Author: Kevin

I am extremely interested in both current events and the ever evolving world of technology. Business and finance have exceedingly become important areas to me, as well. Over the next few years, I hope to log many interesting personal views and opinions concerning important aspects of the world in which we live. Keep in mind that all content posted by me on this web site reflects only my personal views and opinions and not those of anyone else.

Tower Heist (2011)

KevinLeave a comment

Tower Heist is worthy of watching and it’s worthy of eight out of a potential ten Steeler Stars so that proves just how worthy this flick is worth watching.

tower heist

Tower Heist is worthy of watching and it’s worthy of eight out of a potential ten Steeler Stars so that proves just how worthy this flick is worth watching.  Have I said ‘worthy’ enough already???  Sheesh.

Anyhow, I had no preconceived notions going into this film when Brandee flicked on the Roku.  As the intro’s began to roll I saw that Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy were featured so I immediately downgraded my Steeler Star-rating by two full stars!  While I like both actors too often their movies become too slap-stickish for my tastes, however, Tower Heist was just the right mix of slap-stick but also serious action and drama.  It worked well.

The movie had a lot of big name actors aside from Ben and Eddie including Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda and Judd Hirsch, among others.  I think they all played their characters extremely well and they were absolutely believable.  Most of these guys are known for their previous comedic roles in TV and movies so Tower Heist had the potential to be a corny disaster but it turned out surprisingly well.  There was actually a good plot with many twists-and-turns.  I felt it never went overboard on some of the quite hilarious jokes.  It was simply the right mix.

In the end the combination of good actors, good story writing about corruption and greed, as well as a great moral about finding decency in people packed into this 104 minute entertaining movie makes Tower Heist a wonderful investment of your time.

steeler_star_smallsteeler_star_smallsteeler_star_smallsteeler_star_smallsteeler_star_smallsteeler_star_smallsteeler_star_smallsteeler_star_smallsteeler_star_small_silversteeler_star_small_silver

 

1st Annual Jack Brooks Law Cypress Reunion BBQ

Kevin3 Comments

For those whom worked with Jack they know that one of his infamous phrases to utter was ‘so-and-so buddy!’. So, as a final tribute and until next year, Jack-buddy! – looking forward to celebrating in your spirit next year!

This past Saturday, June 14th, Brandee and I along with our good friend Natalie hosted the 1st Annual Jack Brooks Law Cypress Reunion BBQ at Vasona Lake Park.  The collection of great people and conversation was simply amazing!  I cannot thank everyone enough for their participation.

david sign
The group was outstanding and was well-representative of the great culture of our Company.  I am so personally proud to have such sincere and long-standing friendships with these people.  Therefore, I would like to highlight some of the fantastic new memories from this event:

A blast from the past – Early days of Law Cypress (Randy Savoy)

savoyA true testament of the great Law Cypress spirit is embodied in a long-time former employee, Randy Savoy.  Randy was the engineering manager even before I started at the Company in 1989.  He is absolutely a wonderful person and overall great guy.  He attended the BBQ with his son, Peter, who it was a great privilege to meet.  At the BBQ Randy shared some hilarious stories from long-ago which really helped to establish a fantastic story-sharing environment.

Although many of us hadn’t seen Randy in-person for many, many years, immediately when he showed up it was just like the old days when we were laughing, sharing stories and having an overall great time.

The longest distance traveled award (Mike Heiden)

mikeTraveling the longest distance to attend the 1st Annual Jack Brooks Law Cypress (LC) Reunion award goes to….drum roll please…..Mike Heiden who drove all the way up from Los Angeles to attend the event!

Mike is the epitome of friends and family for LC.  I personally knew Mike long before he became a LC employee and he was great fun.  I’m glad to report, after not seeing him in a long time, he has built a fabulous life for himself.  Brandee and I, as well as the others at the BBQ I’m sure, seriously enjoyed the conversations with Mike.  It was sincere, refreshing and funny.  Thanks Mike for making the long trip this year!  Next year you are going to have a serious challenge to your longest-distance-traveled award I’m sure.

