My charity for February is in recognition of the inauguration of President Barack Obama. I, along with millions of other Americans, watched his speech on television. One of the key chords he struck is that we are a nation of laws. This is in stark contrast to the prior eight years of a president who believes abducting people off the street, flying them to third-world hellholes, having them tortured and holding them without charge for years is somehow an American value.

I spent ten years in the United States Air Force in my younger days. Over five of those years were spent on flight status as a crew member aboard various special aircraft. Due to the nature of our missions,  I went through extensive survival training, including some less-than-pleasant courses dealing with detention by a hostile nation.

Anyone who has served as an aircrew member in the military should be able to unblinkingly tell you that waterboarding is torture, pure and simple. I find it sickening that our prior president, and his party, lacked the moral clarity to make the right call on something this obvious.

So to celebrate turning the page on a dark chapter in American history, I’m giving my $100 for February to an organization dedicated to stopping the abuses our own government was willing to perpetrate, Amnesty International.

As I mentioned in my prior post, I’ll be giving $100 a month to a different charity all year long in 2009. My selection for January is actually the easiest.

For the folks that don’t know me, in addition to technology, my other interest is photography. I’ve been taking and playing with pictures since I had my first B&W darkroom at age 13. I do portraits, weddings, travel and artistic glamour. Although there are a many great photographers in the world, I have a very short list of ones who have inspired me.

One of my inspirations is Sebastiao Salgado. I became acquanted with his work in the 90’s when I picked up his book An Uncertain Grace. This is a truly stunning piece of work that forever changed my perspective on the power of photography. I had dreams of emulating him, traveling the world with a Leica M6, taking high-impact B&W images on Tri-X. Reality set in, and I chose a different path, but his work is still some of the most beautiful and haunting art I have ever seen.

Now what does all this have to do with charity? Simple. Many of Sebastiao’s greatest pictures were taken while he was following Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). This humanitarian organization has provided relief in many of the locales depicted in his photos. So in honor of the photographer that inspired me, I gave my $100 for January to the organization that inspired him.

I’ve never been much for charity prior to now. I participated in the Combined Federal Campaign for several years while working for the military, but gave that up when I saw how high a percentage “administrative fee” the United Way was cutting off the top of everything. I prefer deciding how my dollars are spent.

At the time, the charities I gave to were mostly environmental-related, i.e. World Wildlife Fund and Sierra Club. As I got more into the technology space, my occassional charity became the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I still give money to them every year, but mostly to get the cool T-shirt.

I’ve now decided to become more interested in charitable giving. There are a couple factors involved, but one of the biggest is my daughter. She has absolutely taken over my heart and I want the world to be a better place for her. I’m also working now for a company doing software for the non-profit space, which has raised my awareness.

As a senior technology worker, I make well above the national average salary. I would look at $36K a year as the poverty line, not a working salary. All us geeks should be very appreciative for how well off we really have it. To demonstrate some of that appreciation, I’m going to contribute $100/month to a different charity each month in 2009.

Actually, I’m cheating a bit. I donated $100 to Toys for Tots this month, since I couldn’t imagine any parent seeing their child go without a toy for Christmas. Each month I’ll look for a new worthy cause and let you know what it is.

I challenge all my fellow geeks to share in the challenge. Please feel free to share your ideas for worthy charities, and I’ll let everyone know where my $100 goes for the month. $100 is not a lot of money, but it can make a great deal of difference for a lot of people. Toss in your $100 too and let’s see if we can make the world a better place.

Charity Log:

January: Doctors Without Borders

February: Amnesty International

March: Electronic Frontier Foundation

April: Direct Relief International

After seven years working for Countrywide, I finally decided to do something different. I took a new job with a small software product company here in north Dallas area called MPower Open. I enjoyed my time at Countrywide. I started as a senior developer after the consulting company I was working at dot-bombed. From there, I worked my way up to Software Architect, Vice President, and finally First Vice President.

