Between the Lines

What a Weekend with a Lunar Eclipse of the Super Blood Wolf Moon

What a long name, but an amazing and rare lunar event combination that won happen again for many years. I hiked up wearing show shoes on Oregon’s Mount Hood and sat up near the Palmer Glacier and cooked a dinner on my backpack stove and enjoyed the amazing show as the clouds parted to show a clear sky and big bright moon. The super full moon was so bright I didn't need any headlamp to hike in the snow and... Read more →

Pizza Economics and AutoCAD Fields

I read a startling research item by Mashable that may not have been apparent to everyone. It wasn't apparent to all of us Autodeskers who have a long tradition with Beer Busts at special events and Autodesk University. There is about 28 more square inches of pizza in the single 18” pizza (excluding the great stuffed crust debate). Yes, on a normal thin crust pizza you get more ordering the 18 inch pizza instead of 2 – 12 inch pizzas.... Read more →

FIRST FRC Mentor Day

Today is mentor day celebrating volunteer mentors for FIRST Robotics teams. I can speak as having been mentoring a FIRST FRC Team 1540 Flaming Chickens of Catlin Gabel in Portland Oregon for the past few years on why YOU should also get involved. The high school students tell me I help, but I'm not sure they are getting the better end of this volunteering deal as I get so much from being continually inspired by these students I could never... Read more →

Happy New Year

I hope you had an amazing end of 2018, and are starting 2019 with a renewed energy an excitement for what will come this new year. I spent my end of 2018 the same as last year solo hiking and goofing off on the beautiful Oregon coast. It was amazing that the normally foggy, windy, and rain weather for the past New Years has given way to amazing weather and sunset. I spent the last day out in the forest... Read more →

Happy Holidays

No matter the holiday you celebrate or not, I wanted to wish you a nice time as we at Autodesk begin our annual week of rest. We are taking off the time to see family, friends, and perhaps catch up on email and sleep. The Autodesk Portland Office is extremely festive thanks to our Enterprise Data Management Team filling our large data panels with fireplace videos and a drinking actor Nick Offerman running in a video loop instead of the... Read more →

My Autodesk Global Month of Giving - ChickTech

ChickTech is a non-profit organization supporting women and girls in tech with community, education, and inspiration. ChickTech is dedicated to retaining women in the technology workforce and increasing the number of women and girls pursuing technology-based careers. It’s a great group of people and cause and they just lost a major source of their funding and need everyone's help. I'm challenging everyone to help ChickTech as they are not just helping Portland young women to get into STEM careers, but... Read more →

Who Lives in a Pineapple Under the Sea

RIP ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ Creator Stephen Hillenburg. Myself and my kids always got a good laugh from SpongeBob cartoon episodes and the theme music was an earworm that would get stuck in your head “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea “SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!”. It is sad to hear the creator of this whimsical and loved series has passed. I even modeled SpongeBob in 3ds Max years ago for some fun. His legacy will live on in the hearts and minds... Read more →

Consider Helping Others

A couple weeks ago at Autodesk university I ran into a longtime friend and colleague. He was at AU with his wife and two cute young daughters. I found out his home was one of the thousands destroyed in Santa Rosa California last year. It was heartbreaking to hear all of the details of what he and his family went through, but it gets more difficult. Many like his family were left paying monthly mortgage payments for a home that... Read more →

O’l Blue Eye

It’s a funny and frustrating story, but perhaps it makes sense if you had seen me over the past year and wondered “why do Shaan’s eyeglasses have one blue tinted lens.” Last fall I got my annual eye exam and new eye prescription and when figuring out my glasses and lenses I was told to get a blue tint to reduce eye strain from reading electronic devices like computers and phones which emit blue light. It made sense as blue... Read more →

Paul Allen 1953 - 2018

The tech world and the US Pacific Northwest is reeling from the loss of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen yesterday. Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen died at 65 from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In addition to being the ideas person with Bill gates when they founded Microsoft, Paul Allen was also a huge philanthropist as well as a sports team owner of teams like NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and part owner of the Seattle’s Sounders soccer team. He... Read more →

Throwback Thursday Revit Style

think it change it build it Revit! I was recently gifted with some historical Revit early days shirts by Autodesk colleague and early Revit team member Rick Rundell. I believe the shirts are from the Revit 1.0 days circa 2000’ish. I'm going to give you a look as well as an opportunity to get one of these fine early 2000’s classic in BIM apparel.Imagine wearing this to your local Revit user group (not the child tee shirt as that might... Read more →

Sweet Layover Last Evening

On my flight back to my Portland Oregon home from Toronto I had a 55 minute layover in Salt Lake City. My kids live near there including my youngest, my amazing 17 year old daughter. My sweet daughter drove to the airport and waited outside security just to see her dad. Awe, that made my week. Sadness is the 3 bottles of fine Canadian maple syrup in my carry on baggage that I wouldn’t be able to carry back through... Read more →

