In the spirit of pursuing my own success, I posted this ad on Craigslist a couple weeks ago:

Got a Problem? I Can Solve It. (Willamette Valley Area)

Are you struggling with a problem and wish someone would help you solve it?

Then you should contact me; I specialize in solving problems.

My name is Ryan and I am offering my services to help you remove that thorn in your side. For the last two years I have been helping all sorts of people in the Willamette Valley area to solve their problems. Small business owners, students, farmers, teachers have all benefited from my particular talents. I can provide excellent references to serious inquirers.

If you are struggling with a technical or logistical issue, I have the know-how to tackle it. If there is a project that you just need to offload, then I can take it on for you. If you need a temporary extra set of hands, eyes, or brains then you need me.

My fee is quite affordable and is well worth the relief you’ll feel with my help. Initial consultations are free.

Contact me today so we can set a meeting and discuss the ways I can help you succeed and meet your goals.

It seems like a silly idea, maybe. Once I had the idea, though, I couldn’t not post it. While I didn’t expect anything to come of it, there was no harm, and only potential success, in putting the idea out there. So I did, then I turned my mind to other things.

Last weekend I was surprised to see a reply in my inbox–and it didn’t look like a phishing scam or a pyramid scheme! It was a simple message from a woman who was looking to hire someone to help her partner with a vinyl cutting machine. Instantly, my anxiety and self-doubt started gnawing at me, I don’t know anything about vinyl cutting machines, there’s no way I can do this, I’ll just have to tell them I’m too busy or that it’s outside my area of knowledge.

As I re-read the email and considered, a more measured, reasonable thought took over. If I wasn’t willing to take a chance on myself, why should I expect anyone else to? If I was just going to back-down from a challenging opportunity, why did I even post the ad? I didn’t currently know anything about vinyl cutters, but I had all the world’s knowledge at my fingertips. Surely I could learn enough to help them out. I responded tentatively and asked for more details about the project.

For the next couple of days, I emailed back and forth with the woman and found out more about the project. As I got more details, I began researching. I found out that it was an Ioline 100 vinyl cutter.
The Ioline website provided all sorts of manuals. I read up on how the machine worked and I read through the user guide for the software that is used to send designs to the machine. I watched a couple YouTube videos. I needed to charge a fee, and I just threw out $300; it was agreed to. We scheduled Wednesday morning for me to go out to her partner’s shop.

He turned out to be incredibly nice and very interesting. He had a frame jury-rigged around the cutter to guide the material, which was a non-standard, metallic stock of some kind. My job was to help him get the settings on the machine properly adjusted. He was going to be printing out perfect circles at volume, so he also needed a way to create the design files. That became the more complicated part. In the design software–Corel DRAW X5–it is possible to manually create a pattern of circles to be cut, but if he wanted to print upwards of a thousand circles manually was less than ideal. I only had a few hours at the shop that morning before I had to get to my students. I was able to get the hardware sorted out, but the software was another issue. In the couple hours I was there I gained some valuable hands-on experience. I agreed to come back Friday and finish up.

Over the next day I considered the issue. Ideally, he wanted to create a staggered grid of circles, so as to waste as little material as possible. I did some research and found that the design software did not natively have the ability to fill a space with shapes. Corel DRAW does support macros, though! So I went hunting for a macro. I found one that I thought I could get to maybe work. I wasn’t not looking forward to going in Friday with a solution that might only kind of work, though. As I looked into how to install and use the macro, I noticed that the macros didn’t look at all complicated to program. They were based on Visual Basic, which is a very easy language to use (though I had never used it myself) and the class structure of DRAW was very intuitively designed. Rather than try to re-purpose a macro that was designed to accomplish a different goal, I decided to build my own to do exactly what I needed.

I stayed up Thursday night and Friday morning and learned Visual Basic and DRAW’s API. Earlier that day, between students, I worked through the geometry of the problem and sketched out an algorithm. That night I implemented it. And it worked amazingly. I created a UI box where he could enter the size of circles he wanted and the spacing between them. He could then click OK and it filled the page with circles in staggered rows.

I was psyched and eager for the morning appointment that was only a few hours away.

