Just thought I would start posting again. Emerald & I had a baby boy as of April 21st 2013. His name is Akash James Mansfield. We liked this name because it is Sanskrit word for "the space between" or "aether" or according to wikipedia "In Hinduism, Akasha means the basis and essence of all things in the material world; the first material element created from the astral world (Air, Fire, Water, Earth are the other four in sequence). It is one of the Panchamahabhuta, or "five elements"; its main characteristic is Shabda (sound). In Sanskrit the word means "space", the very first element in creation. In Hindi,Marathi and Gujarati, and many other Indian languages, the meaning of Akasha has been accepted as sky.<sup>[1]" 

I am attending Portland State University, but don't like it very much right now. I've had some poor experiences with the products they offer. Education is totally screwed around the wrong way. i.e. the student takes out a loan from the government, and often a bank, in order to buy a product. That product is education. This educational institution treats it as a required commodity, as if it were their graciousness to allow you to drink of the fountain of knowledge, they don't treat it as a product which should be held to the consumer's standards or better. Everyone that is there is paying for a product and ANY company that seeks to retain it's customer base should RESPECT their customers. This is not the case in the modern institutions, and it doesn't seem to be something they are trying to accomplish. More often students are continually disrespected in many ways while instructors are wasting student customer's money and time. 
Examples would be an instructor who I paid the school to retain in good faith of ability and level of knowledge and capability to portray that knowledge effectively to an audience of appropriate size to retain effective knowledge sharing. After I did my research on who was going to be teaching the class and what times were available for accommodating other class schedules in the quarter, at the last minute the instructor was swapped for a drastically under-qualified instructor. When the class started I found I was duped into an instructor who didn't understand the subject and had no experience with it, as opposed to the instructor I signed up for who is considered world class leader in the subject. I see that as a bait and switch, that if it were to be dealt with properly would have at least included the decency of emailing the students signed up for the class to notify them of the change WHEN IT WAS DECIDED. [ECE 271 Winter 2013 Instructor Mark Faust to Donald Dunkin]
Many more examples to go with that one (effectively stated "your son's birth is not a legitimate reason to miss a class quiz... but sporting events are" [Stats. & Prob. 243 Spring 2013 w/Kruti Pandya]). The list goes on to include the work-study program, advising (advisor said "join Engineering Economics class on the last day to add/drop, you will catch up" I could not catch up & could not drop without serious consequences. The advisor should carry the burden for his extremely poor advice.)
I'm just sick of supporting this drastically inferior 'service' with borrowed money and wasted time. I'm ready to start sitting in on all of the classes with ONLY the instructors who actually CAN teach, whether or not the class schedules have a 5 minute overlap... At least then I can learn the material I am seeking from the people with the knowledge and experience that I can actually benefit from, instead of WASTING MY TIME with an incompetent goober while spending borrowed capitol to pay tricky bait & switch swindlers.  
The phrase that fits this situation quite well is "never pay the band until the gig is over"</sup>

Ok, so on a better note, Emerald (and I) bought a house in Portland and I have been working on it. Not because it really needs much work, but there is always room for improvements. I've already mostly finished adding a bedroom in the basement... more later... oh, and we got chickens! :)

Tinker is the word of the day

I have found many fun projects to tinker with such as the Arduino, to exercise some of the things in a hands on practical applications style. I have come across some questions like: what would it take to patch some of the I/O from the Arduino through a Verilog designed chip? OR what are the steps to reduce the applications written in C for Arduino into a simplified chip design (map it to a chip) if I make something I would like to produce? OR how much versatility is available when controlling the Arduino with a Samsung Galaxy S phone? (I suspect it is pretty much the same as from a computer except for the power issues).
Besides all that, I would really enjoy some code tinkering compadres to trade code ideas or conspire on projects.
So many other things on my mind right now, that I should call that an ok start. (even though it is completely disjointed and somewhat random)

