Also...

Luciana has graciously forced me to admit that she had correctly chosen Joe Biden as the VP candidate weeks in advance. Yes, she was right all along. Although, I thought there was a chance Hillary could be chosen. However, I will note we were both wrong on the Republican VP candidate. Anyway, I will blog later on McCain's pick and the DNC.

OK

Sarah Palin it is... then...Ok Luciana and I were both off..so we'll call this one a draw...

Back in Illinois

Well, I'm back in the great state of Illinois, and the great public institution the University of Illinois. To all my friends around the world, and across the US, I hope you are all doing well.

I will Blog later on Barack's speech and the election, and a few other things..but for now I'm going to call the VP nomination for McCain I believe it will be Tim Pawlenty.

Lets see if I'm right or wrong. If I'm wrong my bets are on Romney.

Shawn

Panda Diplomacy

It turns out Pandas too can be used in the diplomatic process. The UK has been negotiating with China over the loan of two Giant Pandas to the Edinburgh Zoo. I looked up the price of what a typical Panda "loan" runs, apparently approximately 1 million dollars a year, seems sorta pricey.

Taiwan recently announced they would also accept a pair of the attention grabbing bears, as a symbolic representation of their friendship. Even though in my opinion I think there's a fairly non-existent relationship between them and mainland China. I'm not sure how I feel about the Pandas traveling abroad from their native habitat. The way I look at it, if you want to see Pandas go to China to see them. However, if the Edinburgh Zoo can help in preventing the Panda from going extinct through their conservation programs, a trip to the UK might just be worth it.

In closing due to the fact my blog has a higher readership level than vliang's blog, I am now the undisputed Panda expert. Liang, I concede still has the music, which she tells me you should thank her for giving everyone good music. Maybe slightly better styling, and commentary on paper sizes. Hey, Viv where did you get that cool domain name?But you can't beat me at insightful blogging.....cheya...cheya..

On Taiwan Pandas, and On Panda Negotiations in the UK

Guo Jingjing the Princess of Diving

BEIJING - Move over Michael Phelps you may have won 8 gold medals, but Guo Jingjing has won the name contest. Guo recently won the sixth gold medal of her career, effectively making her the most successful female diver in history. I caught the replay of the women's three-metre springboard, and I have to say she was quite impressive. The look of confidence on her face when she walks on the diving board is impossible to miss. She executed all her dives flawlessly through every round.

I decided to check her back story out, turns out she is a pretty animated athlete. As you can see from the montage above, Jingjing doesn't do too bad at modeling either. She is one of the most controversial athletes on the Chinese Olympics team due to her brash interactions with the Chinese press, and her high profile relationships. Undeniably however, she sure knows how to silence her critics. Hats off to you Guo Jingjing you've got it all, the catchy name, the looks, and the medals.

Hurricane Watch

Potentially a hurricane could hit in the next 48 hours. If you look at these images the top image is what the expected path should be. The bottom is satellite imagery of the storm. If your viewing this in gmail just click the allow pictures option.

Finished at Moto and Some Advice

I'm finally done at Motorola. I emptied out my cube, and packed my belongings into a cardboard box, turned in my badge and said my goodbyes. I guess, I was a little sad to leave the company yesterday.

I tend to get emotionally attached to people and places, and things I suppose. My view into corporate America was an interesting one I learned a lot, but I also had a lot of fun. Most of the people I got to work with were smart, good hearted individuals. I have no regrets, I'll always be grateful to the company and my boss for the opportunity.

But I do have some general advice I'd like to give you. No one is ever going to come up to you and tell you to do something unless you take the initiative. So for me, I asked as many questions as I could, and I wanted to learn as much as I could about Electrical Engineering as a profession. I read as many company documents as I could. Took free training, networked, and tried to beat the expectations of a first year intern. I will say this I did learn one important thing, you have to like what you do, and put your heart into it, or otherwise your not going to be very good at it.

At the risk of sounding narcissistic, most of you that know me well, have come to realize I hate settling for second place. I want to be the best at what I do, I want people to come and say oh yea that kid Shawn Adderly he was one of the best. I admit I don't always work as hard as I should, but I try my best. So for now Motorola, I bid you farewell.

Georgia vs. Russia and media bias

Most people in the US have never heard of Georgia, no I'm not referring to that southern state, but Georgia the country. Georgia is located in Eastern Europe, sharing borders with Armenia, Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan. Georgia is also one of the strongest allies of the United States in Iraq.

Recently Georgia launched a military operation to take back South Ossetia a breakaway region. Georgia claims that separatists attacked Georgian villages, and therefore they are responding by hunting down those separatist in a full-scale war. The death toll is estimated to be in the hundreds since fighting began, many innocent women and children have been killed by artilery fire or aerial offenses. Russia has entered the war by defending South Ossetia against the Georgian army. This has escalated the violence greatly, Russia may absorb South Ossetia into the Russian federation, while Georgia is attempting to prevent this. A cease-fire maybe near since early this morning, Georgian troops have pull out of the South Ossetian capital.