When I got to his shop, I told him I had something he’d like. I got the macro all loaded and showed him; it was exactly what he was hoping for. It created the design files in a matter of seconds with basically no effort on his part. We sent the design to the cutter. It cut the first row. Awesome. It started on the second row, but I noticed it wasn’t staggered. Hmm. Neither was the third row. Then it went back and cut out the first staggered row. Oh! It was cutting them in the same order the macro created them in. As the blade glided around in a small circle amidst the circles that had already been cut, the material shifted, crinkled and then the feed jammed.

Discouraging. I removed the jam, reset the machine and sent the job back to the cutter. One row. Two rows and three. Then the first staggered row. Shift, crinkle, jam. At exactly the same point.

The holes in the material from the circles that were already cut were catching on the guide wheels as the material fed back and forth. Hmm. That was an issue. The only solution was to redesign my macro to place the circles in the order the machine would feed the material. So, I went to work on the revision.

I tested it, watching as the circles populated the page row by row. With the design fixed, I sent a test to the cutter. Again, the first row printed perfectly. I watched as it cut the first circle of the second row, staggered between two circles of the first row. I smiled. It moved to the second, then the third. I watched as the material skewed to the side, crinkled, and the machine jammed. I sent another test so I could watch what happened this time. Again, the wheels were catching on the material from the first row.

I just sat and thought for a few moments. I could not figure out what to do, beyond placing the circles further apart. But then what was the point of the staggered formation? Of course! That was the problem. If I just placed the circles in a regular grid, the previous row would not be close enough to catch on the guide wheels. I set down to modify my macro yet again. This time I threw out most of my beautiful mathematical processes that were necessary to correctly place the circles in the staggered rows. I replaced them with a straight-forward loop that created a simple x-by-y grid of circles.

This time, though, the machine cut out a perfect grid of circles. Success! I showed him how to use the macro and how to send the design files to the cutter. He was very pleased. He high-fived me. I asked him if I could use him as a reference for future clients, and he enthusiastically agreed.

Now, I just had to get paid. I had already agreed to accept a PayPal payment from his partner. I had sent an invoice earlier in the week. I called her and let her know that I was finished and that he was satisfied. She assured me that she’d send payment later in the evening. I was nervous about not accepting payment at the site, but they trusted me to fix their problem, I should trust them to pay me. I think it’s important to place trust in people. My trust was well-placed, I received the payment that evening!

So, I just earned $300 to help someone with an interesting project that allowed me to learn and challenge myself. They are better off, I’m better off. Now I can leverage this experience for future opportunities. I’m thankful they took a chance on me, and I’m proud of myself for getting past my anxiety and self-doubt. I’m now a professional problem-solving consultant.

What would it take to kill Facebook without something that is just as bad (go away G+)?

Illustration by David Simonds

First of all, email integration would be key. Ideally, existing email addresses could be routed through the new system, so it could act like an email client. Email is already an open communications protocol. Using existing email addresses is important because no one wants another email address to manage. We do, however, want to manage our communications from one place. This will ease the transition out of Facebook because everyone already uses email to some extent, and leaning on this dependable communications channel will ensure that people can stay connected during a years long migration period.

It has to have some sort of Aspects or Circles functionality. We need to be able to present different content to different audiences. Once we can differentiate who we share with, it is critical that the media sharing options be robust and flexible. Both of these qualities have been implemented in many different networks already, so this is actually the easy part.

A long-term advertising campaign is necessary to create and maintain awareness. Facebook doesn’t advertise because it doesn’t need to. A new platform doesn’t have that luxury. If this new network can impassion some creative people it can start a crowd-sourced advertising campaign. Create a theme, a core message, and then let users run with it. Ideally, this would be planned out with multistage messages encouraging joining, then migration.

Any new platform would have to compliment Facebook, but also stand on its own. Ideally, this service would need to add value to Facebook initially (à la Instagram), to encourage people to join it. Upon joining, though, users should find themselves jumping back over to Facebook with decreasing frequency.

Finally, the whole thing should be built with the mobile space in mind. Facebook’s weakness is it’s mobile presence. Facebook apps have historically been disappointing. Home, the newly announced Facebook mobile presence, may change this, but for right now, there is an opportunity for a social network to work better on mobile.

It’s no wonder it hasn’t happened. This all adds up to a daunting endeavor. Of course, any new platform needs to be open and decentralized, or else it is no better than Facebook at all. No one has successfully monetized an open, decentralized social network, though. Low monetization potential means little incentive for anyone to even try. Diaspora* is an example of a great idea, that is initially driven by passion, but that has no revenue source.