I worked with many great people who I consider good friends, but one thing I never had the chance to do was an actual product. Countrywide was about big, corporate IT. MPower is about delivering a high quality software product we want people to pay for. The smaller shop also allows for more focus, which I’m enjoying so far.

Another nice thing is the ability to get more hands-on. I’m actually working with code again, rather then delegating that responsibility to a team. It is a major change of pace for me, and a lot more fun. The technology stack we’re using is a full Java/Spring/Tomcat setup, and the product is even going to be open source. Hopefully I get a chance to dabble with some .NET too. I was just starting to like it.

I’ve refrained from using my blog to jump into politics, as I’ve wanted to keep it focused on the things I’m passionate about, i.e. technology and programming. But there comes a time when even the calm get pushed to the edge. I arrived there this morning on this news of the bailout of Citigroup.

We, the taxpayers, have already invested $25B dollars in Citigroup. As of friday, with a share price of $3.77, the market capitalization of Citigroup was $20.7B. That is less than we gave them a month ago, meaning the company is fundamentally worthless. Yet once again, with the “too big to fail” mantra, taxpayers are stepping in with another $20B in free money, buying $7B in stock and guaranteeing $300B in garbage loans.

At what point is it enough? We poured endless money into AIG and are now doing the same with Citigroup. We are rewarding incompentence to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Democrats and Republicans share equal blame for these unceasing handouts, so this is not tied to a single political party.

And who’s next? Undoubtedly, General Motors will walk away with some cash at some point, rewarding their own long-running case of stupidity. Once the spigot is open, a long line of publicly traded companies will be lining up at the trough.

So what can we do? First, let them fail. Use the money to help individual taxpayers pick up the pieces and forget about helping the uber wealthy protect their stock portfolios.

Second, expand the war on terror to include economic terrorism. We then declare all the incompetent C-level executives at these companies that caused this mess as economic terrorists and ship them to Gitmo. Indefinitely. Start with Countrywide, Citigroup, Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Wamu and Bears Stearns, then go from there.

Our country is supposed to be about “we the people” and instead has become about “we, the too big to fail”. Something must be done.

Eleanor Rear, my great aunt and family matriarch, passed away early this Sunday morning at the age of 88. My aunt lived her entire life in the same house in Arnold, Pennsylvania, a blue-collar steel town just outside of Pittsburgh. I have fond memories of spending my summers there when I was a kid, but I really got to know and appreciate my aunt much later in life as an adult.

My aunt was from the generation that knew the Great Depression. She would tell us stories of how her father was a bartender, and thus one of the few families on the block taking home a paycheck. They would often feed the other children in the neighbor, and to this day, the children of these children would still thank my aunt for what her family did for them when times were tough.

Eleanor Rear was also a devout Catholic, attending church often more than once a week. But more than a devout Catholic, she was the embodiment of what Christianity is supposed to be about. She was honest, tolerant, kind, forgiving and generous to the extreme — all traits that too many “people of faith” today seem to be completely lacking.

She never married. She had met a young man in her youth that she liked, but he was Lutheran and the church would not allow it. She passed away unmarried due to her devotion to her church. She kept track of that young man, and he remained single to this day.

What I most admire her for is that she gave to others her entire life, at her own expense. I remember visiting her several years ago before her sister Augusta passed away. It brought me to tears to see Eleanor, at over 80 years old, providing nursing care for her older sister in that same house. It was at that moment when I came to fully grasp the gravity of the sacrifice she had made for us and the rest of the family. Her life was all about giving to others, and I realized much too late that I would never be able to repay her for that.

In spite of my own agnostic beliefs, I am confident Eleanor is in a better place. She is the purest of saints and an example from another generation of how to lead a good life. I will greatly miss her. I have attempted to honor her by naming my daughter after her, but the void souls such as hers leave in this world are hard to comprehend and too often impossible to fill.