesizers and some modern electronic instruments.)

By definition, a pure tone is a tone with a sinusoidal waveform -- a pure sine wave.

A pure sine wave is an artificial sound. Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) is thought to have created the first pure sine wave tone with the "Helmholtz siren," a mechanical device that forces compressed air through holes in a rotating plate. This is presumably the closest thing to a sine wave that was heard before the invention of electronic oscillators. If you remember the start to the old black and white TV series called "Outer Limits," the opening shot was an oscilloscope showing a sine wave with a noise in the background that we all associate with electronics and old sci-fi movies, but not exactly musical.

(As an aside you may have heard of the Helmholtz Resonator in loudspeakers. Loudspeaker enclosures often use the Helmholtz resonance of the enclosure to boost the low frequency response. So that old guy actually helped with modern high fidelity sound systems.)

Another aside: By the way, two guys in their garage in Palo Alto, California developed a simple circuit to produce a very pure, audio frequency sine waves and went on to found a giant electronics corporation.

No, their names weren’t Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. This was 40 years earlier and their names were David Packard and William Hewlett and they founded Hewlett-Packard where the two Steve’s worked many years later. Also, that first oscillator called the 200A was first produced in 1939. In 1969, yours truly was using the upgraded version called the 200CD and I once owned a 200CD of my very own. The HP signal generators were famous for producing such a pure sinusoidal waves and the amplitude remained quite constant as you adjusted the frequency. Many a stereo had its technical data produced in the laboratory using one of the HP audio signal generators. It was the foundation building block of HP today. And most feel HP was an essential core of what is now called "silicon valley," although Stanford University had a part to play in building the valley too.

By the way, a pure sinusoidal musical note is not a nice thing at all. “[Pure] Sine waves are generally uncomfortable to the ear, and may cause noise-induced hearing loss at lower volumes than other noises. Sound localization is often more difficult with sine waves than with other sounds; they seem to ‘fill the room’.” -- to quote Wikipedia.

But sine waves are where it all starts. So, hang onto your hats, turn up the volume, and wait until the next installment to learn how sine waves can be combined into beautiful musical tones. In the case of electronic synthesizers, they actually are combined to produce musical notes and many electronic keyboards and organs have been doing this combining for years. For example, the harmonic draw-bars on the original Hammond Organ adjust the mixture of sine waves, and Robert Moog really gave you power to build up these waves with his instrument's knobs, and dials.

But all traditional musical instruments create the waveforms complete with pleasing overtones and harmonics whether from the vibrating strings of a violin, piano, or guitar or from vibrating air in a horn, woodwind, or flute. There are a few other examples such as a xylophone or bell or drums and other percussion instruments that get the tones from vibrating chunks of metal, wood, or glass. But, in all those cases, the natural tones are a combination of sine waves. The lowest frequency of all these sine waves is called the "fundamental tone."

And that is why we started with the sine wave. It is in combination that we get the beautiful music. And that combination will be the subject of our next installment of “The Science of Music.”

The Science of Music -- Part Two

Originally written on Feb. 15, 2012 during a visit to my Dad's home in Hillsboro, Oregon and posted on Facebook. During my two week visit with my dad, I wrote an article a day. I started with a long series on the Science of Photography which had thirteen individual articles. I then started this series on the Science of Music. It isn't finished and I have a lot more to say. I hope to add to this series in the future.

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than to be good.

I was thinking about recent discussions and notes about Apple and iPhones. This discussion led me to research some more of the story and cell phone background that I was only vaguely aware of at the time.

Let me start with Decca. They were a British record label that was founded in 1929. They are famous for refusing to sign the Beatles. Instead they recorded “Brian Poole and the Tremeloes” and let Parlophone (now there’s a well known company — ha ha) capture the fab four.

So Decca in the sixties became known as the “company that missed the Beatles.” This really affected their corporate psyche and they were quick to sign new bands after that, although many of their choices including the Zombies and the Rolling Stones were good things for Decca, it never left their minds nor the negotiating table that they had let the “big one” get away. So this tale shows how corporations, even those that are supposed to be hip and “tuned in” can easily miss the next big thing. The old saying about hindsight and twenty-twenty vision is oh so true.

Now, in hindsight, certainly Verizon (or Sprint or you name them) probably wish they had signed up for the original iPhone. It has certainly been a big success for AT&T. But how did that all happen? What was going on back in 2007 when Apple was developing the iPhone and shopping it around to the cellular networks? Did Verizon or Sprint turn down Apple? Was AT&T glad to sign up with a sure winner? Hmmm, something to ponder.

What was happening around the turn of the century? (Isn’t that a quaint phrase? We can use it two ways now.) I was an early adopter of the Palm Pilot. I first bought the Palm Pilot Professional in 2002. The idea of how it would sync with my PC was almost magical. At that time I maintained a very large address book using Lotus Organizer. This address book had started out as a Borland Sidekick address book replacing my Day-Timer around 1986. By the new millennium I had converted to Lotus Organizer, and I had over 400 addresses, emails, and phone numbers from IBMers all around the world. The idea I could take the address book off my PC and put it in my pocket (this was before laptops) while traveling was amazing to me. What I used to do was print address pages from Organizer using tiny fonts and then cut them out and punch holes in them using my special Day-Timer hole punch so I could put them in my little Corinthian leather address book. I was a good Day-Timer customer.

All that ended with the Palm Pilot. Now I had the latest updated addresses and a whole lot more. Instead of spending an hour printing and cutting and hole punching, a simple sync and the address book in my shirt pocket matched my master PC database. It all seemed so cool at the time.

As the years went by I upgraded to a Sony Palm compatible with a color screen and advanced music player. I continued to grow my use of the portable device. I also had a cell phone, but it was primarily for my wife’s use as she drove to Ft. Collins daily for work and I wanted her to have a cell for safety reasons. We had one of those big old Motorola phones and I actually mounted it in the car as a “car phone” complete with roof antenna and a mount on a flexible tube like a mike stand goose neck. That way the battery was always charged. (At that time we were using Qwest cellular, which might have actually been AT&T, I don’t know for sure.) I later added a Motorola flip phone and we became a four phone number family. (I still had two land lines at home left over from the days of IBM and working from home on a 1200 baud modem. Back then IBM paid for your second phone line.)

After a while, I decided to combine the palm organizer and a cell and bought the Treo smart phone. That must have been around 2006. I was very happy with that phone and bought many applications for it, mostly card games. I had Hearts and Spades and even Bridge on the Treo. What I really liked were the mobile news apps which let me view the New York Times internet version. I could surf the web, but the graphics were very poor and so I gravitated to mobile applications more than raw web surfing. Later the Safari web browser on the iPhone would be the first thing that attracted me. Remember the iPhone ad with the NY Times on Safari and the "two finger" expand? I wanted that!

