This is Mingus. He’s my cat. When he was just a few weeks old, he flew onboard a Northwest Airlines cargo flight from Minneapolis to Boston, where my roommate Jawad picked him up at the airport and brought him to me.

He was a tiny baby.

Now he’s a giant. This is normal, since he’s a Ragdoll, one of the largest cat breeds. Although he could probably afford to lose a few pounds.

He’s super friendly, though territorial around other cats. He gets along well with my sister’s chihuahuas, since he could easily swat them down – he’s about twice their size.

Most of the time, he just loafs around the house. He likes to stare out the window, and he likes to play with a laser pointer. When he isn’t eating, he’s probably puking. Again, normal for ragdolls, since they have long hair. For some strange reason, he likes to lick plastic bags before and after puking (which is a nice way to alert me that I’ve got some cleaning to do). He also likes to wake me up at 3am when his food dish needs filling. He does this by punching me in the face. Literally.

I love cats, especially Minguses.

For some time now, I have been wanting to move back to pursuing my passion of music. This job, then, is something of a godsend: it combines my love of music with my background in online communities. I cannot express how exciting this possibility is, an opportunity to really dig in to changing the way that artists and fans interact.

I’d like to send a special personal thank you to everyone at the X PRIZE Foundation who has made my past year and a half amazing. You are the lifeblood of this organization, and without you, the wheels would fall off. Keep on fighting the good fight.

And a huge thank you to everyone who helped me along the way. You are not the shoulders of giants. You are rockets under my feet.

Rock and roll

Minnesoterica

After one too many nights out discussing the essential merits of the Minnesota State Fair to the uninitiated, I decided there needed to be a place for anyone and everyone to share their bizarre, beautiful, and baffling stories about the great state of Minnesota. (For those who don’t know, that’s where I grew up.) The site is built on Ning, and open to the public. It hasn’t been populated with enough media or people yet, but it is growing.

Twirts

Twirts is simple idea: put your Twitter handle on your T-shirt. I found myself telling people my Twitter handle so much, that it just made sense to wear it around with me everywhere. Shirts start at $18.95 for American Apparel 100% cotton. Just put in your handle and go!

Then just yesterday I received the most recent copy of WIRED Magazine, guest edited by J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost and the upcoming Star Trek movie. I had previously seen his incredible talk at TED, and was extremely impressed by the WIRED issue, which is designed much like the pulpy comics I used to read as a kid. Inside were tales of wonder and amusement (amazement?), and those hilarious and tricky puzzles that I would slave over in the back of my Boys Life Magazines (not to mention those eye-catching ads for mail-order instructions on how to build your own hovercraft).

I got to thinking about imagination, and the increasingly rare breed of person who dedicates their life to creating the elusive and unique emotion we call wonder. People like Walt Disney and J.J. Abrams are artists and thinkers, but most of all they are magicians, creating in their lives and their work the sense of disbelief and astonishment that we once felt as children, waking up to an entirely new world. As an adult, it is easy to feel that the world has been worn thin by the repetitive motions of daily existence, but these magic makers strive to recapture wonder, if even just for a brief period.

Please help me add to my list of magic makers, of wonder creators, of those who devote their lives to recapturing the joy of viewing the world through the candy-coated eyes of a child, of not understanding everything and not necessarily wanting to. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Well, as I am an avid collector of music, you better believe that I never parted ways with my old tapes. I’ve still got a couple of cases full of them. Many are commercially pressed recordings, ranging from Deep Purple to Jimi Hendrix (during that horrible phase where the Hendrix estate lost control of his music and they started “remastering” studio outtakes by overdubbing studio musicians).

But of course, I also have a bunch of mixtapes.

I couldn’t let all this great music go to waste! So I went to Craigslist and found myself a boombox for 20 bucks. Has a CD player, tape deck, and even an aux input (so I can make tapes from my MP3s). Heaven.

Here’s a bizarre gem of a tape I created for my middle school band, 2000 Flushes. We used to make tapes so we could learn the tunes. And since we’d never learn all the tunes on a given tape, I’d throw on a bunch of other stuff. I admit the tracklist here is pretty random, but rest assured these are all good songs on some level. Or maybe that’s just my 14 year old self talking.

