California Increases Required Pay Amounts for  Computer Professionals and Physicians;

Computer Professionals: Effective 1-1-2012  If paid on an hourly basis: Minimum hourly rate is $38.89/hr. If paid on a salary basis:  Annual salary is $81,026.25/yr.

Physicians, If paid on an hourly basis: Minimum hourly rate is $70.86/hr. If paid on a salary basis:  Annual salary is $147,634.41/yr.

Why would a computer professional or a Physician need the state to set their pay? Remind me again why I moved from CA to TX.

A Great article in The Telegraph by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

“The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus.

 

The making of computers, electrical equipment, machinery, autos and other goods may shift back to the US from China. Photo: AP

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor

5:53PM BST 23 Oct 2011

1018 Comments

Friday, June 10, 2011 in Feature Articles

AutoSeis of Carrolton, Texas has gone for a simple approach with its wireless land seismic recorders; the data is stored on the field units
(High Definition Recorders – HDR) and gathered later.

For land wireless seismic recording devices, you’re much better off storing the data on the unit itself rather than sending it back to a central unit in real time, according to Ralph Muse. Ralph is the President of AutoSeis, a Global Geophysical Company, that develops seismic recording equipment.

“Everything must be as simple and reliable as possible,” he says. “We don’t have complex radio systems. You put the units out and they stay there for weeks, and then bring them back to camp.  By keeping the units simple and low cost, it is easy to provide redundant units and over sample the survey.”

Mr Muse is an expert on radio data communication. He was CEO of NextNet Wireless which was acquired by Motorola in 2006; he was also was COO of the wireless internet company Metricom Inc, and Senior Vice President of land seismic imaging at Input Output (since renamed ION), a company also specializing in wireless land seismic recording.

Given his background in wireless data communications, it is ironic that he has chosen not to include radio data links in the HDR.  Mr Muse attributes this decision to his experience with other wireless systems. “Out in the field, there are always problems, and places you can’t communicate,” he says. “It complicates operations for no real reason. I would hate to be the field operators tasked with maintaining a complex communication infrastructure in difficult terrain.”

“When you start trying to connect thousands of units, it is very complicated, and takes up a lot of bandwidth. It’s a problem in scaling. I don’t know what happens when you try to do mesh networks for tens of thousands of units, and I don’t want to find out.”

For example, Mr Muse said he worked with a wireless seismic system which required a radio contact to be made with every unit before shooting began. “Some of them are in ditches, some of them are behind a hill. It’s hard to get a connection to every one, so you end up having a lot of problems, and have to set up relay transmitters to make sure you have all the connections.  You’ve traded cable maintenance for communication system maintenance; so what have you gained?”

Companies often have radio licensing problems, discovering that a technology they can use legally in one country at a certain frequency can’t be used in another part of the world.

AutoSeis

RDSeismic LLC was founded in late 2008 by Ralph Muse, Initial product launch and field testing were completed in spring 2010. RDSeismic was acquired by seismic service provider Global Geophysical Services Inc. of Houston, in Nov. 2010. The company was then renamed AutoSeis Inc.

“Global Geophysical used three other wireless seismic systems,” Mr Muse says. “They realized it made sense to own their own supplier. They can have their own technology and customise it the way they want.”

The company is currently building its first 10,000 HDR units, with a further order for 28,000 units, to be exclusively used by Global Geophysical to provide seismic surveys for its customers.

The company is also developing an ocean bottom seismic recording system using the same HDR technology.

The system

The core of the AutoSeis system is the HDR unit, which is “about the size of an iPhone,” Mr Muse says. It weighs just 3/10th of a pound (136g). The unit usually has a 20amp hour lithium battery, which weighs about 2.9lb (1.3kg).

To set up a survey, you decide which specific times you would like the units to record in advance (eg weekdays 6am to 8pm) and program that into the unit, along with the sample rate and tell it what type of geophone you will use. Then you drive out to the field, place the units in position, record their locations and start shooting.

To download the data afterwards, you plug the units into a special rack which can take about 20 units at once. The software automatically downloads the data, uploads programming for the next survey, and checks if the software needs updating. All of this takes about 2 minutes, so by the time you have inserted 20 units into the downloading rack, the first one is ready to be removed.

The unit contains a custom microchip, GPS, clock, motion sensor, infrared communications device and 8 gigabytes of data storage.

The system has one circuit board, and is fitted in a plastic case completely filled with resin. “You don’t have to worry about water getting in because it is full of resin,” he says. “These units are tough, you can run over them without damage.”

The system records in 32 bits, with 26-27 of those bits actually available for seismic processing, which means it can get a dynamic range of around 160dB, Mr Muse says. This compares to 120-140 dB range for 24 bit recording systems. “Our noise floor is a lot lower,” he says. “You can see data you clearly could not see otherwise.”

The 8gB of memory storage onboard is enough to store 85 (12 hour) days of data at a 2 millisecond sample rate, so data storage capacity is not an issue.

The unit also contains an accelerometer (similar to the iPhone). When the unit is moved to another location, the accelerometers detect that it has been moved, and that it needs to start a new record for the new location.

The HDR units can also communicate by infrared, so you can interrogate them with a laptop in the field without cabling them up.

All the units have barcodes. When they are being laid out in the field, the surveyor has a hand held device also containing a GPS which can scan the barcode, so the computer system knows which device it is and where it is.

While in the field, the units can be connected to radio communications if desired, for example if you check if there is background noise (for example from a train or farm equipment) close to receivers which are out of your line of sight, which might make the recording useless. But you don’t need to monitor each individual unit.