Meanwhile, Steve Jobs was busy developing a touch screen smart phone that would eliminate the need for the stylus used on the Palm and other smart phones of that era. Of course, after the failure of the Newton and the success of the iPod, Job’s company may not have been focused on these devices. In 2003 Steve stated that Apple didn’t think that PDAs (Personal Data Organizers — the generic name for the Newton, Palm Pilot, and related devices) were necessarily a product that Apple was interested in, but he did think cell phones were a wave of the future.

First Apple worked with Motorola to add iTunes to the new ROKR phone, but that was not what Steve envisioned. He wanted to add pictures and video and the iPhone began to take shape. He was frustrated that Motorola engineers were the primary designers and his input was limited. Soon hints appeared in iTunes that an Apple mobile phone was under development.

Around this time Apple must have been shopping the idea of the iPhone around to the cellular carriers, and possibly not having much luck. He finally inked a deal with Cingular Wireless; a company owned by a couple of the “baby bells” SBC and Bell South. But before the iPhone came out, AT&T had purchased Bell South and Cingular and rebranded it as “AT&T Wireless.”

I have tried every Google expression I can think of, but I wasn’t able to find out much about the early, pre-iPhone history. Did Steve shop the iPhone around to various carriers? I assume so. Did many of them turn him down? Maybe. Was AT&T happy with the Apple contract when they bought out Cingular in 2006? Probably not. Steve had a nice deal with Cingular requiring them to pay the majority of the cost of the expensive new iPhone (although it was still pretty pricy for the consumer, even with a two year service contract).

And was the iPhone’s success assured? Certainly not. Apple’s history contains both successes and failures. For every Apple II there is an Apple III. For every Mac there is a Lisa. For every iPod, there is a Newton. No, the iPhone was a gamble. At its announcement in 2007 about the only compelling feature it had besides a beautiful touch screen was the visual phone mail that meant you didn’t have to slog through seven other messages to get to the one you wanted. They were all displayed and you could play them in random order. That plus the Safari web browser and beautiful color touch screen were about all the iPhone offered. It wasn’t until the second generation of iPhones added the app store that the product really took off.

Today AT&T is the second largest cell phone carrier in the US behind Verizon, and they certainly owe a lot of that success to the popularity of the iPhone, now available in its fourth generation. The concept of the app store has been wildly successful and copied by Google with the android (several hundred thousand apps on iPhone with Android close behind) and by poor Palm’s new Pre and the Windows 7 (both with hundreds of apps!!) [Sarcasim Alert]

Meanwhile AT&T reports double digit (27% in Q2) earnings growth and billions in profits, much of that fueled by the success of the iPhone. And if copying is the most sincere form of flattery, just check out the crowded field of smart phones as we enter the second decade of the 21st century.

I would love to hear from anyone who has more knowledge of the early history of iPhones with cell phone carriers so I could confirm if there was a “Decca” amongst those companies the other Apple corporation approached and do they regret not signing “Stevie and the Saints.”

(P.S. Basit, do you recall the buzz in 2006 and 2007 regarding cell phone companies and apple?  Steve, note the plug for your old band.)

Originally written on Jan. 2, 2011.

A Sirius Discussion of Orion

A recent photograph of the night sky posted by my nephew Jacob contained an excellent view of the constellation Orion and, at his heels like a good hunting dog, Sirius the Dog Star. That got me thinking about my past. I’ve always had a deep interest in Astronomy, and I own several astronomical telescopes. This meshed with another discussion I had recently regarding mid-life (or maybe in my case more “late-life”) crisis. I contended that the so-called “mid-life crisis” occurred when an individual first realized that they were not going to accomplish the goals that they had held since adolescence. Since my goal from about the age of eight was to be a scientist, and since I think I accomplished that goal, therefore, using modus ponens, I am incapable of having a mid-life or late-life crisis.

Now as you gentle readers know, I usually describe myself as an engineer, but that is certainly a scientific title, even if it is more on the practical application side of the spectrum. In fact, at one point in my IBM career, my official title was “engineer/scientist.” On the other hand, my current official title is “senior technical staff member.” Try to figure out what you are from that title! But let’s go back, back, back …

My earliest recollections were when I was about eight years old. I knew then I wanted to be a scientist. My first love was astronomy. That sprinkled with a little physics. (I was intrigued by aspects of Einstein’s theory relative to traveling faster than the speed of light. I’ll discuss that little episode in some other note. It was natural, however, to associate that speed of light with astronomy since the distance to the stars is often measure in the distance light can travel in one year, a “light year.”)

The clear skies of Montana were very conducive to a young observer, and I collected astronomy texts from the library and started to learn the names of stars and constellations, which are collections of stars that appear to form patterns.

In 1956, at the age of nine, I was somewhat sidetracked when Doctor Arthur Howard from Stanford University spent the summer at my parent’s motel doing geological research in the central Montana mountains. He and I spent many lazy afternoons walking the nearby hills and looking at rocks. He later sent me a geology text book. I think that may have been my first book, as up to then I had only borrowed books from the library. (I still have the book and the price is written on the back cover, $4.95, for this Guide to Practical Geology copyright 1955. Just ask Joel or Mark how much college texts have gone up in the 55 years since then.)

Geology did fit with my mother’s deep interest in archeology, and I followed that path for a very short time before becoming interested in electronics and ham radio. That too is a story for another note. I did return to geology somewhat when I graduated from High School and I attended the Montana School of Mines (renamed before I started as “Montana Tech”) for one year, but that was more an act of desperation by a young man who had abandoned his scientific pursuits as he chased wine, women, and song — and not necessarily in that order. I think I went to Montana Tech more to please my dad than to become a geologist.



As you all know, I only spent one year in college at Butte before quiting to spent a few years sowing wild oats in Great Falls, Compton, White Sulphur Springs, and Libby before enlisting in the Navy to study electronics. That led to my career in electronics and teaching and completed with a Bachelor of Science in Electronics Engineering followed by my employment at IBM. One thing followed another and I added math, physics, and computer science to the mix. I had intended to go to Stanford and get a Ph.D., but, again, that’s a story for another time.

I never lost my interest in astronomy, and it was often a favorite discussion topic for me. I remember when I first met our good friends, Steve and Sandi Quintana. At that time they were not married and Steve worked with me at IBM. They came to the house for dinner and I recall taking them out on the back deck and naming all the constellations and stars in the sky. Regardless of that nerdly introduction, Steve and Sandi became our dearest friends.

When I first saw Jacob’s photograph, I was thinking about an upcoming astronomical event, and I recommended to Jacob that he check out the pre-dawn sky on Monday, January 10, for an excellent view of a close planet Venus. In addition, the planet Mercury would also appear quite brightly on that day, although very low on the horizon. Since both Venus and Mercury are closer to the Sun than the Earth, they appear alternating in the morning sky or the evening night sky. At its closest approach to Earth, Venus is only about 40 million miles away. At other times in the year it is clear across on the other side of the Sun and over 200 million miles. So Monday is a good time to view Venus due to its close approach.