Comic relief (Carol and Jenny)

carol_jennyAnother great memory from the event was Carol and Jenny, Kylie and Kaylee.  These diva’s know how to rock-the-house and they did not disappoint!  As everyone knows Carol and Jen are the core of the Law Cypress family.  It’s amazing to see that as more things change, the more things stay the same.  And this is certainly the case with our dear friend, Carol.

 

Going the extra mile (Bob Utley)

25yohThe incredible success of Law Cypress was certainly due to the fact that we had a great bunch of hard working people but a huge part of our success was also because of our terrific partners.  One person in particular that was an extremely important part of the Companies success was Bob Utley of Fujitsu.  Bob is best known for his charming personality and amazing magic talents but he also has fantastic business acumen.

It was a great pleasure to get to spend some time with Bob and his wife, Elisabeth, reminiscing about all the terrific times we’ve enjoyed together.  A very special treat at the BBQ was Bob performing several magic tricks for the children.  Although the target audience was the kids, I can tell you for a fact that the adults were also quite impressed with Bob’s amazing talent.

Bob’s positive contribution to the Law Cypress family is long-standing and much appreciated.  He was never an official Law Cypress employee but he is, without a doubt, one of the family forever!  Thanks Bob!

A friend of the Law Cypress family (Jim Hughes)

westint_logoAs a distributor of computer products, true success at Law Cypress could not have happened if it weren’t for our fantastic reseller and technology partners and there is no better representative of this group then Mr. Jim Hughes of Western Integrated Systems.  Jim is an icon in the industry and I was so personally honored to have him join us.

jim hughes photoJim always has great stories and experiences to share.  It is really fun to hear him tell his colorful tales.  Sometimes I think he might exaggerate just a bit (or a lot a bit) but the ‘bigger’ and more ‘fishy’ the tales get makes them all that better.

As an animal lover, Jim brought to the BBQ his two precious six-year old dogs to enjoy the park.  Being an animal lover myself naturally I wanted to introduce myself to his dogs but I was quickly warned by Jim to keep my distance.  Jim, being the consummate practical-joker that he is, was dismissed by myself as being a joke so I extended my hand to pet his dogs.  Naturally I did not believe that Jim truly had these vicious dogs and boy-o-boy was I wrong!  I’m glad to report that I still have all my fingers in-tact;  but barely.  Jim, I can never tell whether you are serious or not so thanks for always keeping me on my toes!

 A Jack Brooks protégé (Ivan Bermudez)

ivan bbqWhat would a ‘Jack Brooks’ event be without a little discussion about Jack’s proud football history as a great coach?  One of Jack’s star football players, long-time friend and one of many ‘sons’, Ivan Bermudez, made an appearance.  Yes, I said ‘appearance’.  You see, Ivan is a legend in his own mind and his time is precious so anyone getting to see him is a great pleasure.  Actually, I kid.

Ivan shared some great stories and memories of all the fantastic JB times.  He probably knows Jack as well as anyone and it was fabulous to hear Ivan’s retrospect on Jack as a person, husband, co-worker and friend to everyone.  Ivan, I would like to thank you, again, for sharing such awesome memories!

 Studs-R-Us and the ‘new gen’ of Law Cypress (Freddy Bermudez)

freddy bbqIvan’s cousin, Freddy, another ex-Law Cypress employee, arrived with Ivan at the BBQ.  Freddy had been associated with Law Cypress for a long time through his relationship with Ivan as well as friendship with many other LC employees.  Eventually I think Jack just made it official and hired Freddy on as an employee.  Jack was notorious for hiring ‘lost individuals’ and Freddy embodied this spirit extremely well.  *Just kidding Freddy*.

Freddy was a great addition to the LC team and his friendship is appreciated to this day.  At the BBQ Freddy enjoyed discussing his massive biceps, huge chest and thick neck with anyone that would listen.  I’m looking forward to seeing Freddy again.  See you see bro!