The phrase “Fuck this, I’m moving to Lebanon” was some kind of inside joke I had in middle school. I really have no good explanation. The sticker on the outside of the tape remained intact.

And just for posterity, here’s the tracklist:

Side A
The Descendents – I’m The One
Stealers Wheel – Stuck in the Middle With You
Smashing Pumpkins – Disarm
Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby
Phish – Waste
Tool – Stinkfist
Spain – Untitled #1
Rage Against the Machine – People of the Sun
Elastica – Connection
The Jayhawks – Blue
The Jayhawks – I’d Run Away
Lenny Kravitz – Are You Gonna Go My Way?

Side B
Ben Folds Five – Julianne
Barenaked Ladies – If I Had $1000000
Blur – Song Number 2
Deee-Lite – Groove is in the Heart
The Offspring – Gone Away
Van Morrison – Wild Night
Jim Croce – Bad Bad Leroy Brown
Toad The Wet Sprocket – Walk on the Ocean (incorrectly labeled)
The Buggles – Video Killed the Radio Star
Soul Coughing – Super Bon Bon
Goldfinger – Here in My Bedroom
Cake – Rock & Roll Lifestyle
Semisonic – F.N.T.
The Refreshments – Banditos (cuts off)

I usually try to avoid politics in most of my online communications, for various reasons.  Make no mistake, politics is very much a vital and important part of my life, but I strongly prefer not to discuss on the Internet.  And so it is with some reluctance that I am even writing this post.  But perhaps I should back up a little: this is a post about music.

On Sunday morning, I was driving to the office to pick up some things I had forgotten, when I flipped on NPR to hear the introduction to the presidential inauguration celebration concert, We Are One.  The introduction was led by a plain-voiced disc jockey who had an excellent script, but what struck me was the content: Barack Obama’s ten favorite songs.

1. ‘Ready or Not’ Fugees
2. ‘What’s Going On’ Marvin Gaye
3. ‘I’m On Fire’ Bruce Springsteen
4. ‘Gimme Shelter’ Rolling Stones
5. ‘Sinnerman’ Nina Simone
6. ‘Touch the Sky’ Kanye West
7. ‘You’d Be So Easy to Love’ Frank Sinatra
8. ‘Think’ Aretha Franklin
9. ‘City of Blinding Lights’ U2
10. ‘Yes We Can’ Will.i.am

Now I’ve never actually met Barack Obama, and I can hardly claim to know his musical taste, but I’m fairly certain that this list is not literally his ten favorite songs.  Indeed several of these songs played very important roles in his campaign.  ‘City of Blinding Lights’ was played as Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention a year ago, and Will.i.am’s YouTube megahit ‘Yes We Can’ stands as one of the finest examples of Obama’s viral and online campaign strategy.  Some of the songs here are just plain puzzling; ‘You’d Be So Easy To Love’ might be a great song, but I have a real hard time picturing Mr. Obama singing along to it.

None of those songs struck me the way ‘Ready or Not’ did.  Driving down Slauson, I literally broke down in tears.  I had to pull my car over to prevent an accident.  And I’m not exaggerating.

How could a song like ‘Ready or Not’ – a hit from my high school days, back before Wyclef sold out and Lauryn Hill dropped off the planet – possibly have this effect on me?  The song was released in 1996, just as Clinton was being elected for a second term.  The lyrics are, well, for lack of a better term, gangsta…

Now that I escape, sleepwalker awake
Those who could relate know the world ain’t cake
Jail bars ain’t golden gates
Those who fake, they break,
When they meet their 400 pound mate
If I could rule the world
Everyone would have a gun in the ghetto of course
When giddyupin’ on their horse
I Kick a rhyme drinkin’ moonshine
I pour a sip on the concrete, for the deceased
But no don’t weep, Wyclef’s in a state of sleep
Thinkin’ ’bout the robbery that I did last week.
Money in the bag, banker looked like a drag
I want to play with pelicans from here to Baghdad
Gun blast, think fast, I think I’m hit
My girl pinched my hips to see if I still exist.
I think not, I’ll send a letter to my friends,
A born again hooligan only to be king again.

How is it that this song was chosen as one of Barack Obama’s top ten favorite songs?  What staffer allowed NPR to tell the world that a song about ghetto violence ranked among our new president’s sing-alongs like ‘Gimme Shelter’ and ‘Touch the Sky?’