I then looked again at his photograph and instantly recognized my old friend, the constellation Orion also known as "The Hunter." It is the most recognizable of all the constellations in my opinion. I always think of it as a giant letter “K.” It contains many fascinating stars and astronomical objects, and is a great subject for discussion … at least I think so. Following right behind Orion, as I mentioned previously, is the brightest star in the sky, Sirius of the constellation Canus Major, the “big dog.” So, naturally, Sirius is called the Dog Star and is a well known companion of Orion.

Let’s talk about Constellations. They are simply patterns of stars that observers for centuries have associated together, sort of like connect the dots, and often have mythological origins and fascinating histories. Orion is usually drawn with a spear or shield held out in front, but the more obvious parts of the constellation represent the two arms and the two legs with a belt across the middle and a sword hanging from the belt.

Let’s start with Orion’s Belt, a series of three, almost identically brilliant stars, in a nice straight, equidistant, line. The belt is an example of an “asterism.”  An asterism is any collection of stars in a simple pattern. Basically an asterism is simpler and smaller than a constellation. Orion’s Belt is the central object of the constellation, and — as I said — is well known for the balance of the three stars. That is their equidistant and straight line appearance as well as the equal apparent brightness.

Now there are two things you should know about stars and constellations in the sky. First is the issue of brightness or as it is technically known, apparent magnitude. Apparent magnitude is a combination of two things: absolute magnitude — how bright the star actually is, and distance from the Earth.

Sirius is a fairly bright star, but there are many, many other stars in the sky that we know have a much higher absolute magnitude. Sirius is about 25 times more luminous than our sun or Sol, but Rigel, a star in Orion, is about 85,000 times brighter than Sol. The primary reason for the apparent brightness of Sirius is its relative closeness to Earth.  It is only about 9 light years away, while Rigel is 700 to 900 light years from Earth. Sirius is actually a star formation. That is it is two (or maybe even three — the jury is still out) stars orbiting around each other. The larger, called Sirius A is white, main sequence star being orbited by a red dwarf. Some researchers think that orbital variations indicate a third star in orbit even smaller than Sirius B.

And what of the stars in the Belt? Well, that is the other thing about constellations. We see them as associated patterns in the sky, but that does not mean they are connected in any way. One star in the constellation may be very close to us while another may be far, far away. The only association is that we see the combination of the light from these bodies in the night sky as stable patterns that rotate through the year as the Earth moves about its orbit around the Sun.

In fact, that is one reason these bodies were so studied by the ancients. They were used to tell time and seasons. The rising of the Dog Star was an indication that the annual floods of the Nile river were about to begin. That and the fact that the ancients had no television are the reasons mankind has looked to the night sky since the very beginning.

The three stars that make up the Belt appear the same brightness and to be in a very precise alignment, yet one is 800 light years from Earth and about 100,000 times more luminous than the sun, and one is nearly twice as far from Earth and about 375,000 times more luminous than the sun. But from our perspective, they all appear about the same. But in reality, there is no connection between these three stars. They just appear in a nice line to our eyes.

In addition to distance and luminance, the stars are all moving in different directions. That means that, in a million years, the constellations will have all changed as the stars move apart. The current configuration of stars now known as the constellation of Orion formed roughly about 1.5 million years ago, as stars move relatively slowly from the perspective of Earth. Orion will remain recognizable in the night sky for the next 1 to 2 million years, making it one of the longest observable constellations, parallel to the rise of human civilization. The Big Dipper, on the other hand, contains stars moving rapidly in relation to our vantage point. In 50,000 years the Dipper will no longer exist as we know it, but be re-formed into a new Dipper facing the opposite way.

Hanging from Orion’s belt is Orion’s Sword made up of several stars and other objects. One of the brighter objects in the sword is not a star at all, but a nebula. Now nebulas are giant clouds of thin gas. (The Orion Nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across.) The cloud is heated up by energy from stars and so it glows. At about 1300 light years away, Orion Nebula is the closest and most studied of all the nebula. I’m sure you will recognize pictures of it. Further, it contains the Horse Head Nebula, another common astrological photograph.



The four stars that make up the arms and legs of the hunter (or the lines of the “K”) are Betelgeuse, a red giant star nearing the end of its life, Rigel, a blue super giant which is the sixth brightest star in the sky, plus Bellatrix and Saiph.

So when you combine the interesting and easily discerned pattern of Orion with its many bright stars and interesting asterisms, it becomes a very noticeable constellation. Add that to the fact it is high in the early evening sky during winter in North America, and I suspect it is a very common experience for viewing.

Jacob said he was looking for the Big Dipper, another asterism which is part of Ursa Major — The Big Bear, and famous for pointing at Polaris, the Pole Star. But he could not find it. I’m sure that in his home state of Alaska, the dipper is very prominent. But I’m not surprised that, in Mississippi, his camera seemed to seek out Orion.

So that’s your astronomy lesson for today readers. Tune in to this channel next week for another winter topic, such as snow shoveling. Meanwhile, I’m going to put on a heavy coat, and break out the 8” Reflector for a peek at Venus on Monday morning. It will be in half phase and very observable. Maybe someone on Venus will be doing the same! I had better wave!!

 

Originally written on Jan. 9, 2011.

The Road Not Taken

On the way to work Wednesday morning, I had my car stereo set on “play all.” That is a random play function like the iTunes DJ; the system picks tracks off the hard disk in random order. It began to play “Dragons are Too Seldom,” a song written by my friend William Weinacht about loss of childhood innocence. As I turned the lyrics over in my mind it made me think about a Longfellow poem I had set to music back before Linda and I married. Since Longfellow and so many other poets from that era were New Englanders, that made me think about my old navy buddy, David Woodman — Woody. He was from Bristol, New Hampshire near Laconia and Lake Winnipesaukee.

Funny how memory works. It is a lot like those demonstrations using dominoes that you see on TV. They set them all up and then knock over the first and it knocks over the second, and so forth. Fancy trails are made out of the dominoes as they fall one by one. Beautiful patterns are produced as the dominoes cascade into each other and appear to walk across the room. That is what happened to me. I thought about cold and snow — it has been below freezing here all week — and the fireside poets of New England, so named because they often included fires in their poems. Longfellow is such a poet as are Lowell, Whittier, Bryant and Holmes. Oddly, they are not held in as great esteem as other American poets such as Robert Frost or Edgar Allen Poe. I had set Longfellow’s “Fire of Driftwood” to music long ago, and it always makes me think of Linda’s brother, Chuck, and the times we would play guitar and sing before the fireplace in our house on Sherman street.