For now we’re left waiting, perfectly content on Facebook–just not happy.

Ubiquitous mobile phones are a product of possession culture. Obviously there is the desire to possess the new shiny product of the moment. But, more than that, there is the desire to possess other people. The cultural norm of always having your device nearby and of prioritizing it allows us to be possessed by the people that may cause it to ring, to buzz, to jingle-jangle.

What if we abandoned possession culture? What if we abandoned capitalism. What if doing and being became more important than having?

What would the world look like?

No mobile phones. The people you want to talk to would be in your own community and only a walk away. You would see them everyday. And you could talk to them in person without a device to facilitate the exchange.

No cars. We’d spend most of our lives within a 20-mile radius. For those trips to other areas, there would be rail and maybe some electric planes. Travel could become an adventure rather than a compulsory part of our day.

No personal computers. Mostly because there would be no personal anything, but also because they’d no longer serve a purpose. In fact, no one would possess any sort of electronic screen and people would spend very little time looking at electronic screens. Entertainment would be live and it would be fleeting. Music would always be live and would become so much more important. Our comedies and dramas would be live performances and be that much more human for it. No more summer blockbusters that excite us briefly and then leave us feeling empty.

No advertisements. We could escape the cognitive dissonance of having an emotional reaction to a mass produced thing because of manipulative marketing. Consider how much time we spend thinking about things that are being sold to us because we allow advertising into nearly every aspect of our daily lives. What could we be thinking about instead?

So much more time. All the time we spend worrying over our possessions would instead be spent focusing on each other or our own health and well-being. Life could become a desire to create and be with people and not a race to accumulate or a battle fought against a culture that measures us based on our ability to possess.

Learning and education would be free. Education would be a right and not a commodity. Knowledge would be a goal freely pursued and not one more possession we indenture ourselves to obtain.

Justice. In the broadest human sense, there would be justice. When we abandon our possessions, there is no longer a reason to exploit less powerful groups of people to create the things we lust after. Our resources, recognized as finite, could be cultivated and preserved, and used sustainably. Then there would also be justice for the Earth.

Freedom. We are enslaved now to a culture and a system that cares only about possession and consumption. Those two vices are forces that keep the whole machine in motion. If we resist them completely, the machine will not only grind to a halt, but fall apart. Possession and consumption are everywhere in our culture. They have become the primary appeal of everything, including people. Look at dating and hook-up sites like OkCupid or Grindr. They are about consuming people and then moving on, because there are more people to consume. Not only do we make the machine work, but we are becoming the product the machine produces. When we abandon possessions, we also abandon possession culture and free ourselves from the shackles of this machine and the neat packaging it tries to imprison us within.

The things we’d give up, we won’t miss. Each function a possession fulfills in our lives would be replaced with something much more deeply satisfying. We would soon realize that many of those formerly essential functions serve only to reinforce the possession culture. We could quickly realize how little we actually need to be happy.

A dramatic shift is most definitely coming. More and more people are becoming aware of our subtle enslavement to possession culture. More and more we are finding a stirring in ourselves to connect back to our human roots apart from all of this stuff.

We don’t need the machine. But it most definitely needs us. Resist. Resist. Resist.

Mars One Colony

Those who interact with me frequently know that one of the ideas I’m most passionate about is establishing a colony on Mars. One of the current ventures that aims to make that happen is Mars One. I signed up to be notified when they start accepting applications. Recently I received an email from them. They would like me to answer one simple question: why would you like to go Mars?

That is the question, isn’t it? I want to give them a thoughtful response. So, I present to you the first version of my answer. Please read over my response. I welcome any and all criticism. Your advice and questions will help me make this a stronger, tighter statement.

Why I would like to go to Mars:

As a species, our next great destiny is to take to space. It is inevitable that we will become a space-faring people. Never have we let a frontier restrain us, keep us from reaching beyond the environment we currently know. We cannot. Our curiosity is too great, our sense of purpose too irresistible.

There has to be a first step. Some group must be the first people to live on another planet, to die on another planet. And there must, at some point, be the first human born on another planet.

I will  be part of humanity’s first step to living across the stars. I will be a pioneer. I will help build a new civilization from nothing, crafting a self-sufficient community that will shine as the crown jewel of human accomplishment. I will be a small part of an endeavor that involves the effort of many, many intelligent and driven people.