What a Difference a Week Makes

The smoke from the west coast forest fires has cleared up in Portland Oregon. Here is a composited image from our Autodesk Portland office showing two weeks ago versus now. Read more →

Bad Marketing

I would call this more a viral marketing, literally viral.. I personally seen this sticker at Portland’s Hawthorne Street Festival last weekend. We had a great time at the street festival with all the local artists and vendors but the stickers for the selfie contest were cringe worthy. If you are the marketing team for the portable restroom company Honey Bucket (ironic company name too), you should consider a second opinion on future ideas and concepts, or change professions. The... Read more →

Moore or Less

I was thinking last night about how technology has changed over the years, and how Moore’s Law has apparently been broken as computer CPUs are not doubling computational power each 18 months. We have not seen the transistor density and computing power doubling for a couple years now. I understand it is a feat of engineering and physics to do this and I'm not certain of the reason chips have slowed their advancements in recent years, but does it matter... Read more →

Construction Tower Cranes Provide Unique Views of Portland

The west coast of the United States has been in a building boom from Los Angeles to Seattle. Seattle has been leading the way for the last 3 years, but Portland is up there and high in the tower crane counts. Next door to our Portland office is the 5MLK construction with customer and contractor Hoffman Construction. I went and visited them at the construction site last week. I have an FAA waiver for the local airspace and a FAA... Read more →

I'm Back

Although I was still checking in from time to time, I have been enjoying a 6 week sabbatical. Now I am just trying to get back into waking up early, commuting, and booting up my work laptop for the first time in weeks. My views last week in Washington then Pickathon music festival. It was a sweet way to wrap up 6 weeks off and to return refreshed and ready to hit the ground running. Just finished my first official... Read more →

Final Week Push and Getting High Altitude

I'm entering my final week of sabbatical (6 week vacation) and please ignore the bad example of me in the office writing this while on my sabbatical, but my fav backpacking and outdoor gear shop Next Adventure is a couple blocks away and I needed to say hi to colleagues and post this. The last 5 weeks have been filled with some amazing adventures some solo, some with friends, and some with my 3 kids all over Oregon. I will... Read more →

Sabbatical Week One

Greetings following my first week of sabbatical, and what a week it was! First thing I did was that I went looking for a new personal laptop to take on my adventures, since my MacBook from 2011 was not very peppy anymore and I didn't want to take my work laptop out on outdoor adventures and my iPad doesn't cut it. I looked all around for something that had dedicated graphics and performance as well looked nice and lots of... Read more →

Hello Summer

I am so grateful to have an employer that understands that employees need time away to refresh, recharge, and come back with a renewed energy and passion. Some of us use the time to go spend time with friends, family, education, reading, working on their home, camping, or traveling, but a 6 week sabbatical every 4 years provides a true length of time to disconnect. I will be checking email and posting to the blog occasionally so that things don't... Read more →

Sabbatical Next Friday

Next Friday, I will begin 6 weeks off for the 5th time in 20 years at Autodesk. This is one of the best benefits of working for Autodesk. The 6 weeks provides enough time you can truly disconnect, recharge, and come back with a renewed energy and focus. I don't have a big elaborate travel schedule, I am doing what I did last sabbatical and that was free forming it by going camping, hiking, road trips, seeing friends and family... Read more →

Custom Espresso Tamper

Thanks to the kindness and concern for good coffee in the new Portland Autodesk office and an excellent excuse to make things, Hans Kellner Autodesk employee extraordinaire in Autodesk’s San Francisco office designed a custom espresso tamper. Hans designed the tamper using Fusion 360 and then machined it on a Haas CNC. Now we have two new custom espresso tampers for our new Portland office’s espresso machine. From Hans: After testing it and seeing it was a perfect fit, size,... Read more →

Weekend Gorge Memories

Yesterday it was 90 degrees in Portland, so I headed into the Columbia Gorge to enjoy some hiking and wildflowers. Coyote Wall Tom McCall Nature Preserve Rowena Crest We love our pets in the Pacific Northwest, and maybe you know that Autodesk back to the early years has allowed dogs in several offices. I was sad to see search and rescue going up Coyote Wall yesterday but heard it was to rescue a German Sheppard dog that was having problems... Read more →

Raspberry Pi Starter Kit from Pimoroni to Give Away

I have a new and amazing Pimoroni Pi Starter Kit with about everything you would need to make something with Raspberry Pi. I would love to gift it to a teen that is totally interested in STEM and technology that would complete the build and provide a follow up of their project and experience. Do you know a teen or advanced pre-teen that would love this and do something with it? Email me Read more →

Throwback Thursday - Keep on Pedaling Michael

In our new renovated Portland office in the old Towne Storage Building, there is history all around us and all that could be maintained, restored, and celebrated was.The building had many years as a paper company storage, then county government records, then for some years as a funky storage building full of studios and lofts that people could rent. Over time the building was in jeopardy due to poor condition and safety and was potentially facing demolition like so many... Read more →