RIP Michael Jackson

It's shocking to learn that Michael Jackson died today. The man was a legend, his music was amazing, and he still commanded instant media buzz. The sad thing is that he died at such a young age, and he has very young children who no longer have their father to watch them grow up.

The early reports state that he died of cardiac arrest, and others have speculated that prescription medication abuse was a cause. In either case, these diseases are currently causes of many deaths in our country, and I think this gives us increased motivation to come up with a solution. My father died of a heart attack 12 years ago this 4th of July, and it was a very devastating time for my family and I, especially for my mom and youngest brother, who had just turned 1 year old a few days beforehand. I feel a major cause of his death was his smoking habit. He tried many times to quit, especially since my mom became pregnant with my youngest brother, but unfortunately he couldn't stop smoking.

I hope that people reflect on the impact his death will have on his children, and realize that they also need to take great care of themselves to be healthier, not only for their own benefit, but most importantly, for their children.

P.S. I just saw a picture on TV on CNN that was shown by Entertainment Tonight of Michael Jackson while the paramedics were attempting to revive him, and it is sickening and it angers me that the producers of Entertainment Tonight chose to display the picture on national television. It adds nothing to the story, and is an absurd invasion of privacy. I am disgusted by the tabloids who don't respect anyone's private life in the most difficult times. It's fine to cover celebrities but there is a line drawn when family and health is involved.

SHPE Elections

As some of you may know, I have been a member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) for the last 11 years, and I'm heavily invested in working to improve the organization to better serve our members and the Hispanic community. The national elections have been underway for a couple of weeks now, and I'd like to chime in on who I voted for this year, particularly for President and Vice President.

National President

I voted for Michael Gutierrez to serve as the National President for the 2009-10 term. To be honest, this decision was quite easy for me to make since I am very familiar with the 3 candidates and the vision they each will bring to the organization. Each of the candidates have served tremendously well for SHPE, but in speaking with Michael, I have no doubt in my mind that he is the best candidate to lead SHPE in making great strides to making a highly beneficial impact in the lives of our members, as well as helping other Hispanics achieve success in their professional careers.

Michael and I have had many conversations during the SHPE National Board of Directors (NBOD) meetings over the past 3 years, and he has consistently suggested areas where SHPE can make strong improvements to provide better benefits to our membership. He has not only been a champion of increasing the value of professional membership, but has also been a strong supporter of student programs.

He has developed a strong reputation on the NBOD of being a fair and steady voice for our members, and rarely accepts the status quo because of his drive for greater improvement of our organization. He has continued to demonstrate the ability and desire to bring together all of our members and supporters to take SHPE to new heights, and explore new opportunities that have great potential. Because of that, Diana Gomez awarded him the President's Award for his contributions to the NBOD at last year's NILA conference.

In my opinion, the ability to bring together all of our members and supporters is the quality that makes Michael the best candidate for National President.

National Vice President

I voted for Barry Cordero to serve as National Vice President. I was very deliberate in taking a look at what Barry and Conchita Jimenez both offer in serving as National VP, especially since I consider Barry a great friend, and we worked together closely during his term as Region 2 Student Representative a few years ago. I wouldn't want to mislead anyone by not mentioning that we're good friends.

In my opinion, Barry has been one of the most vocal and dedicated SHPE members I have known during my time as a SHPE member. He has continuously pushed the envelope for SHPE to change the way it operates in order to serve our members, and he doesn't hesitate to question why our organization's leaders have not taken the necessary steps in making things work right in our operations. He has been able to get people out of their comfort zone, and that has helped to make SHPE operate better.

Barry was also a key contributor to the success of last year's national SHPE Conference in Phoenix. As Conference Co-Chair, he helped to develop the highly popular Professional Track, widely expanding upon the Professional Development Series by adding the Green Engineering and International tracks, and a Project Management Institute Certification course. He also worked on offering hands-on workshops for students and professionals to develop skills with engineering tools, and our members provided excellent feedback to bring these workshops back to this year's conference. Due to his vital contributions, he was asked to serve on this year's conference as Professional Programs Chair.

I strongly believe that both Michael and Barry are the best candidates for National President and Vice President. On paper, they may not appear to be the most qualified candidates for those positions, but their respective contributions to SHPE over the past 5+ years have shown me that their leadership and dedication will serve our organization best.

In regards to the Region 2 Student Representative position, Gaby Baylon has been a great student leader in the San Diego area, and I look forward with great anticipation to working with Gaby to achieve our mission of being The Source for Quality Hispanic Engineers and Technical Talent!

Gmail Autopilot and the Conficker worm strikes!

There is an awesome new feature being made available today for Gmail. Check it out!

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/autopilot/index.html

Can't wait to start using it today. Also, check this article out on the Conficker worm's assault on the world that was launched today:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/04/conficker_worm_strikes_militar.html?wprss=securityfix

Everybody panic! :-P

Team USA is going to the WBC Final Round!!

An amazing thing happened a couple of hours ago: Team USA came back to beat Puerto Rico 6-5 in the bottom of the 9th inning in the World Baseball Classic's 2nd round elimination game in Miami!

It had seemed that the members of the team had not shown the heart and emotion to win the tournament against teams from other countries, especially after getting embarrased by PR in a mercy-rule 11-1 loss a couple of days ago, but they showed it tonight when they needed to win to stay in the tournament.

I'll be going to LA this weekend to visit family for my grandparent's wedding anniversary, and I'll be going to Dodger Stadium to cheer on Team USA all the way!

Crowdsourcing to help you save money

I read this post on the Google blog about a crowdsourcing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing) initiative to share tips on saving money. I figured this would be great to share with everyone since we all could use help with our finances these days. Here's the link:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/tipping-points.html

1st Dodgers spring training home game in AZ

Wow, it's been a long time since I've made a new post on my blog, but I hope this is worthwhile for you to check out.

My wife, a friend of ours, and I attended the 1st Dodgers spring training home game in AZ at the new Camelback Ranch sports complex this past Sunday. It was an awesome experience for me, since I'm a die-hard Dodgers fan, and I've never had the chance to go to one of their spring training games in Florida.

The fields are beautiful. I wish I had the opportunity to play on such nice fields in high school. Then again, I played a few games on Blair Field in Long Beach in my senior year, so I can't complain.

Here are some pictures of the game:

View of the field from our seats



My buddy Rafael Furcal at bat in the 1st inning



View of one of the practice fields



Cat and I standing in line for food before the game



Eating my hot dog...not too happy it wasn't a Dodger dog though



I can't wait to go back for my next Dodgers spring training game, and hopefully the Dodgers will have resigned Manny Ramirez, and we'll see him play by then!

Google is launching its own Web browser: Chrome

Today, Google confirmed that it is developing an open-source Web browser called Google Chrome, and this is great news for users since we have yet another open-source option to choose from, instead of being forced to use Microsoft's IE or Apple's Safari browsers.

I'm a strong advocate of the open-source movement since it enables people around the world to create innovative solutions to enhance users' experience with technology. The fact that Google has yet again taken a leading role in challenging companies like Microsoft and Apple who choose to bundle their own closed-source products in efforts to squeeze out browsers like Firefox, and it serves as notice to those companies that Google is actively supporting independent, open-source browsers.

For more info, check out the official Google blog entry on Chrome:
Official Google Blog: A fresh take on the browser . It'll be available for download tomorrow (Sept. 2). Have fun!