Ah…, Frost, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” That poem popped into my head. It was a snowy Wednesday morning rather than evening, still that is how the dominoes fell. And then I thought of “The Road Not Taken.” Nothing to do with snow; nothing to do with fireplaces; it is a poem about decisions. That idea took root in my conscious and this essay is the result.

I’ve made some important decisions lately and there are more to be made. Of course, life is about decisions, some big some small. I often ponder how I reached this point in my life and trace back the key decisions that led me down one path or another. That is why Frost’s poem has always resonated with me. Lately the decisions have been big ones.

In May I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The results of a blood test had shown my prostate specific antigen (PSA) had increased so a biopsy of my prostate was performed in the doctor’s office. The tiny needles found that 60-70% of my prostate on both sides was cancerous.

With prostate cancer, there are several courses of treatment to choose from. You can select surgery and have the prostate removed. There are different types such as open surgery or laparoscopic or robotic. There are radiation treatments including external beam and brachytherapy using radioactive seeds. There are also chemical and hormonal treatments or a non-treatment called “watchful waiting.” There are other new and experimental methods too that involve freezing the prostate.

After considering the decision carefully, doing a lot of internet information review, talking to my insurance company, and seeking several doctors’ opinions, I was ready to decide. I even met with Chuck’s doctor and family friend in Alaska to get a general opinion of proposed treatments. When you ask a specialist such as a surgeon for an opinion, it will often be “to have the surgery.” That is why I sought out advice from other area specialist and generalists and spoke with many patients who had gone through the process I decided to have the surgery using the new daVinci robot. This is a procedure done through several small incisions in the belly. The doctor sits at the machine viewing through a stereo TV camera inserted into one of the incisions. He uses “waldos” which are hand manipulation devices to remotely control the miniature tools inserted into other incisions and removes your prostate.

An advantage of using the robot is the quick recovery since there is very little blood loss and the incisions are all less than one inch except for a single two inch cut. There are always dangers with surgery ranging from infection and reaction to anesthesia to very serious problems with blood loss or blood clots. There are also several nasty side-effects including loss of continence and loss of sexual function. One big advantage of surgery is that, if the cancer does reappear later (indicated by the continuing PSA blood tests), then you can do follow up treatment with radiation. If you do radiation first, you can’t do surgery later.

In Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” the dilemma is less dramatic.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

A simple decision, which road to take? The poet peers down one road as far as he can see until it disappears around a bend. Being one traveler, he can’t send out scouts to track both trails. That might have been what Lewis and Clark would have done when exploring the great American Northwest. Again, not so serious a decision in this case, still the poet takes the time to consider the choices.

So I chose the surgery. I sought out one of the best surgeons in Colorado. Some recommended a visit to Mayo Clinic or even better would be the university hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, home of the greatest expertise in Urology and Prostate surgery. I consulted with a professor at University of California. He is a leading expert on the robot surgery and charged $500 for a 30 minute telephone consultation. I ended up following the advice of my family doctor and my urologist to have the surgery done locally. This was both because it is a common procedure, and you can recover locally and that simplifies post operative treatment.

I chose a doctor with the large Urology Center of the Rockies based in Ft. Collins and had the operation at the new Medical Center of the Rockies located near Loveland. One factor in my decision was that this doctor and his assistant had done hundreds of these procedures with the robot and that experience is key to success.

MCR is a modern facility with wonderful staff, and I was home the day after the surgery and recovering quickly. Although the daVinci Robot is new technology, over 2,000 operations using it have been performed at MCR, so they were experienced. There was so little pain I was quite amazed at how quickly I recovered. I did not take any strong pain pills at all after the surgery. They gave me a spinal block prior to the surgery similar to what women get when delivering a baby, and afterword I only took simple aspirin like pain relievers for a few days. It was really amazing how little pain there was.

However, I was pretty uncomfortable for a while with a catheter and had to sleep on my back all night long. I got the catheter removed at ten days, and things got a lot better after that. I did not suffer the loss of continence, and for that I’m very grateful.

I made my decision, and it seemed that it was the right decision. At least things went well so far.

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

So the poet decides to take the road less traveled, hence the way most people remember this poem. However, this poem can be misleading. Robert Frost himself stated, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem — very tricky." Yes, the poet says the path he took was grassy and not worn, yet he says at the end of the stanza that, really, both were worn about the same. It is not the road less traveled, it is simply the road taken — a choice.

It was not an easy decision for me. I have over half a dozen friends that were in the same situation. Two old friends from the navy have recently had prostate surgery, the father of another friend chose surgery some five years ago, and I know two people at work, one who went with the surgery and one who had the radioactive seeds implanted in the prostate. There are different paths to choose.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men with about one in seven affected. Doctors say that, if we lived long enough, all men would develop prostate cancer. Fortunately it is a slow growing cancer with effective cures, and, if discovered in a person in their seventies or eighties, it is possible that no treatment or “watchful waiting” would be the recommended path.

I chose the surgery since I was healthy and able to withstand the assault on my body and it seemed the choice with the best outcome. Key was the fact that you held in reserve radiation treatments in case of a recurrence. The trouble is that you don’t have a crystal ball to gaze into the future and determine the result. A nasty side effect that occurs in only 5% of all patients is a 100% probability if it happens to you. The odds can guide the decision, but they don’t guarantee the outcome.

That is something I understood clearly. My current job is to analyze data statistically and predict outcomes and identify trends. So I know how to do the math, and I’m aware of the gambler’s paradox and other limitations of statistics. Statistics are a way to analyze outcomes with a large group. If 1,000 patients have surgery, then typically, 50 will have a particular side effect. That tells you the likelihood that this will occur in an individual case, but you can be one of the 50. Rare events do occur; they just occur rarely.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

Again the poet states that the two choices were about equal. In fact, no-one had taken either road recently as the leaves were not disturbed on either path. In life we can sometimes chose one choice, and then get a second chance to take the other path. For example, although I’m disturbed by the high level of divorce in modern society, I recognize that many second marriages turn out to be much wiser choices with happier results. Still Frost knows that, with the twists and turns of life — or a path chosen — it is unlikely he’ll be back to try the second way.

Another advantage to prostate surgery over radiation is that the removed tissue can be examined. This is called a pathology report. The prostate is frozen and then sliced into tiny slivers. Each of these is then examined under the microscope by a specialist. The biopsy is done with twelve little needles and only samples small areas of the gland. The pathology examines everything.

When my surgeon gave me the pathology report, it was not good. It showed that the cancer had spread beyond the “capsule” of the prostate. There was good news in that it appeared that the surgeons had gotten all the cancer since they routinely remove a little more tissue around the gland called “margins.” The pathology report indicated the cancer had been completely contained in the margins. However, due to the fact the cancer had escaped the prostate, my diagnosis was elevated from stage one cancer to stage three. That moves me into a different statistical group which does not have as positive of results as the stage one group.

