Category Misc.

BatKid’s Key to Gotham City

A gWhat an amazing story of San Francisco going all out for a child's Make a Wish.

News coverage of this heartwarming event:
Video by SF Chronicle: http://vimeo.com/79541124
Watch Make-A-Wish Turn San Francisco Into BatKid's 'Gotham City –Thewire
Batkid's Make-a-Wish Transforms San Francisco Into Gotham - ABC
Batkid: Thousands cheer on pint-size superhero –SFGate

Kudos and good karma to fellow Autodesk team members Arthur Harsuvanakit, Evan Atherton, and Maurice Conti of the Office of the CTO aka "OCTO" as well as Autodesk for getting involved when asked by the mayor. As I have said before many times, Autodesk does indeed have a heart and a soul. Also big thank you to everyone involved in this from the people of San Francisco to the Make a Wish organization. Making an sick child's dreams come to reality does more than just provide a fun memorable day for everyone.

Scam Alert – Phone Support Calls to Fix Your Computer

An important warning about scam phone calls going around.

I have been receiving unsolicited phone calls (859 547-4475) from people telling me "they are from the helpdesk of esupport.com and sometimes say they are a contractor of Microsoft and that they need to help me fix my computer" but they cant provide me any details on my computer or account information. It sounded really fishy or "phishy" like a scam. Within 5 seconds of searching online I found this is common where they direct you to a website and the site installs malicious software on your machine which phishes personal login data or causes your machine to crash and provide a solution to fix it for a fixed fee. Don't fall for this scam that has been going on since 2010 and recently picked up in activity again.

I reported this with the FCC, FTC and my local States Attorneys General and they were all very aware of the scam and frustrated at inability to stop the callers from overseas. I would have hoped that since the scammers are using the same phone number that the phone companies could just block that number to customers but apparently not.

Make sure to warn your friends, family, and colleagues.

Friday Fun Fact

I realized this week that that when I joined Autodesk almost 16 years ago there was no Google in existence. Google was incorporated in September 1998 and I joined Autodesk in January 1998.

It is hard to remember a time before being able to ask a question of search engine as most search engines in the 90 were very simple. I used Altavista and Dogpile to search back then. Back in the 90s most barely had email let alone their employer allowing the Internet's web into their office.

Things sure have changed and now Google is literally everywhere from the most used search engine that generally operates as many users second brain to Google's smartphone and operating system Android, self-driving cars, Google Maps and Earth, Gmail, and now experimenting with delivering goods in the Bay Area and transplanting computerized brains into wild seals and tuna populations to map the ocean and monitor shipping traffic. OK so I made up the last part about the seal and tuna but honestly at this point I would not blink if told that.

I am excited and a little frightened to see where technology will be in another 16 years. Perhaps my cyborg replacement will leave a comment for me on this post in the distant future.

Cheers,
Shaan

Summer Is Basically Over

Summer is basically over for those of us in the Northern hemisphere as the temperatures start to change and at least in Utah where I live, the leaves are already changing colors for the Fall.

My GCC 2013 TrophiesOver the course of the Summer of 2013 and the past 112 days Autodesk participated in the Global Corporate Challenge. This was my second year participating in the challenge. Within Autodesk there were 523 teams comprised of seven Autodesk employees that competed based on steps taken as well as miles biked and yards they swam which were also converted to steps using some magical conversion rate. In the entire GCC there were over 262,000 participants around the world representing thousands of companies.

I was a member of the Team OCTO-Pi made up members from the Autodesk CTO office and Autodesk Research. The seven of us including Autodesk Chief Technology Officer Jeff Kowalski ranked a proud 36th out of 520+ teams in Autodesk! We logged a total of 11,318,299 steps or 4,501 miles. All Autodesk teams combined logged 3,508,807,452 steps or 1.4 million miles.

Participation in the GCC is a really fun way to motivate people to be more active and healthy. The fun competition among teams as well as within teams was a blast. I remember on a visit to the Autodesk Toronto office seeing a team that was in the top 3 at the time having a wall of shame and members that were the lowest in daily step counts were highlighted to motivate them. It was all in good fun, and healthy employees make productive and happy employees.

What Are You Doing This Summer

It is Summer for most of us in the Northern hemisphere which is time to for vacations, barbeques, and getting outdoors and doing things like hiking camping fishing etc. We have hit the mid-point of Summer and technically headed for the Fall next so every minute counts. I recognize some readers live in areas where the seasons are only “Hot and Hotter” or “Wet and Dry” instead of the four seasons. I do love having four seasons as each season has such unique things to enjoy, experience, and love.

Are you making the most of your Summer, or doing anything amazing? How are you readers down under spending your Winter time and are you ready for your impending Spring?

My last week’s activities in Utah included climbs totaling over 6000 vertical feet, tubing 16 miles of river, and sliding down natural granite waterfall slides. I don’t want to waste a minute of the warm (actually been very hot) Summer time.

Zombies Are Good for Your Health

Last weekend I ran the Zombie Chase 5k obstacle course with my oldest son.for the second year in a row. Last year it was during the day, this year at night under a full moon and in an old mining/ghost town. It is like a 5k run combined with obstacles and a haunted house mixed in. We got to run through houses, and old railroad caboose, all while having zombies chasing us. We did get revenge in the end where there was a paintball gun area and we could shoot the zombies with paintballs. It was a total blast and thousands participated.

The Innovation of Innovation

Autodesk’s Bill O’Connor created this nice short video on Innovation. This is very fitting since I have given two keynotes on innovation recently from an Autodesk perspective from taking CAD from the mainframe to the PC, BIM, digital prototyping, and cloud computing technologies.

The path to innovation is paved with seven questions. Bill O'Connor, Founder of the Innovation Genome Project, shows us how these questions have been used in innovations throughout history—from fire to flight, writing to recycling, and everything in between.

Friday Fun – A Few Days on the Mexican Riviera

I am still getting back to speed after returning this week from 5 amazing days on Cozumel Island in Mexico. Cozumel is one of the top scuba and snorkel diving locations in the world with the worlds second largest barrier reef. I had a ladder into the Caribbean from located just 10 steps from the condo where I was staying in the Northern region of the island. I found the amazing condo on AirBnB.com which was all new to me but I will most definitely use it more often as the location was like living in the property instead of a hotel or resort experience. Cozumel MexicoIt was a great deal of fun to go snorkeling on the reef within 5 minutes. I did hit other locations up and down the island but honestly preferred the abundance of coral and sea life behind the condo units. I took many underwater photos using my iPhone in a special Seashell brand case that was rated to 100 feet depth and luckily there were no leaks.

First Climb of the Year

The weather where I live in Utah is finally very warm, and the snow meting enough that I could make the first big hike/climb of the year just yesterday. I joined a meetup.com group “Ultimate Thrillseekers” to summit

Mount Olympus which is one of the prominent peaks you see in the backdrop of Salt Lake City. It is not Mount Everest and actually 20,000 feet lower in elevation, but at just over 9000 feet it is no small hill either to break in the legs this year.