... summer 2007 barbeque ...

Dday’s here. Or rather summer bbq day is here. 115 “I will be there” responses on the evite. More like end-day. Well the preparation – it went something like preparation, preparation and more preparation. I won’t bore you with the details but some takes are definitely worthy of the mention – Diego and the 50 pound pickle jar, Alex monkeying around the park trying to set the tarps on the canopies with the angry deprived park lady breathing down his tail. I guess Tarzan in sunglasses was never that popular. The generator that never happened because angry fun hating person, see park ranger lady with deeply rooted issues, just happened to have an issue with fun in general. How about Marcela, Tiffany and the tomatoes. Big up to them. Who knows how much worse my burnt burger would have tasted if I didn’t have all the tomatoes and bbq sauce to soak it in … mmm bbq sauce … mmm Tony Tek’s jerk chicken. Big up to Tari, Dez and Alex for handling the smoke generating task with such tenacity and yet quite a high level of dignity.

Lovely day as always – we pride ourselves in being a California NSBE Alumni chapter. The Seattle chapter’s been thinking of moving south. Good call. We were lucky to have a pretty good location at Lake Almaden Park. The lake, the ducks, the wind, the grass, the beach, the volleyball pit, the people. Sounded a lot like the definition of heaven. It was a great day and unfortunately there were a couple of hiccups in the early setup stages – The park ranger wasn’t exactly in love with our generator nor did she appreciate Alex climbing up the canopies to set up the tarps. This all led to a majestic quest to acquire IPod and battery powered speakers to make up for the music deficiency which in itself turned up to be a two hour effort that came up short.

No need to worry though – a bunch of intelligent people ready and willing to mingle, next thing you know the conversation was … literally out of this world. A couple of people were going all off on rockets and you would have thought Jessica was ready to perform a stent installation operation right on the grill. Such intelligent people. Join NSBE and let it rub off on you. The lack of music didn’t hold anyone back – Football came first and Carlos was not shy on showing off those high school wide receiver moves. Seitu showed some promise of maybe making the JV waterboy all star team and Diego definitely throws worse than my little sister’s little sister. And of course NSBE is not without comedians … or not so funny volleyball referees.

“THIS TEAM MUST ROTATE”, “THE BALL IS FOULED”, “THIS REFEREE CAN BE BOUGHT” … these few sentences, or should I say SCREAMING SENTENCES describe Janelle’s tenure as volleyball referee. I won’t go into questioning her abilities as the last thing I need is a fine from USA Volleyball for decrying one of their valued refs. Volleyball though was comedy from Tari getting smashed on by Seitu. Let me rephrase that … Tari getting SMASHED on by Seitu. Joy had some serve moves, would have been nice if she kept the ball within the lines. Angela … Angela … I’ll skip the comments this time around to save her from crying. Ijeoma though came ready to BRING IT. Chenece … It would be kinda nice if you remembered what team you played on. Tiffany, Sean, Trish, Emeka and the rest of the crew did a great job cheering on the sidelines. It really added to the essence of the game. Plain magic. Dez, Akili, Rommell, Elvis and Tari – remind me again why it is that you don’t work as liars? These dudes argued everything from how much the total numbers of sand grains on one side of the court affected the game outcome to how many fingers most people are born with.

All was not lost though as in the world of double dutch you trip, we all know you tripped. Sand had nothing to do with it, there are no disputable court lines and no replay is needed. I take that back … a replay IS NEEDED to determine exactly how Tari jumped into that super tight space in between Elias and Janelle. Seitu was obviously frustrated on the sidelines as someone always tripped the rope before he could get to jump in and Ugo constantly tripped in up and pretended that she didn’t even know what happened. And why again do most of us work as engineers and not liars in courtrooms? Sean was getting pretty pissed at the kids who were throwing their shoes at the ducks and I thought that he was gonna pull a WWF move on one of the 50lb kids.

