Neanderthals, New Roof, and Back to School

So I went to Arlington, VA for a business trip recently and had a little time to kill before my flight departed the next day, so I took an Uber over to the National Mall area and saw many of the monuments. It was actually my first time visiting that area. Of the few things I saw, I was most struck by the words of Abraham Lincoln inscribed next to his monument. I was impressed that his words could resonate with me considering the time and cultural gap between our times in this country. Needless to say, for me this was all in stark contrast to the lack of that kind of leadership today, which was both depressing and motivating at the same time. It makes me want to participate more in our world, in conversations about difficult problems and how to solve them, in our societal choices, etc.

I was also struck by the exhibit at the Natural History museum on the evolutionary origins of modern humans. On a more lighthearted note this is apparently what AI says I would look like at a Neanderthal. Anyways, learning about our distant evolutionary ancestors just had me thinking about the plan of salvation and how God may have allowed certain events to come to pass to produce a species capable of housing the His spiritual offspring. At least for me, it seemed enlightening at the time.

In other news, Emily continues to be cute and has started walking around, which is pretty terrifying honestly.

We also now have a new roof, and it looks great. Now we are just waiting to have funds dispersed from our lender, we just sent them the endorsed checks from insurance. We want to take care of the interior water damage and window replacement with the remaining part of those funds, but we have to wait until the case that the attorney started is settled, which hopefully will be in the next month or so.

Today was Natalie's second day of 2nd grade and Angela's first day of Kindergarten. They are both pretty excited and positive about school so far, it's been a whole 1.5 days. 

Even though I think they'll both have fun and learn at school, this is what they really want to be doing. FYI, N64 Super Smash bros. spans multiple generations. FYI, I can easily beat Sarah and both girls on one team against me.

Lastly, a bit on my career development. I love my job, and would be totally happy continuing my career in optical engineering for the defense industry if there were options to move anywhere I'd like. After recently considering some options, I really think it would be best for us to be located in NC closer to family of whom can be a support to us and to whom we can support. There have been some other work opportunities that could have materialized but didn't because they weren't exactly the right fit. It has to be the right fit because I really don't want to be in the business of moving my family around on every whim, it's stressful for everyone involved, especially as the kids are now getting older and making friends in school. 

The main issue I have with the optics and photonics industry is that there really are only a few places in this country that support the work for which I'm both qualified and interested, i.e. it's a pretty small field. Looking around me though I see that Machine Learning (ML) and Computer Vision (CV) are skills that are in much higher demand with open job reqs in Raleigh/Durham and pretty much any major city as these disciplines are being applied in almost every field imaginable. It's scary to consider a complete change of field, after all, I am now a senior optical engineer and subject matter expert in a large defense company and if I applied cold for one of these positions I would not likely be at the same level of seniority or pay grade. 

L3Harris has activity applying ML and CV currently, so a better strategy for me will be to inject myself into those projects to gain experience quickly and then market myself as an expert who understands both sides of the camera, the hardware optics and electronics as well as the software in delivering information products through ML and CV. With this skill set I think it might be great to work for Teledyne Scientific Imaging out of Durham which is an international company serving both commercial and defense industries. Another option would be Leica Microsystems or another company doing biomedical optics and imaging research (again they only have reqs for people with ML/CV backgrounds). 

Later in life, after the girls move out, I would likely want to see if I could move into academia and secure a professorship. I would do this now, in fact, academia would be a way for us to have greater geographic flexibility. However, Sarah's biggest complaint is that when I am doing research full time (as opposed to industry where I can balance some research with development work) it is too tempting for me to be swept away in solving all the world's optics problems and our life balance, or lack thereof, suffers. Maybe when the girls are gone I can find a way to balance that passion with my passion for my relationship with Sarah, but for now it's just not really possible, so I need to stick with opportunities in large companies as we now know that that seems to work okay for us.

That's enough for tonight.