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January 23, 2006

Remote Aquarium Monitor and Control System

As I was taking the dust off of my portfolio and resume this weekend I came accross the link to my senior design project, a Remote Aquarium Monitor and Control System. It was one of the most engaging things i got to work on during college. Check out our homemade underwater temperature sensor. It saved us a $50-$100 in expenses and worked incredibly well.

The project was featured on RNews (Rochester News Station) and the Democrat and Chronicle.

January 22, 2006

Crispy Crusted Red Snapper

Makes 4 fillets
Total time: 40 minutes

1 cup tomato, seeded, chopped
1 cup leeks, thinly sliced
½ cup green bell pepper chopped
1 T. garlic minced
4 red snapper fillets (6 oz. each), boned and skinned
½ cup coarse bread crumbs
½ cup Parmesan cheese, grated
½ cup plain potato chips, crushed
½ t. paprika
¼ t. cayenne
2 T. unsalted butter, melted
1 T. scallion, thinly sliced
Lemon wedges

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

Combine first four ingredients in a bowl. Spread on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray.

Arrange fillets on top of vegetables; season with salt and pepper to taste.

Combine crumbs and next four ingredients; toss with melted butter. Divide crumb mixture evenly over each fillet, pressing into the fish. Bake 20 minutes, or until fillets flake easily when tested with a fork.

Sprinkle with scallion and serve with lemon wedges.

Fish options
Snapper alternatives:

Don’t get hung up on using red snapper—it can be hard to find. Why? To reduce over fishing, fresh snapper is only available for about the first ten days of each month. But that’s okay. Flounder, tilapia, and other flat fish fillets work fine. Cooking time runs about 10 minutes for each inch of thickness (that includes the tomato layer and breading).

Capturing New Business in Government

There are many unique aspects of capturing business for your company in government compared with private industry. First of all contracts must be publicly announced, allowing newcomers to the field to be able to find new opportunities. For NASA the website to monitor is the NASA Acquisition Internet Service (NAIS) website. You can search using specific criteria or register to be notified of new business opportunities in a certain area.

So once you identify an opportunity how do you go after it. Initially the government posts a synopsis describing the details of the contract. After determining that some of the work in a given contract is in your area of interest the next step is to see if there is any restrictions on what type of businesses can go after the work. A very common thing to do is to only allow small businesses or small disadvantaged businesses go after the work. Some common types of small disadvanted businesses include:


  • Veteran Owned

  • Disabled Veteran Owned – Owned by a veteran wounded in combat

  • Women Owned

  • Hub-Zone – Your company is headquartered in the Ghetto

  • 8a – Your company is owned by someone of minority decent


You can find more information on the specifics of small businesses by reviewing the Federal Acquisition Requirements website. In order for your company to qualify for this type of work they need to go through a certification process first. Even is the contract is not a small business set-aside there is often requirements for including small businesses on your team. It is very common for small businesses that want to go after work in the government but do not easily qualify to have a wife own 51% of the company or to open up an office in a HUB zone.

I’ll get into more into this subject in a later article.

Improved my website

Well I finally got some time to clean up my website. While there were allot of little improvements the main changes were adding a photos, resume, portfolio, and contact pages.

January 02, 2006

Homemade Bailey's Irish Cream Recipe

1 Cup Whiskey
3 Eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 pint heavy cream
1 tablespoon chocolate syrup
1 teaspoon instant coffee
1/2 teaspoon coconut extract

Mix in blender
Chill overnight

Note: I usually add more whiskey then the recipe calls for.