Particularly what I found interesting about the coverage of this small-scale war in comparison to the conflict in Iraq, is the number of graphic images available of this plight. Its quite interesting you might say, when you think about Iraq which has an estimated death toll of anywhere from 400,000 to 600,000 Iraqis killed, and 4,119 US troops killed since July 2008. Yet, there are no images of such detail returning to US television screens.

I don't like how we choose to desensitize things, war is war, its not pretty anywhere, if your going to get involved in one you better show people the consequences. You should show people what their kids will be paying back China for, since we borrowed over a trillion dollars to finance the war in Iraq from the Chinese. This is really a roll on the floor laughing moment, the US's economy is sagging and we are putting ourselves in debt with a country that US is unsure of its long term goals.

Like I said before, and I will say again sometime the truth is hard to handle, but if you can't handle it your a coward. I agree sometime there is no other option, as was the case in Afghanistan, and the first gulf war. Even then those wars were no less deadly, innocent people still died and soldiers were killed, in war you simply cannot avoid such facts.

I encourage you to go to the msnbc story on Georgian war, and click on the launch slideshow option.

Russian jets attack Georgian city as battles rage

A Few more things on Beijing 2008

The first thing I forgot to mention was the fact Taiwan, is known as Chinese Taipei during the opening ceremony. They were not allowed to parade with their actual national flag, but they used a Chinese Taipei team flag. This apparently falls under the One China policy, were they do not recognize Taiwan as a entity by itself.

Lastly, the Chinese used rain dispersal rockets as my friend Jenny brought to my attention. Basically they load these rockets with special chemicals to induce raining before the clouds can reach downtown Beijing. The Chinese have also been experimenting with "cloud seeding", which entails creating clouds and consequentially rain to clear the skies of smog. Beijing plans to keep many factories closed and take over half of the city's cars off the road to reduce pollution.

Beijing 2008

Last night, all eyes were on Beijing for the opening ceremony of the twenty-ninth Olympiad. The Chinese showed the world, that they know how to put on a show. Zhang Yimou a Chinese Oscar nominated film director, was put in charge of the massive production. The imagery was quite powerful, pointing out many important moments in Chinese history such as Confucianism, and the invention of writing.

The use of technology was very noticeable in the ceremony, with massive flexible LCD screens used to create amazing mosaics of moving images. By using the LCD allowed Yimou to change the scenery to fit each skit. It was almost cinematic in some regards.

Initially this paper was a blank sheet, according to the announcers this was done symbolically to tell the world to not make assumptions about China yet.

Overall, I enjoyed the ceremony very much including the breath taking lighting of the torch moment. Essentially the final torch bearer runs around the top edge of the stadium held by guide wires to light the torch. The Chinese did a very good job of showcasing themselves to the world. No doubt as you may have read in my previous blog posts, China is a country on the rise. Of course China has many problems that impedes the country from being the ideal place to live. Yet, you can't help but think what remains in the future for a country that has over one billion people, and is changing at an improbable speed. No one would have ever imagined China would be hosting the Olympics twenty years ago, China then was a hard-line communist nation living in the past. Now Beijing and Shanghai are modern concrete jungle meccas, with new skyscrapers going up daily. If Chinese would take more responsibility on human rights, and provide the people with the freedoms they deserve, China could be one of the world's shining jewels.

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera. ~Lewis Hine

Well not quite a picture, but the comic does tell a story.

From xkcd..

Hello Moto

Well so I have to say, now that I'm almost done with my first real engineering job. Motorola is a cool hip company to work for. Engineers don't have a dress code, most days I just wear jeans and T-shirt to work, a lot of people wear flip-flops everyday. My work schedule is pretty flexible too. Overall its a very forward moving company.

My co-workers are very helpful, smart people, and most of them are in their early 30s or mid-20s. Its a nice working environment. They all have very interesting hobbies and are not just engineers but people that have solid outside interest. Just like my interest in politics and photography, one engineer happens to be very good at pottery, another has a passion for high performance cars.

Motorola has a design center on every continent except Antarctica. China, Brazil, and Malaysia have massive factories. What amazes me is the global reach of the company, and guys we don't just make cell phones we make a lot more things. Its pretty fun to have a job that allows you to be creative.

Motorola recently shocked the market with the fact they made a profit in Q2. Moto is coming back baby. These headlines are all equally lame, but true:

Hold off on the eulogy for Motorola
Motorola dials up unexpected profit on cell phone sales
Motorola accidentally makes a profit
Surprise! Motorola posts profit
Motorola rings up a surprise profit

IMPORTANT: Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, and not necessarily that of Motorola.