Based on these results, my surgeon recommended I have external beam radiation treatments focused on the area where the prostate was removed. He planned that treatment for April to give my body the opportunity to heal from the surgery, so I had time to examine the options. My research verified the reason for his recommendation and indicated that the final results and probability of no recurrence of the cancer was statistically higher in men who had immediate follow-up radiation treatment.

However, the radiation treatment itself has several disadvantages. First are side effects of incontinence and impotence — same as the surgery although these problems don’t usually appear until 12 months after the radiation treatment. If they do occur, they can be more severe than the effects of the surgery. Further there is a danger of the radiation actually causing cancer as well as other undesirable side effects. Another decision to be made.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

This is the tricky part of Frost’s poem. Most recall the final two lines which would seem to indicate that the author chose the path less traveled, an analogy for choosing a life of some eccentricity instead of following the beaten path, and that had made all the difference which assumes a positive outcome. Most think Frost is saying to take the less traveled path in life for greater satisfaction.

But read more carefully. He switches to the future tense. At some point in the future he will be telling this tale with a sigh. Ages and ages will pass before he’ll know the outcome of his decision. And what about the “sigh?” Is it a sigh of regret or a sigh of contentment? That is what is tricky about this poem. Robert Frost is really saying that we make choices in our lives, chose this path or that, and we may not know the result until ages and ages hence.

I have to tell you frankly, I didn’t want to do the radiation treatment. It is lengthy, every day for four to eight weeks, although the individual treatments are less than 30 minutes. Near the end of such treatment regime you are fatigued. Plus there are all the side effects. Finally, you can only perform radiation treatment once. If I have the treatment now, and the cancer still reoccurs, I am left with fewer options.

So I again did my research and sought out one of the most experienced Urological Oncologist in Colorado. He is a professor at the University Hospital and is author of 38 articles and books on prostate cancer. I met with him in December and he took all my medical and surgical records and a CD with the pictures from the pathology and a team of doctor’s reviewed the information. I met with him this Monday and he stated that the odds are better if you do the radiation treatment now, but only a little bit better. He said that, in my case, it would be acceptable to do “watchful waiting.” That means that I’ll have the PSA blood test several times a year and we’ll use a very sensitive version of the test. If my PSA starts to increase (it is near zero now since my prostate has been removed) even a little bit, then I’ll have the radiation treatment and possibly chemo too.

I’ve check the statistics. Here is the data. Even with a clean pathology report that the cancer had not escaped there is a 10 – 30% chance of recurrence, and in my case with the large tumor size, I’m at the higher end of that number. So as many as 30% of men with my surgery suffer a recurrence. Of those, about 50% have the recurrence in the first three years and 19% after year five. So the odds are that I’ll be having radiation in any case. As Frost so correctly noted, it will be with a “sigh” somewhere in ages hence that I’ll know if I took the correct path. Meanwhile I’ll be watching and waiting and having regular blood tests.

Did I make the right decisions? Time will tell.

Originally written on Jan. 13, 2011.

I've Been Everywhere

I just finished teaching in Romania what will likely be my last professional class in my career. It is precisely for the reasons of reminiscing and creating a sort of memoir of my life that I’ve been writing these blogs. So it is time to talk about my teaching career and especially my travels delivering classes. Last night we had the grandkids over, and I gave Alyssa my collection of coins I had gathered in my travels. She started asking me about the countries and this essay was born. (She asked my wife, Linda, how to tell the Chinese coins from the Japanese coins. Linda answered, read the writing on them. :-D )

I started my teaching career in 1968. I was attending Navy electronics school, and I was asked if I would teach “night study.” This was a two hour session Monday through Thursday. Since I had always wanted to be a teacher, I jumped at the opportunity. For twelve weeks I would learn electronics during the day and then teach the same thing that night to the students who were struggling. I learned a lot about explaining things different ways to fit individual learning styles. Since the instructor typically learns more than the students, I ended my Navy training with near perfect scores.

I had been in the Navy, at that point, about six or eight months. So I was a paid employee. However, up to that time, all I had done was go to boot camp and technical schools. I had not really produced anything. Therefore, this night study class I taught represents my first actual work for the Navy. It was the start of my paid teaching career.

This was really the start of my career in general — any career. Prior to that I had jobs, some pretty nice, such as working in my dad’s grocery store and with the Bureau of Land Management in fire suppression, but not a career. Now I was in the Navy and attending electronics technical school studying the field that I would spend my life pursuing. Therefore, this was the actual starting moment of my life-long career.

I had always enjoyed explaining things. A story for another time is how I used a special record maker machine my parents gave me as a gift. My first recording was not a musical composition, but rather a short lecture on the impact of Einstein’s special theory of relativity on travel faster than the speed of light. I was about ten years old at the time!

I did not do any more teaching, after that short night study stint, for the rest of my Navy career. Following my discharge from the Navy, I moved to Colorado and was working for an aerospace company in Boulder. My old Navy buddy, Woody (David Woodman), moved here and he was looking for a job. He had a degree in math and was interested in a teaching job. The state employment agency recommended a job at the “Electronics Technical Institute” (ETI) in Denver. Woody wanted to teach math, not electronics, so he suggested I apply. I did and was hired.

Since I had a First Class Commercial FCC (Federal Communications Commission) license, I started out teaching FCC License Preparation. I expanded my teaching to other topics including communication theory and radio electronics and even taught a special class on microwave communications. I think I’m a natural teacher. I was a big hit with the students who often said they found my classes the most enjoyable in the school. The school was very happy with my work, since some of my classes were in addition to the regular school’s two year curriculum and students were taking these classes due to my reputation. That meant extra income for the school. I loved to teach, so everyone was happy.

I think, deep down inside, I really wanted to be an entertainer and take the stage. However, my skills on keyboard and guitar and my singing (very reminiscent of frog croaking) were never going to get me a paid gig. Therefore, I suspect, teaching and being the star in front of the class was the best I could accomplish. Anyone who has been in my class will tell you the jokes flow freely, mostly at my expense. I try to make learning fun … it’s a blast for me!

While I was at ETI, I took on some special assignments, such as teaching basic radio theory to the dispatchers at the Denver Fire Department communications center. Through the connection of the former technical director of ETI, who was then the head of the electronics department at Metropolitan State College of Denver, I soon found myself teaching at Metro in the evenings. I mostly taught digital engineering courses at Metro, but I taught a few other classes on solid state electronics and semiconductor physics.

I had been at ETI for about five years when Linda and I got married and began planning a family. Since neither ETI nor Metro had great medical insurance, we were living in Longmont and I was making the 40 mile (80 mile round trip) commute to Denver every day, I began to look elsewhere for employment.