I will do all this by going to Mars.

On Mars, I will have an opportunity to live with others that are just as passionate as I am about being a planetary pioneer. Our very survival will depend on trusting each other completely and on each colonist’s willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the community. We will have to become a deeply connected family. I want to be a part of that family.

We all want our lives to have meaning. We expend tremendous effort trying to earn recognition or create a lasting impression. This is where I want to spend my effort. I want to spend the rest of my life building and supporting a colony on another world. That is the meaning I want my life to have. I can think of few other ways that I could so fundamentally impact my world than by creating a new one.

When I go to Mars, I will be a part of a historic transition for our entire species. I will get to help take that first step as we take to the stars. Along the way, I’ll get to work with some of the most intelligent, amazing people here on Earth. Some of them will become my family for the rest of my days. Establishing a colony on Mars is exactly the way I want to spend my life.

What do you think? Would you be interested in going to Mars. Are you going to apply to Mars One?

Please let me know what you thought of my explanation of why I want to go to Mars.

That freedom it’s protecting is freedom from *government* censorship. You are free to say whatever you want without *government* persecution. You are not protected from criticism of others though. And yes a person or company can refuse you based on what you say because they are not the government.

The First Amendment gives you a broad right of expression, but that means it also bestows a great *responsibility* to self-regulate the ideas and thoughts you express.

So, please stop claiming that this is America and you can say whatever you want and expect that to protect you from being held responsible for the words that tumble from your slack jaw.

[image source: http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/first.gif]

I prefer to have a few very close relationships. My connections to other people are a major part of my identity, really, so I’m only truly happy if those relationships are healthy. Much of my attention will be put into maintaining and growing my friendships and to more clearly communicating my love to those people I am closest to.

When the rest of my life has been uncertain and even disappointing, my friends have always been constant, supportive, and my home. I’m going to pull people close and make sure they know that I need them in my life.

I have bounced back from my failure with DC Teaching Fellows. I’ve established myself as a well-liked and much asked for tutor in the Eugene area. I worked over a year at a local sustainable farm. All of that has allowed me to rebuild my confidence. Now it’s time for me to start looking forward again. I feel more prepared for the GRE, so I will be retaking the Mathematics Subject exam and the Analytical Writing portion of the general GRE. Graduate school is again on my near horizon. I’ll be applying to a number of schools this time. This is my primary education focus.

I have some other areas I want to focus on, though. I want to develop a portfolio to demonstrate my ability to design and implement algorithms to solve problems and my understanding of numerical analysis. The implementation portion will allow me to learn and explore different programming languages. A secondary goal is to familiarize myself with a variety of languages.

Other than those two primary focuses, I am just going to read more. This includes everything from more science articles online to non-fiction books and also catching up on the fiction books that my friends have recommended to me. Then we can talk about them which will help me grow those relationships.

Focusing on relationships and on learning will give me a lot to think about and when I have a lot to think about I write. Writing is the third area of my life that will be getting most of my attention. I claim to be an enthusiastic writer, but the amount I write does not really reflect that. I have aspirations to release a collection of poetry, but I have not produced enough poetry within the last several years to find enough pieces worth pulling together.

Distractions will not force my relationships, education, or writing to the back burner, as they have this last year. Instead, I will maintain my focus and let the distractions wait until their proper time and give them no more than they deserve.

I’ve just been letting myself get distracted.

So, there’s not much substance to this post. Mainly, I just want to say that there will be more words up here. I have a number of posts I’ve started but never took the time to properly write out, once-over, and publish.

In general, my life is going really well. I just finished a class–Elementary Analysis–that went well; I feel better prepared for when I eventually retake the GRE Mathematics Subject Exam. I have also decided to leave the farm I’ve worked at for the last year-and-a-half. While I love it out there, it has become a source of great frustration as I try to fit it in but also view it as a really low priority. And that’s not fair to them out there. I have more than enough students that want to hire me as a tutor to make up for the hours I spend on the farm.

So, my life is going well. I’m still fighting my ongoing battle against my inclination to passively consume with my desire to actively create. To expand on that topic my next post will be about the areas of my life I want to focus on and how I plan to make them my top priorities. I’d like to write that post while I’m back home visiting my family for the holidays.