The answer is simple, and powerful: we have a black president.

Let me tell you just how proud I am of this.  I didn’t break down in tears of rage, but tears of absolute pride.  For the first time in the history of this country, we finally have a government bold enough to connect with the culture that makes us American.  It isn’t about race or poverty or politics, it’s about the shared experiences that make us who we are and the art that ties it all together and speaks volumes to the real identity of our nation and its people.

‘What’s Goin’ On?’ is one of the preiminent protest songs of a generation.  It is, without a doubt, the most powerful statement against the Vietnam war put to music.  And here, an American president has admitted its importance in his life (it’s OK, Barack, your iPod thanks you, and so do we).  And alongside Marvin are tunes by Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin, songs of redemption and love and God and the imperfections of human beings.

I applaud you, Mr. President, for acknowledging the culture of America, unabashedly and unashamedly, multicultural as it is.

And so I leave you with my own sentiments, as expressed by the great Sam Cooke (after all, great songs should speak through you).  Indeed, it has been an awful long time comin’.

100 years ago this wouldn’t have happened.  People had homes then.

I’ve recently come to realize, again, that I have no home.  When I was 18 I left for college like most of my generation (this is itself a seismic shift), and after I completed it, I moved elsewhere.  I grew up in Minnesota, and I still call it “home,” but in reality I haven’t been home in over 8 years.

I went to school in Boston.  I spent 7 years there, earning my two degrees from MIT, and then promptly set out for the complete opposite side of the country.  I moved to Los Angeles, somewhat on a whim, and managed to settle down (I’ve got a good job and a decent apartment, though I’m still trying to figure out how to live with my sister).  And my friends are no different.  Even friends who went to school in Minnesota left promptly after graduation, moving to major cities like Chicago, New York, and San Francisco.

I should stress that this is not unusual anymore.  The ability to communicate cheaply over long distances (indeed worldwide, and even beyond that) has deteriorated the sense of home, the sense of place.  And I don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing.  But my how life has changed since I was a kid.

I’m about to head “home” for the holidays, and reflecting on a year of decisions I’ve made, both good and bad, and places I’ve been, I can say that while I have no home I am often glad to be a citizen of the world.  The people I’ve met, far and wide, have shaped my life in some amazing ways.  And for that I am eternally grateful.

See you in the new year.

it’s not just the rocket science that is difficult.  it’s the logistics.  it’s the politics.  it’s the bugs and quirks and anomalies that can cause catostrophic failure.  it’s the show-business.  it’s the pageantry.  it’s the stunning beauty of a machined nozzle spewing gas at ungodly temperature and pressure.  it’s the defeat.  it’s the victory.  it’s everything in between.

if i didn’t believe that i was making a difference in the world every single day, i would never keep doing what i do.

for your enjoyment, i present a video of what exactly i’ve been up to this past week.

while driving through the barren landscape of the new mexico desert, we stumbled upon an awesome oldies station (i think i heard maybe two commercials the entire trip).  and this little gem came on, which i hadn’t listened to in a long, long time.  i couldn’t help but post it here.

but what this eventually leads to is epiphany, closure, elation, or discovery.  in this particular case, i had a little of each.  as the week came to an end, i felt as though i had explored some new part of my life that i had thus far failed to recognize, and i’ve come to realize that although it may not be exactly what i imagined it was, i always have the ability to change it.

for fear of being even more vague and introspective, i’m going to change the subject (as i said, i only wanted to mention the tribulations of this past week as a means of record).  you see, after a long week at the office, when everybody is ready to just call it quits, it sometimes helps to lighten the mood a little.  here’s a sample:

that, my friends, is how you have a little fun at the office.

the good news is that after a week of busting my ass, i actually have something to show for it.  the northrop grumman lunar lander challenge is officially ON.  it’ll be held october 24-25 in las cruces, new mexico, and i’ll be there to supervise the webcast and any technology issues we have.  it should be a blast, and if nothing else i’ll get to see some rockets fly.  and there is very little cooler than flying rockets.

here’s a preview:

and just because i feel like it, here’s a little song i’ve been enjoying recently.  hope you like it too.