I ended up interviewing at IBM in Boulder and took a job as a tester in the copier manufacturing line. I was quickly promoted and was soon a test engineer working in disk drive manufacturing and magnetic recording head development. The manufacture of thin film heads was a new situation in Boulder and most electronics engineers are not specialized in magnetism. Since I was a graduate student in physics at the University of Colorado, I was asked to develop a class on magnetism. I got the assistance of a draftsman who used CADCAM to create wonderful illustrations of the magnetic domains and lines of force for the course materials. I created transparencies and taught several short classes to my fellow engineers and technicians.

It was about this time that the IBM PC was announced. Based on my previous experience with Radio Shack and Apple computers, I was soon teaching classes on using the IBM PC. This was entirely a volunteer effort on my part, but I had the extra time and IBM had the need, so I began teaching classes regularly to the entire site: executives, managers, employees, contractors, everybody. This became one of the most popular courses in Boulder site education. I taught people how to use the Personal Computer, VisiCalc (a very popular spreadsheet program that predated Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel), word processors (like EasyWriter or WordStar), and other productivity tools. At this point I wasn’t teaching “programmers” as much as “users.”

One of my students was on the school board. He asked IBM if he could obtain my services. Next thing you know I was teaching at Ft. Lupton Middle School one day a week. I taught students in the gifted and talented program. I also taught the teachers how to use their Apple II computers to maintain records of student’s grades using VisiCalc, develop curriculum and educational plans, and select appropriate educational software.

So, by this time, I was teaching regular classes at IBM Boulder on using the PC and spending every Tuesday in Ft. Lupton, while still performing my “day job” of testing disk drives.

Then, one day, a manager from IBM Technical Education visited Boulder. He asked the site education manager if he knew any possible instructors for IBM’s new programmer training curriculum which was being developed on the IBM PC. He recommended me, I interviewed, and the next thing I knew I was in Austin, Texas, teaching the first class of the “brand new,” fifteen week long Programming Fundamentals (PF). This was a course that was intended to be the start of a complete programmer retraining curriculum. In those days, IBM did not lay anyone off. If your old job went away, then IBM would train you for a new job. (That WAS the good old days.) Due to the high need for programmers, IBM planned to retrain people with that skill.

Programming Fundamentals was just a part of the overall curriculum. IBM already had a “University Level Computer Science Program” (ULCS) which was a series of five day, very intense classes taught by university faculty from the best schools in the country. There were 23 classes in all. This curriculum was developed during the ‘70’s to fill a need. Computer Science was a new discipline and IBM’s experienced programmers typically had degrees in math or physics or engineering rather than Comp. Sci. IBM wanted to be sure their programmers had the latest knowledge of computer science taught in universities, so the ULCS program was developed. It was taught at off-site conference centers all around the country and attended by thousands of IBM programmers during its twenty year life. (I later attended ULCS as a student and graduated from that program in 1992.)

IBM Technical Education developed a curriculum consisting of Programming Fundamentals followed by appropriate ULCS classes, plus various short classes on programming languages, operating systems, and other IBM technical topics. All together this curriculum was one to two years in length depending if students went full-time or part-time. IBM Education hired five university professors to write the entire 15 week Programming Fundamentals course. I was hired to teach the first class along with two other IBM instructors who had taught the old training course. The previous course used the IBM mainframe in the labs and an internal IBM programming language, but the new Programming Fundamentals would use the PC and Pascal. I was hired as the PC expert to complete the “faculty” of the PF training core; plus I had taken some Pascal classes while working on my Master’s in Math at CU making me a good fit for the job.

But I was an engineer, not a programmer.  This was the start of my transition from teacher/engineer to teacher/programmer. I learned a lot of computer science by teaching the classes. Everyone knows the teacher learns the most, and that became my motto as I worked with university faculty and experienced programmers. I started reading every programming book I could find. To this day, I have one of the finest software engineering libraries in northern Colorado. Come over some time and borrow a book.

After teaching the first class in Austin, we traveled to Rochester, Minnesota, where we taught the second PF class. Following these two pilot classes, we returned to Austin, Texas, to modify and improve the course materials. The professors who originally authored the course had done a good job, but we saw many areas for improvement now that we had taught the class twice. I worked with Dan Smith and other education experts to revise the PF class, shortening it to 13 weeks and putting more IBM work knowledge into the course. My special focus was on rewriting all the lab assignments making them more complete and precise as well as rewriting all the exams (there was one every week) adding instructor notes and grading guidelines.

At that time my manager was located in Austin, so I spent a lot of time there. Coincidently, my next two managers were also in Austin, while our organization was spread out all across the U.S. So we had many long department meetings, conferences, and work sessions in Austin. In addition, since it is a very large IBM site, I taught a lot of classes in Austin. I like Austin, know the city well, and it is an easy flight from Denver.  Austin became a sort of second home. When there was the possibility that IBM Boulder would close, my plan was to transfer to Austin. Love the “Salt Lick” barbeque, love sixth street live music, love the mild weather, just LOVE that city!

The PF revision effort finished just in time because IBM Boulder was making major mission changes and switching from hardware manufacturing to software development. IBM initiated a training program in Boulder that ultimately grew to 26 Programming Fundamentals classes. My next stop was back to Boulder to teach the first PF class there and to train additional instructors from the Boulder site. I ended up teaching three of these first classes in Boulder in 1986 and 1987. I often substituted for PF instructors on vacation for the next three years. To this day, I work side by side with many of my former students.

Meanwhile, programmer retraining was expanding at all IBM sites. I quit teaching the course and started just teaching the instructors. We would hire junior college computer instructors and local IBM programmers. I taught them a two week course called Teach the Teachers or T3. In this class we would show them how to use the materials to teach the course. They already knew Pascal and other computer science topics. I was busy improving labs and quizzes and really getting deep into educational theory. I led the effort to rewrite all the course materials using the powerful IBM publishing system called “BookMaster.” I created and edited course materials into single computer files which would print “Student Notebooks,” “Instructor Guides,” and other specialized documents. The power of BookMaster was you could have single source files and the document produced was based on commands given at print time. I became a real expert in using IBM generalized markup languages for formatting of books and other documents.

I hired various consultants in educational psychology and graphic design to help develop course materials. We performed a thorough validation of the course objectives and materials matching them to actual programmer tasks. Since graduating from this curriculum could lead to promotions and pay increases, we had to work with human resources to make sure our course was not discriminatory and that what we taught and tested was really what was required on the job.

It was during this time that I wrote two textbooks on mathematics which were used as prerequisites to the programmer retraining curriculum. I learned a lot about computer typesetting, especially of complex mathematical notation. I had two interns working with me full time; we wrote and published the two books in less than six months. They were then used in the introductory computer math sections of the training. (We had learned that students needed some refreshing of their math skills before embarking on the curriculum.)