Slate posted this article a few weeks ago about treating pedophilia as a mental health issue. Moreover, the article suggests we should try to decrease the stigma associated with attraction to children and adolescents for the sake of those who suffer from such attractions but do not want to act on them. The article discusses some promising research regarding treatment, but also findings that pedophilia probably cannot be “cured.” It also addresses some objections to taking this approach.

Now, I agree with the premise of the article. Pedophiles are not inherently monsters. In fact, the stigma is something that has always bothered me, but defending pedophiles is a quick way to become ostracized. Unfortunately.

Why do we consider pedophilia an absolute evil?

In large part it is because we tend to think of pedophilia as a verb, as the act of abusing and molesting children. But it is not. Pedophilia is a condition, the condition of being attracted to children and adolescents. Pedophilia is a noun. It is no more monstrous than depression, than PTSD, conditions we’ve come to treat with sympathy and compassion. We only think about pedophilia when it is forced into our awareness by some overly scandalized story in which the pedophile has already acted, already abused. Our outrage is misdirected from the actions to the condition.

Slate’s article reports on the difficulty non-offending pedophiles have in seeking treatment to help them refrain from acting on their attraction. Mandatory reporting laws and a cultural revulsion have created an environment where people who suffer from these attractions have no safe avenue to seek help or information. The most common treatment for pedophiles is incarceration. Any therapeutic treatment still usually only occurs after someone has offended. How many could have been helped before they offended if help was available? How many tried to seek help before they lost control?

Think about this: how would you react if someone you’ve known for years confessed to being “minor-attracted?” Would you believe him if he said he’d never acted on it? Would you offer support and encouragement as he tried to find help?

On the off-chance that you do know someone in this situation, here is a great resource: B4U-ACT.

This is important to me because it is part of a larger issue. Most people do not want to harm others, and many want to make the world a better place. But, we all have our demons, our baggage, and our tendency toward human failure. Why are we not treating each other with sympathy and kindness all the time? Is it really so hard to identify with someone who is struggling, who is not perfect? One of the great underdeveloped human capacities is empathy. It’s not even important in our culture. And that makes me profoundly sad.

Now, it’s your turn. Sound off and voice your opinion. But, keep it constructive and on topic, please. Can we protect more children by actually decreasing the stigma associated with pedophilia? If we treat pedophilia as a social health issue will less pedophiles turn into abusers and molesters?

do you wonder what this time means to me?
is it any wonder I’m coming around,
turnin’ my days into nights whenever I’m with you?
there’s nothin’ more real than what I feel
right here, sayin’ nothin’ but nothin’ at all.
you ask why I’m smilin’, and you don’t see
this is the happiest moment of my day.
as I silently stare, you don’t turn away
you’ve depth enough for us to share

all the times I’ve played this through in my head
by now I’ve realized there’s only one way it goes.
inevitably, unavoidably, I’m going to love you.
too late now ‘cause I started days ago, really.
it’s no wonder then that the world streams by
and I, I forget to notice until you’re there in it.
so believe me I’ve been considerin’ little else
fussin’ over how you feel, and should I tell?
this is the most I’ve enjoyed such misery.

remember when you see me quietly smilin’,
you wonder whether maybe I’m bored with you,
you have me fascinated, intimidated some,
when you challenge me into introspection.
then you laugh at my muteness, kiss me
since my mouth is useless, and the day is right.
you’re only gettin’ better, this is only becomin’ real-er.
this is me, a few words at least, for you to read
in case you wonder what this time means to me.

–R. Brockey

So much in my life is so very different from just a year ago. Very soon, the full extent of my growth over this last year will be clear.

click image for source: Amnesty International

On October 9th Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old girl living in Swat, Pakistan, was shot in the head by members of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Malala has already become celebrated in Pakistan for speaking out against Taliban rule and for fighting for education for women.

That morning, as I drove to work, I listened to an NPR broadcast about the shooting and I was sickened and angered and scared all at the same time. Still am, really, when I see her story trickle up in my various feeds.

She has such huge strength. And she was shot with deliberate intent. They stopped her bus, asked where she was, and shot her. Then left her. It is one of the most cowardly, evil acts I have ever heard of.

And yet, my faith is not shaken. It is not the Taliban’s evil that we should focus on, but on Malala’s courage and determination in the face of their terrorism. This story strengthens my faith in humanity because Malala exists and her spark is one that will never be stifled.

news sources:
Aljazeera, NPR