The US presidential election was a great success for progressive America. Let’s see if the change moniker bear itself as true.

If Obama is able implement a fair health care system here in The States, I’ll label him a success. Living without a health system in the US is truly living on the edge. My brother had a heart attack about a year ago and was uninsured. He now owes about $500k. My wife and I are currently uninsured but Vada is covered be the state of California.

The step back however was Prop 8. It’s bewildering that a simple majority can change a state’s constitution. Hopefully, the courts will also find this so. It seems as if the courts and the constitution should be there to protect the minority from the majority.

I’m happy to see the backers of the proposition are seeing some backlash now.

Here is an entertaining article about the whole thing.

Annika, Vada and I went to vote this morning at The Rec Center around the corner. I’m the only one allowed to vote, however. We waited in line about 20 minutes. That’s definitely not long but it’s the longest I’ve ever waited around here. So it seems like turn out is good.

There were a couple machines but about 20 booths to fill out paper ballots. Last time it was just the opposite. Glad to see the paper ballots taking preference.

Well, now we wait till the evening. We are all going to an election/pizza party at a friends.

Hoping for an Obama win and Prop 8 defeat. May the day end festively!

Only a couple weeks left till the election. I’m getting excited. I’ll be so happy when this thing is over. I waste way too much time reading and watching election (non-)news.

Just saw this video for the first time. Extremely well done.

Obama ‘08 - Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

Btw, my daughter was born on May 31, 2008. Her name is Vada and she is wonderful. She sleeps all night and spreads joy and poop everywhere she goes.

I’m now at San Diego State University majoring in Computer Engineering and taking way to many courses for a new father. Gotta get finished, though.

Before I go… Something to laugh at.

Well, it’s been forever since my last post. School, life and laziness have combined to cause me to completely neglect my blog. No apologies, though. I’m plowing through school and hope to be finished in the next 2 or so years.

Well, the biggest change is that Annika and I are having a baby in 4 weeks. We don’t care to know if it’s a boy or a girl but so far things are going wonderfully and we are looking forward to starting our family.

In preparation for our new family, I’ve changed my name. I’m now Christopher Wilson Kuehl. So I took Annika’s last name as it’s easy to pronounce in both German and English whereas Wilson can give Germans difficulty. Also, I like to buck patriarchal traditions. And who would pass up the chance to be Chris Kuehl (pronounced “cool” slightly wrongly by English speakers).

Also, I got accepted to San Diego State University where I’ll be working towards a degree in Computer Engineering starting next Fall. I’ve really enjoyed the time at San Diego City College. Most of the professors are great and I’ve had the chance and will continue to work with a lot of great people on the AUV project.

Ok, time to stop procrastinating and get studying for my Circuit Analysis exam in the morning.

It appears that digg has been blocked by the San Diego City College District for the last couple weeks. I’ve tried accessing it from City College and Mesa College with the same result. After a minute or so I get the “The connection has timed out” page. I’ve not tried it from Miramar.

Other sites that are a lot less informative are still accessible: Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, etc.

Of course, getting around the block is trivial. Just find a free proxy site and read digg all you want. Unfortunately, digging doesn’t seem to work.

Update: digg it!

This is the xorg.conf file as generated from the Live CD.

# xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Tonight I went to see the Padres play the D-backs. They were down 8 to 0 but almost came back. The game ended 8-7. Now they are only 1 game out of first place. I went with Annika and Matthias, a friend from Berlin. It was his first baseball game but he quickly caught on. By the end of the game he had all the basics down. He goes back to Berlin on Saturday.

Even though they lost ,it was the most exciting one I’ve seen this year. We were seated behind the left-field wall.

This is rant. You’ve been warned. This will hopefully be the last time I ever mention Pacific Nautilus on this blog. Also this is my personal opinion and may or may not be representative of the San Diego City College Robotics Engineering Club and its members. For background read my last post.

It looks like Pacific Nautilus is trying to assemble another team. Actually, when I say Pacific Nautilus it should be clarified that I mean Chris Carter. There is no one, to my knowledge that is still apart of his pseudo-organization. For a second year in a row, an entire team has left Chris. So when Chris writes “we” he is being optimistic. Let me detail why this year’s team left him.

During the first day of the competition Chris and I were the only ones actually at the facility from our team. The first two days are set aside for testing and is also when you have to actually qualify for a spot in the competition. Like many schools, we were having some problems. During this time, there were various people coming around to see what teams were doing and asking questions. While I was trying to trouble shoot the problems and eventually fix them he took every opportunity to tell each and every person that passed how “they”, meaning the team, “wouldn’t listen” to him and hadn’t “kept it simple.” After hearing this 5 times, I was extremely irritated. After 20+ times I was infuriated. Still, I said nothing. I wanted to keep everything as professional as possible. Basically, I was there for 12 hours trying and eventually getting the sub to work all while Chris stood around and talked shit about the work that the rest of the team and myself had put hours upon hours into.