Although I don’t have a degree in education, I did attend education classes at Vanderbilt and Harvard, as well at educational classes at CU and CSU during this time. I became very qualified as an instructor and instructional designer. IBM education was not only my employer, but also sent me to a lot of training. It was a rich and rewarding time for me. I was soaking up the learning like a sponge and adding even more books to my library. My manager would give me a $1,000 budget every December for me to purchase personal books. I became a good customer at the local college bookstores and technical book outlets. (Much later, in 1996, I purchased my first book from Amazon.com, becoming one of their first customers.)

Soon I was traveling internationally to Germany to supervise their deployment of PF and train instructors. I also went to San Juan, Puerto Rico to teach the faculty at Universidad de Puerto Rico. The Universidad were very interested in our course due to its high completion rate. As good IBM customers, the corporation agreed to provide them with the PF course materials and flew Dan Smith and me down for several weeks of meetings and training.

After about five years, the demand for PF began to wane. I started teaching other, short classes. I joined an IBM Technical Education organization called the Computer Science and Software Engineering Training group. I started traveling and teaching quality classes such as software inspection and software testing, as well as software engineering, object-oriented programming, and other topics. These classes were two to four or five days in length.

My first class was in Charlotte, North Carolina, teaching formal software inspection techniques. Directly from Charlotte, I flew to Toronto, Canada, and taught the class a second time. I was teaching classes that I had not originally written, but I soon started to modify and improve these courses using my new skills with IBM publishing tools and my recent knowledge of instructional design. I also purchased more books!

Thus began my travel to all the IBM sites teaching programmers how to do their jobs better. Because of the success of these classes, I was soon invited to teach to customers. That opened up many new cities for me to deliver courses. I taught a few classes outside the US, but it wasn’t until the next step in my career that I became a real globe trotter.

I am very happy that, when my passport expired and I had to send it in to get it renewed, the government returned the old, “canceled” passport. It is a colorful reminder of all the nations I visited, full of stamps and visas and work permits. I had already taught in Canada and Germany, but now my travels began across the vast Pacific Ocean. I taught first in Japan, then in Korea, Singapore, China, and Australia. These all involved 20 hour plane rides, but fortunately we were allowed to fly business class, so it was comfortable. In earlier days the planes would stop in Hawaii or Alaska to refuel, but by the time I was making the trip the new model 747-400 could make the trip from L.A. to Japan in one hop.

It was during this time that I took a year off from travel to develop a completely new and revised Software Testing Curriculum consisting of four different courses that could be combined in various ways. I had a small staff of interns and one administrative assistant, as well as several vendor organizations producing graphic arts for the class materials. I still use those materials to this day. Upon completion of the course design, I took that material “on the road.” I became a regular at the IBM European Education Center in La Hupe, Belgium, and my passport began to fill up.

My teaching began to take on more of a flavor of consulting. Instead of just teaching a fixed curriculum, I would go to IBM sites and customers to analyze their software development issues. I suggested improved processes, especially in the area of software engineering, software inspections, and testing.

I spent several weeks in Charlotte, N.C. helping them with a quality issue with the new Check Image software. I shared my earlier experiences with “computer vision” while developing a complete inspection process for their programmers and teaching classes on quality improvement techniques. I did similar work at IBM Store Systems in Raleigh, N.C.

IBM Global Services was a new IBM business enterprise; it was rapidly growing as they provided consultants and technical services to other companies. I was asked to join a group in New York working on a new consulting methodology called “Worldwide Solution Design and Delivery Methodology” or WSDDM — pronounced “wisdom.” I worked with the other methodologists and developed and documented the testing methodology called “Full Lifecycle Testing.” Upon completion of this work we had to roll out this methodology world wide. I started traveling the globe teaching these IBM consultants and project managers. At one point I left from New York City, flew to La Hupe, Belgium, where I taught European students for three weeks. Our team then flew on to Singapore where we taught the Asia Pacific IBMers. I returned via San Francisco. So, like Phileas Fogg, I’ve been around the world, although in less than 80 days. Since I crossed over the International Date Line, I am either a day older or a day younger than everyone else born on my birthday. I’ve never figured out which.

Over the years I visited many foreign countries, always teaching in English. Some countries, such as Japan or Taiwan, had strong English skills. My Korean students, on the other hand, were weak in English, so I had the double duty of teaching the technical topic and translating as well. I like to use a lot of analogies in my presentations and describe technical issues several ways, so I would just keep explaining something until the students understood the words I used. I remember students from Vietnam flipping through their dictionaries as I went through my lessons. Of course, in Australia, language was less of an issue.

Following the roll out of WSDDM, IBM decided to establish a permanent training facility at their corporate headquarters in Armonk, New York, to train Global Services professional new hires. I helped develop the curriculum and began teaching a two week class in Armonk. After the class ended, I would then go home for a week and return for the next session. That was fun because there were a large number of instructors and we would go into the city on the weekend. I really got to know and love New York City.

After a couple of years, due to the high demand for this class with all the new consultants IBM was hiring, they eliminated the week off and started running the two week classes back to back. I didn’t want to relocate to New York. During all this time of travel and remote assignments, I had kept my office and abode in Colorado. So I resigned from that assignment and started teaching Information Engineering for a manager out of Dallas, Texas. This got me into a different kind of training where, instead of teaching at company development and manufacturing sites, I began teaching at IBM’s education centers in Dallas and Atlanta.

When I was in Technical Education teaching at IBM development labs and sites with thousands of employees, our motto was “travel the instructor, not the students.” All the sites had classrooms and local education staff that supported me when I came to town to teach. In service education, since that was for IBMers located all over the country in small branch offices, IBM had two large education centers with nearby hotels, many classrooms, and other fancy facilities such as television studios. It was in Atlanta that I taught classes broadcast on the IBM Educational Television Network or ETN. That is another whole story that I’ll save for later. I would teach the Information Engineering classes at these education centers and the students would travel to attend.

Throughout all this time, I had developed a reputation all across IBM as an expert on Quality. I was soon invited to join IBM’s premier quality organization, “Quality through Software Engineering.” I became a consultant rather than a teacher, traveling to sites to troubleshoot quality issues and recommend changes in processes and improvements in techniques. I spoke at conventions and conferences sponsored by IBM, the IEEE, ACM, and special testing organizations such as the SQE conference and certification organizations like the ASTOB and the IIST. (I’m giving up translating all the acronyms. Just check them on Google.)

Finally, by 1998, I grew tired of the travel and being away from home. Plus I wanted to go back to school and study Computer Science. I could not do that with all the travel. So I interviewed for a job with the IBM Printing Systems Division (PSD) in Boulder doing what I usually did as a consultant. Ironically, although the name had changed, PSD was really where I had started 25 years earlier testing copiers in Boulder. I took on the job of managing the software testing of PSD’s flagship product, InfoPrint Manager. I no longer had to travel except now and then to attend and sometimes present at conferences. I would go to a half dozen meetings and conferences a year, but no more international travel. I stayed home most weeks. I did go to some trade shows and visited a few customer sites, but I was no longer on first name basis with all the flight attendants flying out of Denver.