The secret ingredient behind the scenes (Natalie)

natalie_bbqI’ve mentioned Natalie a few times in this blog and now I would like to call her out specifically.  Natalie is a dear friend of Brandee and mine.  We have known each other for many years.  She is the proudest mommy ever to her beautiful daughter and watching them together is pure magic.

Natalie helped organize the BBQ event with Brandee.  Natalie (a.k.a. “Nat”) had a previous commitment that she had to attend later in the day so she couldn’t stay the whole time but, as she always does, stayed to help as much as she could.  Nat, and her ham-for-a-daughter, typically keeps us tremendously entertained by singing the Frozen song over and over, are two of the most terrific people you will ever find in your life.  Nat and Cookie – You are A+!

 Jack-Buddy!

For those whom worked with Jack they know that one of his infamous phrases to utter was ‘so-and-so buddy!’.  So, as a final tribute and until next year, Jack-buddy! – looking forward to celebrating in your spirit next year!

jack with dogs

In all seriousness, Jack was absolutely a great people person and gave so many young kids opportunities to grow, learn and experience life without excessive coddling.  In spite of his tough exterior he was a man of great values, as many of you reading this already know.

It was such a fantastic honor for us to host this event in Jack’s wonderful memory but also a great celebration of the Law Cypress spirit.  I seriously cannot wait until next year!  Speaking of which….

 Next year’s event is already in-the-making (Lynn Law)

Brandee, Natalie and I would like to extend our greatest gratitude to the entire Law family for attending the event.  In particular it was tremendous to spend time chatting with Lynn.  She has graciously agreed to organize next year’s event already.  So everyone get your creative thinking-caps on and start sharing your interesting ideas for the 2015 BBQ!

Your input is requested

As we plan out for next year I think a more organized approach would be to use technology!  Yes, believe it or not, technology is our friend and many of us are in the technology business so we want to eat our dog-food *so-to-speak*.

Therefore, I am requesting that you contribute something virtually to this past event, as well as future events, by commenting, liking or suggesting something.  Your input in valuable and we want to take the spirit of Jack as well as the vision of LC into this next era with passion and pride so please contribute something!

 

Getting the most out of your document capture solution – Multistream, color dropout for forms processing

KevinLeave a comment

Leveraging an investment in scanning hardware and software should always be a priority.  After all these are typically not cheap investments although the ROI can be outstanding if implemented properly.

In this blog I would like to share some little known, yet extremely useful, features that can dramatically improve forms processing automation and accuracy.  I am occasionally asked about these features and I believe if more people knew these were available then it would help improve efficiency in the capture process tremendously.

Multistream – Multiple versions of one captured image

The first feature I would like to explain is “Multistream”.  As the word would indicate this means that for each image captured, the scanner can output two or more versions of the image.  Why in the world would anyone want to do this you ask?  Good question and the answer is to improve Forms Processing data extraction accuracy.  Typically when people use Multistream they will output a color version of the image and a bitonal (black and white) version of the image.  The color version is stored for the purpose of retaining an electronic version of the original document.  This version of the image is for human’s to retrieve and view images.  However, the bitonal version is used for the capture technology such as OCR to process by computers.  Bitonal images are preferred for OCR because the color is unnecessary for a computer to interpret pixels and might actually decrease the level of accuracy.

As you can see in the image below the OMR (Optical Mark Recognition – checkboxes), ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition – Handwritten) and OCR (Optical Character Recognition – Machine characters) are much cleaner on the bitonal image on the left.  While the color image on the right is good for human viewing but not as good for capture and data extraction.

Dropout Color – Remove form background color

Another useful feature to use, in conjunction with, or just use in general on certain types of forms, is called “Dropout Color”.  This means that either the scanning hardware, sometimes the scanner driver or even capture application, can remove the forms background color.  In the image below the form color for the Healthcare form is a red color.  This red color is a good way to guide humans completing these forms to which area of the form to fill-in information.  However, this color is unneccasary and not needed for a computer to read this information via OCR, ICR or OMR.  Therefore, we can “dropout” the color to expose only the information on the form that we really care about.