Unfortunately the day had to end and we closed it up with some dominoes, card and board games and not forgetting some soccer. I mean what kind of day would it be if Mohammed didn’t get a chance to show off the skills and you know Tiffany had to run over the dudes. She really tried to milk the “I am a girl I can play soccer, I am not physical move” … yea right. Its 2007 honey and girls do all sorts of things this century you know.

All in all it was a great day. We were honored to have the NSBE Region 6 Alumni Extension Chair Elect, Darrell Porcher, fly in all the way from San Diego just to attend the barbecue and we did get a whole bunch of new faces and people. Thanks to the Stanford SBSE crew as well as the San Jose State BASE representatives for representing the collegiate chapters. We are very excited to have kicked off the 2007-2008 year in such fashion and we do hope to see most of you around for future events. Remember we have general body meetings every 4^th Saturday of the month. Next one will be on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 10:00 AM to 12:00 Noon at Santa Clara University in BANNAN ENG, Room 326. Hope to see you there. For more pictures, check out our website.

... TRAITOR, TRAITOR ...

Traitor : a person who betrays a friend, country, principle, etc AKA betrayer, backstabber, double-crosser, renegade, fifth columnist; turncoat, defector, deserter; collaborator, informer, mole, snitch, double agent; Judas, Benedict Arnold, quisling; informal snake in the grass, two-timer, rat, scab, fink



Well the Black Stars came out strong this week. Quite the way to get the third indoor soccer season rolling. The first 5 goals were scored in the first 10 minutes of the game. Many many more were yet to come. Tiffany, Ola and Emeka were on full showoff mode on offense each dropping a couple of goals. What made the night exceptionally memorable was perhaps the second goal where the traitor (name withheld – we will not give him/ her the honor of being mentioned on this blog) who now plays for the other team hit the ball off Ola for the lovely assist. Or maybe it was Tiffany’s goal that went right between Traitor’s legs. Or it was Emeka’s fast moves that broke Traitor’s ankles.



Lovely game. A good NSBE thrashing with a message maybe – Go against your family and you are bound to lose. Support your people. The schedule is out and available HERE. Come support the team and let Dez know if you would like to play on the team.

... june general meeting ...

The official summer welcome. Out with the old, in with the new. This months meeting featured speeches by the potential members of next years board, a speech on patents by Michelle Galloway – a very successful Silicon Valley IP attorney, Stanford and Santa Clara lecturer as well as wife to an engineer topped off with lunch catering courtesy of Sade of TAN, The African Network.



The icebreaker was fun – it was basically all about picking on people (That is my way of saying I forgot the name of the icebreaker we played and I cant quite describe it). It was fun though – Michelle’s son, Will, handled the camera from multiple angles and we were lucky to have him act as color commentator during his moms speech. Alas the kids of the 00’s – They can simultaneously play Nintendo, listen to music and still pay attention to their parents?



The speech on patents focused on everything you ever needed to know from types of IP, reasons to have a patent, the hierarchy tree, common misconceptions by several involved parties, the rights provided by a patent, what makes an idea patentable, how to documents inventions properly, interactions with patent attorneys and patent examiners, US and International laws covering patents, litigation, patent invalidation, case studies on several patents, etc. Michelle was very knowledgable on the material and we were very lucky to have her. She answered tons of very specific questions and I’ll probably be pumping out two or three patent applications within the next year now that I know how to go about the whole inventive process. A fun patent just in case you were wondering? Look up US patent 6,293,874.




We had a mini intermission that allowed us to feast on the lovely Caribbean style delicacies prepared by Sade, herself an engineer at Cisco, after which we got into the speeches. Yawn. Yawn. Well, not really – with comical characters such as Alex in the crowd the candidate Q&A session was as entertaining as it was informative. I wont bore you with the details of the speech but we did have a promising group get on the podium and we believe that the upcoming year will be a great year for our chapter and we try and push through what should be the last of our infancy year.



See you all at the next meeting. Remember our monthly events:
Power Lunch – Every first Friday of the month @ 11:45AM – 1PM
General Body Meeting – Every fourth Saturday of the month @10AM - Noon

... Juneteenth 2007 ...