Naturally, once employed in the steady, no travel, job at IBM Boulder, I quickly resumed my teaching. First it was the deployment of ISO 9001:2000 for PSD. I developed and taught classes to all the employees as we prepared for that certification. I also taught regular software testing courses to my own employees. I encouraged regular meetings to improve our skills by mutually sharing and presenting on various technical subjects. I was often the presenter.

I did take a temporary assignment with IBM Research in 2003, and I was back on the road teaching IBMers how to use Orthogonal Defect Classification (ODC) — don’t ask! Linda was retired by this point. She got to travel with me to San Jose, Los Angeles, and Boston as I taught and consulted with IBM organization on the use of this defect classification system.

These classes gave me additional exposure within the PSD organization. This exposure had always been one of the reasons for my success within IBM. Like any big organization, it is often difficult to get noticed. You were more likely to become known due to a screw up on your part than on some success. Life is often like that. Because of my travel and teaching, I developed a reputation for knowledge and expertise that often led me to new opportunities.

It was no different once I had settled in to the PSD culture. I had been a senior engineer for over eight years. That is typically the top of the ladder for a technical person. To obtain any further advancement, most engineers have to switch to management and start climbing that ladder. IBM, on the other hand, has a technical ladder with a few more rungs above senior engineer.

After leading the development organization to a successful ISO certification and deploying ODC, both done primarily by me teaching classes to the entire organization, I was promoted to “Senior Technical Staff Member” or STSM. It is a strange title, but a great job. Basically I am a technical executive. It is my responsibility to guide the technical direction of the company. That means I study options, make predictions about the future direction of technology, and advise top management. If you would say that the top executives steer the ship, I am the one reading the maps and doing the navigating.

By the way, STSM is not the top rung of the ladder. IBM has an even higher position called “Distinguished Engineer.” Among those DEs are “IBM Fellows.” There are about 150 IBM Fellows in all of IBM for the last 50 years. You become a Fellow by doing something extraordinarily special. For example, my friend Joan Mitchel is a Fellow based on her work defining both JPEG and MPEG as part of an industry wide task force. It is a position you are appointed to by the IBM CEO. The list of Fellows is like a who's who of technology.Fellows include Harlan Mills, John Backus, Gene Amdahl, Edgar Codd, Benoît Mandelbrot, and Grady Booch. A google search of any of those distinguished scientists will yield a history of computers. I don't think my accomplishments are on equal with this august group.

There is an organization called the “IBM Academy of Technology” which these top technical people are in. One of the Academy’s key concerns is technical vitality. I was a member of one of the Academy’s sponsored organizations called the “Boulder Technical Vitality Council” (TVC). The TVC sponsored weekly one-hour presentation taught in the Boulder cafeteria. The presentations are attended by people from all the divisions on the site. I presented regularly on areas I was interested in from “Quality Predictive Indicators,” to “Leadership and Driving Change,” to “One Laptop Per Child.” Eventually I was elected the chairman of the council for a two year term.

I attended the Academy’s annual conferences which were held in Toronto, Canada, and Chicago, Illinois the two years I was chairman of the TVC. I was very impressed with the Academy and made several personal contacts. That is important because the final technical promotion at IBM is not done by management, but by the Academy. I was hoping they would invite me to join. I don’t know if I would have ever gotten that last promotion if I had remained at IBM. There are only 350 total IBMers in the Academy at one time, and it is a fixed size organization. However, since these are very senior technical people, there is a steady stream of Academy members retiring from IBM, so there are openings every year. You had to be nominated by three members of the Academy, and then the body would vote on you.

Unfortunately, in 2007, IBM sold Printing Systems Division to Ricoh, so I lost my opportunity. There was a three year joint venture period in which I worked for both companies. Since June of 2010, I am no longer part of IBM. I plan full retirement from my present company in a couple of months, so this week’s classes on software static analysis in Romania will be my last teaching assignment.

Or, perhaps not … who can predict what lies down the road? I may return to the university as either a student or an instructor. No-one should think they are too old to learn or to teach. I can’t predict what will happen to me next, but it has been a good ride. Along the way, I’ve traveled to a lot of places in the US and abroad. Sort of reminds me of the old song I listened to working in my dad’s store back in Lewistown, Montana: “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

As a young kid who had barely been out of the state, who knew I would end up in these places.

I was totin' my pack along the long dusty Winnemucca road,
When along came a semi with a high an' canvas-covered load.
"If you're goin' to Winnemucca, Mack, with me you can ride."
And so I climbed into the cab and then I settled down inside.
He asked me if I'd seen a road with so much dust and sand.
And I said, "Listen, I've traveled every road in this here land!

I've been everywhere, man.
I've been everywhere, man.
Crossed the desert's bare, man.
I've breathed the mountain air, man.
Of travel I've had my share, man.
I've been everywhere.

I've taught at:
Great lakes, Illinois (US Navy)
Denver, Colorado (ETI, Metropolitan State College of Denver)
Boulder, Colorado (IBM)
Ft Lupton, Colorado (St. Vrain Valley School District)
Austin, Texas
Rochester, Minnesota
Charlotte, North Carolina
Toronto, Canada
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
Raleigh, North Carolina
San Jose, California
San Francisco, California
San Juan, Puerto Rico (Universidad de Puerto Rico)
Santa Teresa, California
Salt lake City, Utah
Miami, Florida
Markham, Canada
Kansas City, Missouri (Hertz Rent-a-Car)
St Louis, Missouri (Fairchild Aviation)
Singapore
Sidney, Australia
Grand Rapids, Michigan (Foremost Insurance)
Beoblingon, Germany
Binghamton, New York
Yamato, Japan
New York City, New York
Endicott, New York
Armonk, New York
Atlanta, Georgia (Coca-Cola, IBM)
Albuquerque, New Mexico (US Department of Energy)
Seattle, Washington
Springfield, Illinois
Palo Alto, California
Portland, Oregon (Informix)
Parsippany, New Jersey (Prudential Insurance)
Poughkeepsie, New York
Dallas, Texas
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (Hertz)
Los Angeles, California (Rite-Aid Pharmacy)
La Hupe, Belgium
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington, Massachusetts
Tokyo, Japan
Tucson, Arizona
Tampa Bay, Florida
Taipei, Taiwan
Thornwood, New York
Chicago, Illinois (Schlumberger)
Copenhagen, Denmark
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Milpitas, California (Tivoli)
Manassas, Virginia
Melbourne, Australia
White Plains, New York
Washington, DC (AutoCAD, Orotek, IIST)
Boston, Massachusetts
Thousand Oaks, California
Oakland, California
Timisoara, Romania

I’ve been everywhere!

Originally written on Jan. 29, 2011.