Government and Finance

I am not really sure why I am starting this blog besides as an outlet. "So read at your own risk" is the implied contract you agree to by continuing to read. Many subjects come to mind as ways to start this snowball, brainstorm is my preferred method for now I think.
When I voted for this president I had faith in his ability to communicate with the people which was very necessary at the time. Now I am pretty sure he spends a lot of time doing just that. I am not sure if his focus is really where it belongs... it seems like a discourse instead of dialog. I feel he sends plenty of messages to the public about the things which are being focused on, but I am not convinced the issues are being addressed with the necessary amount of input from the people who are actually affected. I see the focus on the "head" or command structure and missing the people of the "body" of the nation. He seems to be playing into the hands of the control structure while in the background something is being set up to undermine the messages being relayed to the people. Is this just the next step toward police state and the structured metering of population maintaining by controlling bodies and powerful entities?
I know the "housing collapse" was a structured collapse. It was arranged from the top down and the timing was somewhat accounted for. It is far too convenient that the market collapses when the population is starting to gain headway on technological evolution and gaining monetary and public sway. Companies before the burst were able to decide their own direction and go in that direction. Part of the major flaw to a publicly traded "Stock Market" is the possibility of manipulation by numerous means. So as to say
A company starts and does really well selling goods to the public, so good they can't keep production up to pace with purchases and have to grow faster than they can afford... setting up the situation for "stock market" entrance. Being publicly traded/funded, they are then able to grow to fit the situation. The company continues to grow and eventually can afford to do side projects. Some of which don't fit with the business model of the "Old Money" structures in the stock market (such as to undermine the oil industry stranglehold on a completely outdated technology, the car market). The fact that such a company is publicly traded makes that company vulnerable to a vast number of possible interruptions. Some possible interruptions are cooking the books of a competitor so as to transfer loyalties out of the stock value, raising the price of some input product used by the company which makes it profitable, or debasing the ability of investors to freely invest due to credit availability and/or equity based capitol input (people were borrowing against their house values {sometimes} to generate a greater gain by placing that equity money into a company or pet project with greater or near equivalent growth potential) ...... The housing finance community was forced into generating loans to "risky borrowers" by governing bodies. This practice can be absorbed to a certain calculable degree according to risk potential. That risk potential was accounted for and the degree to which loans were required to be generated far outgrew the possible market absorption rate of defaulting loans generated for these risky borrowers. Therefore the situation was set up by the governing bodies to do exactly as it did. This situation was intended to collapse just as it did. .... Knowing that this set up was taking place, "Old Money" has the ability to pad against such pending disasters and even post a gain accordingly by setting up to take advantage of the current valuing system which is based on real property or real estate. Many advantages would be realized by such a "disaster". By shuffling money into safe industry knowing of the coming housing collapse would make for an ideal situation for "fire sale" purchasing of small companies and real estate/houses and great deals of land. These steps would have the ability to increase the 'leveraging power' of the "Old Money" so that they can set up to "redirect" the market in the coming future in whatever direction they so choose.
Part of the reason this is completely believable is because I could see the housing collapse coming as of about 2001 when the ARM loan industry was coming into full swing. The housing loan requirements were being manipulated at the same time, generating a great set-up for large numbers of defaulting loans. At the same time the APR was going lower, even though it should have been rising according to economics principles. The lowering of the APR made it more appealing to enter the ARM loan system to borrow against housing values even if it wasn't necessary, just to loosen up liquid asset finances as a homeowner (almost everybody bought into it because of the state of continued stable growth in America).
I am curious as to whether the "financial bailout" money is going toward the "Old Money" establishments under the pretense of their ability to handle money in order to generate stable growth historically. Is this really just money for the "Old Money" to buy defaulted homes, loans, businesses and Real Estate in order to leverage the market? The set up is convenient for the receivers of bailout money to buy up defaulted/undervalued property and use it to leverage future growth and indentured servitude.
The "American Dream" is to own a home (one of them at least) and now lots of people who had good credit just got swindled out of their home and have had their credit history ruined due to manipulation in the top end of the market by the overseeing bodies (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA). Their equity gone and their possible interest rate higher than when they had a good credit history, they are in a place to be taken advantage of by the bailout money they provided by paying their taxes during the boom/bubble. The banks who advised them into this situation stand to gain double from the situation