 Forms Processing – Automatically extracting data from forms

Now, after using Multistream and/or Color Dropout, as you can see in the image below, you can now expose all the data you wish to capture in a neat manner which a computer can better understand and interpret.  The combination of using these advanced features can certainly help improve your data capture automation and accuracy levels.

Gaining value by using tools available to you

Enabling these features is quite simple so I encourage everyone to consider if these, or other features, might be available to you in your document capture solution that might help improve productivity.  These are just a few examples of using available functions to enhance process.  Within the entire capture process there are many techniques, functions or features that can be incorporated that would make capture much more efficient.

What do you think?  Are you getting the most out of your capture solution or do you think that there are possibly areas of improvement had you known about capabilities such as Multistream or Color Dropout?

An ABBsolutlYY great day with ABBYY USA!

Kevin1 Comment

This past Saturday, January 25th, was the ABBYY USA Winter Holiday party held at Wente Vineyards in Livermore, California.  Founded 130 years ago, Wente Vineyards is the country’s oldest, continuously operated family-owned winery.  The Vineyard itself is absolutely gorgeous with other excellent attractions such as a Bar & Grill, full service restaurant, wine tasting tours and, my personal favorite, a stunning 18-hole Golf Course!

vineyard

The party itself was scheduled to start that evening at 6pm with a pre-dinner wine tasting  tour starting at 5pm so a couple ABBYY golf addicts and myself were quick to put two-and-two together and a morning golf tournament was born.  There were a grand total of fourteen players that joined the tournament and we played best-ball format.  My group consisted of two long hitters and myself.

golf course

Hole #10 was particularly noteworthy.  Our strategy was for me to tee-off on each hole because I could generally put the ball ‘in play’ although I wasn’t terribly long.  Then the next two guys could be more aggressive and try to put us in a better position.  It worked out well and especially on the 281-yard tenth hole.  I tee’d off and put the ball ‘in play’ about 180 yards, leaving only roughly 100 yards to the hole so this gave us three additional chances to improve.  The next guy in our group, Steve, had a very nice shot that traveled roughly 210 or so yards which only left us about 70 yards, so this was a slight improvement.  Therefore we had two shots to be most aggressive.  Our next guy, Ruben, took the third shot and drove it out of bounds but we had one more chance.  Ruben also took our fourth shot.

hole 10 ruben

We all agreed that he would ‘grip-it and rip-it’ and he did just that as we had little to lose.  His shot ended up only about 10 feet from the hole making his tee shot roughly 270 yards and directly on target. It was nearly a hole-in-one on a par 4 hole.  It was an amazing shot by Ruben and one to remember for a lifetime!

ruben and steve 10 hole

After a great morning of golf with the group that went a bit longer than expected I had less than an hour to rush back to the hotel room I had rented, shower and return for wine tasting.  So Marc, who was also staying at the same hotel, and I hauled it to the hotel to check-in and get ready.  Since Marc wasn’t planning on attending the wine tasting he was nice enough to lend me his car which was much appreciated.  I made the wine tasting event just as it was starting at 5pm so a bit a relaxation or short nap was, obviously, not in the plans.  The wine tasting consisted of a guided tour where the history of the Vineyard and Wente family was explained which was interesting.  Then they took us into the “cave” (their terminology), which was actually a large storeroom/warehouse which stored all the barrels of fermenting wine where the process was explained in detail.  It was a great experience.

wine tasting the cave

Lastly, after the wine tasting tour, it was time of the main event and the Winter Party/Dinner.  There was all the usual chit-chat and conversations you might expect.  At about 7pm we all sat down for dinner, which was absolutely delicious.  Drawings for prizes were held through-out the evening and many people won wonderful items but, unfortunately, I was not among the winners.  Nevertheless I got around to say hello to nearly everyone which I sincerely enjoyed.  I also had the chance to meet many of my co-workers significant others and/or family members for the first time which was great as well.

dinner

Overall it was a busy, but wonderful day/afternoon and evening.  Thanks to ABBYY USA for sponsoring such a terrific event and especially thanks to all the organizers!