By Roger "Denny" Ramses

The shift started out a little slow but traffic picked up a little as the afternoon progressed. The people that we spoke to while we were at the booth were an interesting mix. There were a number of families with children that we were able to discuss the PCI programs with, and I think several of them seemed pretty interested in getting their kids involved in the programs. Actually a few of the parents and grandparents that I spoke to had already heard about the PCI programs at San Jose State and they were happy to find a way of connecting with the organization. The children and adolescents that came to the booth enjoyed the science demos despite our somewhat feeble attempts at explaining them.

There were also a number of people who came by who were either engineers or had relatives who were engineers. A lot of these people were also already familiar with NSBE and they were happy to discover the alumni chapter restarting. One lady who stopped by was actually a past member of the Silicon Valley AE chapter and she had some interesting anecdotes about days gone by.

So overall it was a good day and hopefully a few people will become affiliated with NSBE because we were out there. It might have been nice to have a little more visibility, but I think we were pretty successful anyway.

... June Power Lunch ...

NSBE folk seem to love bbq: Correct

Ijeoma is all about justice to the hardworking waiters and waitresses: Affirmative
Alex ordered fries and they were delicious: Wrong
Alex’s fries never left the kitchen: Correct
The fact that Alex didn’t get his fries makes Uncle Franks BBQ a bad eatery: Incorrect
Alex was mad he didn’t get his fries: False
Alex will be back at Uncle Franks and he thought it was the best food ever: Hell Yeah!


Dude on the far right of the picture didnt just pull out a huge booger: Correct
Dez didn’t like his smoked chicken at all: Correct
Dez likes most types of foods at most restaurants: cough cough COUGH COUGH
Jana’s name is spelt like the old Jana’s name: eeer, I don’t see how that couldn’t be any truer
Diego was all over his brisket: Incorrect. Diego was ALL OVER his brisket!
Elvis talks too damn much: Correct
Jennifer and Dez were playing with other people’s food: Correct



Uncle Franks BBQ is hidden behind a little dive bar: Correct
You have to walk through the dive bar to get to where the magic happens: Correct
Ola is ready to let the Nigerian Nightmare terrorize the masses once Season 3 indoor soccer starts: Correct
Jennifer is just about to achieve US traveler status: How am I supposed to know this?
Rene’ will sue you for $200: Correct
A lot of items above appear to be extremely random and out of place: Incorrect
NSBE folk really do love to do power lunch at BBQ places: Here’s the proof!

... May General Meeting ...

You know its gonna be real live any time a speaker comes and the first thing they say, or rather scream is WHOOOOOSE HOUUUSE! six house. Charles Lassey of Mili Group Inc, was quite the speaker, a very knowledgeable region 6 NSBE alumni – you would after all expect this from someone who is closing in on a decade of experience in real estate in addition to owning millions of dollars worth of real estate in California.

The icebreaker was entertaining – your basic intro with a couple of questions designed to make it interesting. Now we all know that Seitu and Rommell’s favorite dates are the ones they don’t have to pay for; Angela certainly doesn’t think a date without meaningful conversation is a date and Marcela is sadly letting the outrageous gas prices get in the way of her happy dates – Tiffany on the other hand … slow your roll girl … first date in Hawaii is a little … yeeer.

Charles and Rommell (Rommell was assisting Charles with the presentation of materials) did a pretty good job and they put up a captivating show (not like there were lions jumping through rings of fire or anything). Among the key points Charles stressed on were (and of course this is his opinion based on his experience):

- Ignore all the negative rep. the media is spreading on real estate and real estate investing. The best time to get into real estate is always now

- Shoot to pay the interest and not the principal first

- Borrow smart

- Make sure you get the most bang out of your buck. Financing 10 houses with a million dollars down makes more sense than paying off one house worth a million dollars (There is some math involved in this)

The presentation is available on the NSBE Yahoo Group

As always the meeting was a blast. The nominations went smoothly and speeches/elections will be held during the next meeting. Feel free to nominate anyone or yourself for any of the following positions before the next meeting if you wish to (President, Vice President, Communications Chair, Finance Chair, Membership Chair, Programs Chair, PCI Chair). Look out for the following upcoming events:

June 1^st 2007: Power lunch at Uncle Franks BBQ in Mountain View.

