Randy Strauss a.k.a. Rand

What's most important?   For you, me, and all Americans to work together in effectively creating our democracy.
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      Here is a written introduction to PeopleCount.

I've published about

• 1,000 articles on Quora.com,
• 400 articles on PeopleCount.org's blog
• 60 articles in my own blog (over 200 are a bit hidden...)

Perspective: It took me months to understand the true cause of the problems in politics. That included a LOT of work seeing that the cultural truisms about politics clouded our view. The remedy isn't too complex, but it's difficult to see that it'll be successful and that there are great ways to assure adoption (growth).

I'm looking for help with book marketing. If you know of someone good who can handle marketing a paradigm shift in politics, I'd love to learn about them. My budget is low, though.

April 2022:

The new plan is to do a crowdfunding campaign June 14 - July 4, 2022.
It'll include a video of the demonstration website.
I don't know if the book will be done by then.

July 2021:

Time marches on, the world is burning and flooding, the Democrats seem unable to unite the country, and the Republicans are doing their best to divide it.

I've given notice at work- my last day is August 31.

The plan:

• Sep: Finish writing and start marketing the book
• Oct: Publish and continue marketing
• Nov/Dec: Start crowdfunding

You're welcome to send me more followers: or go sign up on PeopleCount.org And you're welcome to donate or invest. The plan is for PeopleCount to be a B-corporation at first, and a non-profit later. (It can't be a non-profit in the beginning- that requires a committed, knowledgable board.)

May 2021: In a month, I'll be 64... I'm working on:

• Fixing politics: I have a 2.5-year plan and need $2M in funding.
  I'm working on building a network and collateral for a crowd-funding campaign.
  While resigned, we try to fix the symptoms without addressing the cause.
  I've identified the cause, and have designed a solution, but it takes about ten hours to see that it can work. Mostly because we believe a bunch of myths.
• Ending racism: We try to fix the symptoms without addressing the cause.
  I've outlined a better approach.
  I'm reaching out to people aligned with this.
• Trying not to grow old too quickly or ungracefully- mostly via exercise. but there's so little time.
• Working full time on flying taxi traffic mgmt for NASA
• Typical husband/father/dog-owner/homeowner stuff (the garden always needs weeding.)

We still live in Mountain View, California. The weather's mostly pleasant, but climate change brings more extremes. I'm in okay shape but feeling my years. I still enjoy walking, and try to take the dog out twice a day, but he can only walk a mile, and prefers half that. So I often walk alone, trying to do 10,000 steps a day (since early April). I try to exercise 2-3 times per week as well...

I rarely juggle anymore, nor play ping pong. I still enjoy them. I guess I don't really care about enjoyment any more...

I rarely find time to write. Every few months I'll look at Quora and write something. Or maybe that phase is over, too...

My wife and I will have been married 31 years (in May, 2021.) My older son is living at home- he has a CS masters from San Jose State. He's starting a PhD program at U Hawaii in August... My younger son is in his third year at UMD in a PhD program in industrial and organizational psychology.

I'm currently working full-time at NASA, for a subcontractor to a contractor. Since March, 2020, I've been helping with "System-wide safety" for autonomous flying taxis, a.k.a. UAM (Urban Air Mobility). I converted a MatLab program to Java, made it robust with testing and various additions/changes, and optimized it- it smooths a path, estimates thrust required, sends the results to other components and tracks the flights progress along the path.

I also built a viewer in MatLab of the planned polygonal path, our smooth path, and the vehicle positions. It's animated with keyboard controls so you can speed it up, slow it down, go backwards, zoom in and interrogate points. MatLab has nice 3D charting, but animation was a stretch for it...

I began at NASA in March, 2018, helping out with various UTM (drone traffic management) tasks.

In October, 2018, we began building a real-time viewer of drone traffic as a Google Map application. We also had two simulators so one could easily make interesting scenarios for testing, experimentation, and demos. We built it in six months and then refined it over the next year.

For me, the job is a combination of busy-work and exercise. Except for the paycheck, it feels like a waste of time. The viewer was for the DHS and the DoD, but they weren't involved and they made delivery difficult. Finally, NASA cut funding to UTM so I was moved. One part-time person was going to continue to work on delivery, but I don't know if he succeeded. The problem was that the person taking delivery wasn't going to use it. When the team that needs it finally shows up, there'll be no one to customize it for them.

I still work hard. I sweat the details. But I've now learned to stick to my job and not worry as much.

I've found it harder and harder to work nights and weekends on PeopleCount, still alone.

I need PeopleCount to be known to get some help, or support with it. I work well on teams. I work okay alone, but software requires mental energy, few distractions, and solid hours of time. With responsibilities at home, there's simply not enough time after a full week at work... Plus, working on a team, I can focus on one area. Besides life's distractions, when I'm working on one aspect of PeopleCount, all the other parts are distracting.

I suppose this is at the heart of no longer caring about enjoyment. Who I am is a commitment to make the world work. I wish I were on a supported project to fix politics, reverse climate change and end sexism and racism and then end war and poverty. I'm sure we could accomplish the first four and make good progress on the last two.

Not doing those things, I feel my life is wasted.

I haven't given up, but I'm in grave doubt that I can do it alone. I understand why people with money keep busy and avoid hearing about new possibilities. But it seems wrong...

Last updated: May 2021.   Copyright 1999-2021, Randy Strauss

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