I just completed reading this book. Clearly a moving and inspirational story. One thing that struck me was how the nation reacted to the news of D-Day. The President gave a very moving and long prayer on the Radio, all the churches across the country were full of people praying. Stores like Macys, Lord and Taylor etc. all closed so the employees to go home or to church to pray. Contrast this with conditions today where we cannot pray in schools or at a ball game.

More on the book:

Stephen E. Ambrose draws from more than 1,400 interviews with American, British, Canadian, French, and German veterans to create the preeminent chronicle of the most important day in the twentieth century. Ambrose reveals how the original plans for the invasion were abandoned, and how ordinary soldiers and officers acted on their own initiative.

D-Day is above all the epic story of men at the most demanding moment of their existence, when the horrors, complexities, and triumphs of life are laid bare. Ambrose portrays the faces of courage and heroism, fear and determination — what Eisenhower called “the fury of an aroused democracy” — that shaped the victory of the citizen soldiers whom Hitler had disparaged.

For those of you who are still wondering, the release of GreyScale yesterday was an April Fool’s joke. When we filed it under ‘April Fools’ I figured everyone would immediate realize it was actually an April Fool’s joke. But some folks didn’t realize we were joking. We got lots of calls and lots of email from folks who didn’t realize it was just a our standard April Fool’s hi-jinx. Why do we do it? Sometimes a team, especially one on a death march of coding like we are, needs a break. Earlier in the week we all dropped everything and started thinking about what to do for April Fool’s. It took us about two hours to come up with the idea, draw the pictures and draft the releases – two hours of much needed light hearted tomfoolery.

I just wanted to thank a few co-conspirators including Mark Cuban, Jeff Clavier, Dave McClure, David Cohen, Jay Adelson, Gabriella Draney and Aaron Patzer. Each allowed us to use their names as investors and help spread the word via Twitter, Facebook and their blogs. This was the first time we included third-parties in our prank. I also wanted to thank Sequioa and the team from Color for giving us the idea for GreyScale – we couldn’t have done it without you guys. Finally, if you are actually interested in developing GreyScale we are willing to transfer all of the IP as well as the $41 we collected in exchange for 2% of the new company (keep us posted).

Of course we didn�t just come up with this idea in a vacuum, instead we talked to some of the best and brightest minds in the Bay Area, Boulder and Dallas to make sure we were on the right track. As a direct result of those conversations we have put together an all-star cast of angel investors including Jeff Clavier, Mark Cuban, Dave McClure, David Cohen, Jay Adelson, Gabriella Draney and Aaron Patzer.

The first GreyScale pitch was to Jeff Clavier who has invested in startups like Truveo (acquired by AOL), MyBlogLog (acquired by Yahoo), Tapulous (acquired by Disney) and Milo (acquired by ebay). I think he liked what he heard because his response was, �Let me have the banking coordinates.� I knew I was on to something. The next investor I reached out to was Mark Cuban who had two words for me, �I�m in�. I was getting a little cocky at this point, but despite that the next few pitches went equally as well. When I pitched the idea to Dave McClure who has invested in over 100 startups including Twilio and SlideShare he immediately indicated he was in. I had similar experiences with other investors like David Cohen of TechStars, Jay Adelson formerly of Digg, Gabriella Draney of TechWildcatters and Aaron Patzer CEO of Mint.com. Once we had a rockstar cast of angel investors we knew we had to move forward.

We figured it would only cost us $10-20 to build GreyScale, but there was so much investor demand we had to increase the round size to $41 and even afterward we had to turn some investors away.

Taking a page from Jack Dorsey�s playbook I have decided to divide my time between ShopSavvy and GreyScale and commit to give 200% to both endeavors.”

PRESS RELEASE

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GLOBAL GEOPHYSICAL SERVICES TO ACQUIRE RDSeismic, LLC�

October 14, 2010

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HOUSTON, TEXAS � Global Geophysical Services, Inc. (NYSE: GGS) ��Global Geophysical Services, Inc. (NYSE: GGS) today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary AutoSeis, Inc. (�AutoSeis�), will acquire �RDSeismic LLC (�RDS�). Ralph Muse, Founder and President of RDS will join AutoSeis as its President and lead Global�s seismic equipment development activities.

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In 2010, RDS brought to market the High Definition Recorder (�HDR�) � a small footprint, lightweight, autonomous nodal land seismic data recorder that sets a new benchmark for data quality.

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Richard Degner, Global�s President and CEO, commented: �With our experience in the use of many industry leading recording technologies, the HDR represents a breakthrough system for our requirements. The combination of simplicity, ruggedness, extended dynamic range, and low power consumption is combined in a system at a fraction of the investment requirement of other systems.�

RD Seismic headquartered in Carrollton, TX develops cutting edge autonomous nodal seismic recording systems. To learn more about RD Seismic, visit www.rdseismic.com.

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About Global Geophysical Services, Inc.

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Global Geophysical Services, headquartered in Houston, TX, provides an integrated suite of seismic data solutions to the global oil and gas industry including high-resolution RG-3D Reservoir Grade� seismic data acquisition, microseismic monitoring, seismic data processing and interpretation services, and Multi Client data products. Global Geophysical Services combines experience, innovation, operational safety and environmental responsibility with leading edge technology to facilitate the success of its clients by providing them the tools to Gain InSight. To learn more about Global Geophysical Services, visit www.GlobalGeophysical.com.