June 16^th & 17^th 2007: Juneteenth festivities at Cesar Chavez park. Silicon Valley NSBE will have a booth and will display a line following robot and hold workshops on sensors.

June 23^rd 2007: June meeting. Nominated candidates will present their speeches and voting will take place. In addition, Michelle Galloway, an attorney and a lecturer at Stanford and Santa Clara University (also a member of the Silicon Valley High Tech advisory board) will give a presentation on patents.

July 7^th 2007: Annual Summer BBQ. Location TBD

... May Happy Hour ...

By Diego Dimes - El Presidente

El Torito was the spot for our second Happy hour. Dave and Busters was suggested again but we decided to try something new. Plus its like pulling teeth trying to get a table at D&B. Jennifer was right on time and Tari was about 2 hours late…anyone surprised? Everyone was scared to be the first one to order a “real” drink until Craig stepped up to the plate. The ice was broken and house margaritas began to flow. On the rocks or blended at $3.95 you got a lot of bang for your buck.


The conversation was stimulating as always (That is what happens when you mix intellectuals and margaritas). Topics ranged from mergers and acquisitions to the Detroit Pistons spanking the Chicago Bulls. The wait staff was kind enough to place us directly in front of the big screen TV. We promptly requested the station be changed from baseball…yawn…to the NBA playoffs. The recent college grads and the seasoned professionals showed up to this one. We are thinking of replacing some of our power lunches with happy hours. What do you guys think?

... May Power Lunch ...

You win some, you lose some. We partly lost one. Maybe we should ban the man upstairs from crying – this rain thing seems to get too much into the way of a lot of thing; traffic, outdoors playtime, makeup, May power lunch coming out party, restaurant seating … Yes. Rain does get in the way of restaurant seating.


Faultline Brewing in Sunnyvale is an okay joint, their portions may be a little questionable … but then again if you are a pig (like me) then everyone’s portions are questionable; but some are more questionable than others but I digress. Faultline is an okay joint … except for the maitre d who was more of an embarrassment to the holy code of honor that all maitre ds live by. Her vision of seating the masses during the Friday lunch rush was exceptionally flawed and for a minute I thought she might want to test the waters that are “how high can my pitch really go”

Rough start – smooth ending. Good conversation as always. Great food. Scratch that. Rationed great food. Sad to see that the famed research triangle park may soon be responsible for poaching Craig but … we’ll try and survive. Got any favorite places you would like to suggest for power lunch? Pass the word on. See you next first Friday of next month.

... april general meeting ...

By Tiffany Taubodo, Communications Chair

Since we failed to observe National Nutrition Awareness Month in March, we decided to recognize it in the month of April. We were greeted with a very warm welcome from our President, Diego Dimes as we realized that the two rooms that we normally hold the meeting in were already occupied. Diego quickly responded and found us another room. Once we secured a room, the breakfast buffet began. The breakfast spread included fresh tasty bagels with an assortment of cream cheese and an assortment of seasonal fresh fruit.

After a nutritional breakfast, our speakers Carolina Brochado and Lorraine Damiani from the Nutrition Education Action Team spoke to us about "Nutrition and Chronic Diseases: "How can you avoid them." They provided us with handouts, showed us serving sizes of food and were very willing to answer all of our questions. For those of you who were unable to attend the meeting, you missed a treat. Please take a look at the following websites to become more aware of nutrition and how it effects you.

www.americanheart.org
www.diabetes.org
www.mypyramid.org
www.dietfacts.com

Following this, we had a programs update. Be on the look out for our upcoming happy hour and elections announcements. The meeting ending with an excellent Unity Banquet slide show presentation and the Ipod Raffle. Seitu has great luck and pulled his own name out of the bag for the Ipod Raffle. Congratulations Seitu!