The next day the sub was working and with a few quirks we made it straight through the gate to qualify. At this point Chris starts to change his tone. Instead of “they” he starts to include himself in the teams work by using “we.”

Now lets talk about sponsors. I had identified a source on the Internet for possible sponsorship of hydrophones. I gave Chris the information and he contacted the organization and eventually the guy in charge. This turned out to be a gold mind. The guy made us a set of 4 custom-made, matching hydrophones. he also sent us an adjustable pinger made to match what was used in the competition. Now, however, our team has no hydrophones nor a pinger. These are all in Chris’ possession and, although I’m sure the sponsor was donating them to “the team,” we have no access to these because instead of donating them to the Club they (we believe) were donated to Pacific Nautilus. The same thing happened to a $2500 camera that was donated to the team.

The main difference between Chris and the other team members is that he wanted to have ownership of everything. He wanted to have City College pay for as many things as possible (shirts, entry fee, etc) but he wanted Pacific Nautilus to own the Sub. I and many others wanted to be apart of a project that the next generation of students could work on. Chris hated the idea that what he started could later be controlled by someone else. I had the feeling the entire time that Chris would not be apart of a project of which he was not the leader. We had and have an extremely good team but Chris was never interested in being a team player and I therefore don’t consider him to ever have been apart of “the team”. He was interested only in being the leader.

So now let’s talk about the Pacific Nautilus website. There, Chris lauds the achievement of 2007 team for placing 11th out of 27th. I’d like to correct him. We actually placed 9th as the there was a error in tallying the final score. This will be officially corrected soon. He also lists a fictitious UCSD team which he has been talking about for a year. Chris uses area schools to make Pacific Nautilus sound more reputable. He falsely represents Pacific Nautilus as being somehow in cooperation with San Diego academic institutions. In reality, Pacific Nautilus acted as a barrier in the case of our team. City College was extremely wary of this outside organization that would offer no written agreements. The Club tried on several occasions to get Pacific Nautilus’ relationship with the Club formalized in writing. Chris never wanted this and it never happened. Having formal agreements didn’t allow Chris the flexibility to take his ball and go home. Now that we have completely broke with Pacific Nautilus (and I’m sure because of our success), the school is more willing to offer support.

After a certain point we, the team, all kinda decided that we would put off the politics in order to put together a working sub for the competition. We knew it wasn’t going to be pretty once we expressed to Chris that we no longer desired to have him in charge. We actually never got around to telling him that due to the somewhat dramatic conclusion to the competition.

Wow, this is getting long. Even though I have more to say, I think I’ll cut it short here.

In closing, if you’d like to join or sponsor one of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle teams in San Diego, you’ve got 2 legitimate teams to choose from: The first team that broke from Pacific Nautilus - San Diego iBotics or the second team that broke with Pacific Nautilus (my team) - San Diego City College Robotics Engineering Club.

Update: We actually placed 9th out of 27 teams. There was an error in the tabulation of the final scores stating we placed 11th. This will soon be changed on the competition website.

This year I and some friends from San Diego City College Robotics Engineering Club took part in the AUV Competition here in San Diego. For the uninitiated, this is an international event that has some of the top engineering schools in the country, and a few abroad, competing against each other. The goal is to build an autonomous vehicle that can navigate an underwater course and carry out specified tasks.

This year our entry, The Seahorse, did extremely well. While the final results have not yet been posted we heard from a good course that we were 11th out of 28. This is exceptional considering that the entries that placed around us had about $20,000 invested in their subs while we spent about $3,000. Additionally, we won the award for Most Improved entry. This year we easily passed through the gate almost every single time and came within inches of surfacing in the octagon several times. We are currently planning for next years event and are confident that we can place even higher.

Our team has also severed ties with Pacific Nautilus. After the close of the event, Chris Carter, who IS Pacific Nautilus, tried to usurp control of the sub although City College and our various team members have receipts for almost every part. After a slight altercation, the sub was taken by the event coordinators. Our Dean of Engineering contacted the event coordinators and the sub is, or very soon will be back in the hands of the school. Thus, it will be available to us for next year’s event. The one or two parts that may belong to Pacific Nautilus will be returned once ownership is clear.

Unfortunately, the products that our sponsors donated - the custom-made hydrophones and titanium underwater camera - are currently in the possession of Chris Carter/Pacific Nautilus. We will soon be in contact with said sponsors in order to let them know what has happened to the products that they intended for the team.

This is the second year in a row that Chris Carter has lost an entire team. The other team reformed as San Diego iBotics and competed in this years event as well. Although it is tempting to join forces, it is obvious that our teams have differing design philosophies. We do wish to cooperate with them in the future, however.