John Burkhardt's Blog

Ok, so I've been a total news junky since the election. I can't stop reading the news. I've read all kinds of allegations of voter fraud, electronic voting machines that were tampered with, exit polls disecrepencies, "moral values" and Bush's supposed mandate.

What is so great about this country? What are proud of? That we have the best bombs?

I keep reading the news, hoping that the shit will hit the fan.

I thought of a Bob Dylan quote today which sums up the hope I have now:

"They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn".

What happens to people who follow a religion but are devoid of spirituality? Fear, hatred, threats, righteousness, bigotry.. are these Christian values? Where will this kind of thinking lead us? Is Bush really one of them?

I try hard not to be political. In general I don't feel a strong affiliation with any party or ideology. I think hard about issues, and I try hard to see different points of view. I'm sure that if I sat down and talked about issues with someone they would find all kinds of interesting labels. I have a deep inner sense of how people should be treated and how to make our country a better place to live, and I try to live my life as an example.
It is so hard not to think about politics these days though. I saw that 1984 sticker and thought it was just too good. Then last night I read the New York Times article "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush". It is chilling. Terrifying. I knew this guy would be bad news back in 2000 but I had no idea just how bad. This quote really hit home, especialy when I thought about 1984:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the
White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen
Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White
House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't
fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush
presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the
reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that
solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded
and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me
off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued.
''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while
you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again,
creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things
will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to
just study what we do.''

The whole article is amazing though. Everyone should read it before casting their vote. I take it for granted that I live in Massachusetts, and in Cambridge no less. We are a town comprised of some of the smartest people in the country. Ever hear of places like Harvard or MIT? I love it here, the people, the diversity, the wealth of ideas and understanding, the history.
So for what its worth, this blog endoreses John Kerry for president. I've known this man's record for a long time. I've voted for him before. He is a man of the people and he has a deep understanding of the world and history. He is "reality-based". Bush is not. Kerry will win in my state (hey, we were the only state who didn't vote for Nixon, remember!). No matter who wins, there are many people who will continue to work for us and will make decisions based on reality.

The Sonos ZonePlayer was pictured on the cover of the Boston Globe today, with a nice article on the front page of the business section. Its starting to feel real!

On Sunday I went for a long hike with my friend Matt. We woke up at an hour that was on the verge of being unreasonable - around 7:30 a.m., and then drove straight up I-93. The hike we picked was apparently quite popular. It was about a 9 mile loop up Mt. Lafayette, along a ridge including Mt. Lincoln and Little Haystack. The whole thing took us around 7 hours.

But what a perfect day. We could see for over 100 miles in every direction. Lafayette is around 1 mile high. The world looks big from up there. It also struck me how much distance we could cover.

We walked along that ridge there for a couple of miles and from the low end (the Haystack end) Laffayette seemed impossibly far away. Fall is just beginning around here - the leaves had kind of a golden yellow glow.

Along the way we met a guy named Sam, who sent me these pictures. Thanks Sam! Sam is from Spain. His real name is not Sam.

Life is what happens when you are making other plans. Where did I go? Well, sometime around Dec, or the end of Jan I got a phone call from a friend of mine, who is also a recruiter, about a new job at an unknown startup. "Just go in and talk to these guys.. what do you have to lose?", he said. "But I have a job. I just got a job. I love my job." I had just taken a great job at Macromedia (see previous posts). I had no desire to change jobs, or to be looking for a job, or thinking about a new job. I was happy at Macromedia, and ready to finish up Flex and watch that product fly. Ok, actually, I did finish up most of the Web Services work for Flex in the end. We had a great SOAP stack written in Action Script. Wow, I just browsed some of the Flex pages and it is freaking amazing, no?

After a while I agreed to interview with Rincon Networks, which later became Sonos. I signed an NDA, checked out what they were doing, and knew right away that I had to take the job. I was hired as the lead Windows programmer for a new digital home stereo product called the ZonePlayer.

At Sonos I have built the Sonos Desktop Controller. This application is a control surface for the Sonos Digital Music System. I've been coding non-stop since I took the job in January. It has been one of the greatest projects I have ever worked on. And one of the most talented teams I have ever known.

I might have more cycles to write about it, but for now I'm just going to get the product done and sit back and listen to some music.

Elizabeth Kostojohn, second place winner of the 2004 Rotch Travelling Scholarship has started a blog.

Elizabeth is travelling to Venice, Finland, Sweden, Russia and Paris. I'm going to meet up with her in Paris in October. She sent me some fantastic pictures - I can try to host them for her blog.

I haven't posted on my blog for quite some time.

More on what I've been up to in a minute.