Stephen Leonard on STEM and the Frustration Inherent to Engineering

In this episode, Frank and Andy interview Stephen Leonard, Andy's son, about his upcoming first SQL Saturday Talk, digital natives, engineering and STEM, and old movies like "Aliens" and "the Matrix."

AI Generated Transcript (experimental)

Hello and welcome to data driven,

the podcast where we explore the emerging field of data

science.

We bring the best minds in data,

software, engineering, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Now hear your hosts Frank Lavigna and Andy Leonard.

Hello and welcome back to data driven,

the podcast or we explore the emergent fields of data

science machine learning an artificial intelligence.

If you like to think of data as the new

oil then you can consider us.

Car Talk 'cause we focus on where the rubber meets

the virtual road and with me on this epic journey

road trip down information superhighway.

Although I think we have to be sequestered because of

the pandemic is Andy Leonard,

how's it going? Andy, hey it's going well Frank,

how are you doing, brother?

You know I'm doing OK,

I'm doing OK, we're in lockdown.

I'm in. My wife is actually on an important work

meeting and I have the kids.

In the room with me so you might hear in

a frequent interjection,

but I understand that Speaking of kids,

yeah, we have a very unique guest.

We do, we do have Steven Ray.

My older son is joining us for the first part

of this an we want to talk to him because

at least in this it is first part because he

is about to deliver his very first sequel Saturday presentation.

Yes Sir, very cool. So I know a little bit

about the back story to this so.

Steven, why don't you, uh,

kind of do an intro to yourself.

You're just. Quick bio I know and he probably knows

everything about you,

but most of the rest of his home.

Well, I'm for the uninitiated.

I'm Steven. I'm Andy's son and or as I normally

refer to him.

Dad, I do stuff with small AI and neural Nets.

I also work with Raspberry pis specifically.

Sorry iot devices, specifically Raspberry pie.

Zan, Jetson, Nanos working a little bit less with the

latter.

Recently I've been doing more work with the pies.

And, uh, pretty soon on the 25th I will be

presenting my first sequel Saturday class and I guess I

just got lucky enough to do it on the first

several virtual SQL Saturday. Call it whatever you want,

lock or unlucky based on the world events.

I'll be teaching class on how to install SQL Server

on a Raspberry Pi 3B and I'm working on a

solution for the four as well.

Very call and it's my understanding that you actually you're

actually studying.

Was it telerobotic? Not telerobotics but.

Was it? Does a really cold like $10 word for

it that Angie,

Oh, Mecatronics Mecatronics That's it?

Yes, Sir. Cartoon yes it does.

I'm uh, it's It's, uh,

it's really just all the I believe there are like

12 or 13 official realms of engineering,

or at least the ones that they teach in college.

And it's sort of all of those mixed into one

like hyper focused,

really hard class and I really just chose it because

when I walk into the when I walk into a

room,

if someone has a question,

I just want to be able to answer it.

I want to be sort of the most helpful I

can be and I figure if I'm well enough versed

in.

As much engineering as much as much of the realms

of engineering as I can be,

I figure I can be pretty helpful.

That's pretty, that's the plan.

A chip off the old block there Andy.

Well, he, uh, you know his.

I'll say Frank, he's probably better at it than me

because his mom has a lot of background training in

multitasking type tasks.

She was 911 dispatcher for awhile and to graduate from

that course.

They they literally play five or six conversations at the

same time.

And she had to write down and track all of

the conversations and respond accordingly.

So it makes for a good project manager,

which is awesome because I have exactly zero of those

skills,

so he has. He has more of that than I

do,

but I think he definitely gets his ADHD for me,

which this is Frank. We've talked about this about weaponizing

things that maybe hindrances in some fields an you know

that I hear some of that in Stevie's plans here

because rather than just go after one discipline.

You know, just pick up a discipline of engineering,

mechanical or electronics. You know he likes the idea of

kind of popping between disciplines and.

You know, I, I think that so he's kind of

leveraging the ADHD there.

Yeah, I, I mean I.

I think that if you can,

it's one thing to kind of play to your strengths

and quote Unquote fix your flaws.

But I think there's a whole new level of self

improvement that I've kind of discovered over the last four

years or so.

Is weaponizing your flaws. Yeah,

you know what we talked about this with anti fragile

right?

Antifragility and not seem to loves books on that.

you and I are both huge fans and I'm still

working on getting him to come on the show.

Frank I don't know. I don't know if we're going

to be able to pull that or not,

but I have two goals here.

Is you're well aware one is to make contact with

him and two is to not get blocked on Twitter?

Yes, so he's although if you're for the listener,

if you're not familiar with the lab he's been,

he's been on fire lately with Twitter,

as well as his one of his big sticks is

risk prediction and risk modeling and risk management.

Although he would call it something else,

and he would probably smack me across the face for

calling it risk management.

But honestly, it would be an honor.

Do snack Crossface by to lab in my agree.

Agree yeah, but he's on fire both on Twitter and.

He's making crazy money on this on the fund that

he manage is.

Oh wow, OK, I didn't realize he still managed to

find.

I didn't know either, but somebody reported that he made

either 360%.

A three 3600% or 36 times I don't know whatever

it is,

but he's in March. He made a ridiculous amount of

money,

partly because I think he predicted a lot of the

long tail effects of the Cove in pandemic.

Wow, yeah, if you look at him on Twitter lately,

don't get blocked for him though.

Please yeah, I'll try not true.

I can live without kind of that pseudoscience biohacker knowledge

from his Twitter feed,

but I don't think I could live without to labs

wisdom.

Yes, I'm here. Which again we will share that story

in full detail.

Later, you're laughing. I am laughing now.

We were going through that phase of.

A kind of anger denial and all that.

Now we're kind of laughing at it were accepting.

That's where we have accepted it.

An yeah, so we've gotten over it.

But yes, we need your child.

We have. We have ignored him and we want to

talk about his product now.

You gave him advice that he should Chinese.

He combines the more likely his proposal to speak would

be accepted.

Yeah, and you know this Frank from our relationship and

I've been doing this for.

Along time when I get,

you know, once I got to to be able to

speak,

I started reaching out trying to help others do it.

'cause it was such a rush and I had.

I had a couple of of men tease,

I guess actually present at the pass summit 2019 in

Seattle back in November and you know,

that's just a huge, huge,

great failing and you see the kind of picked up

on that as well.

You heard it when he was talking about his motivation,

part of it as he wants to be able to

help just as much as possible.

But yeah, it came to me.

I don't know ten months a year ago he said

dad,

I want to. I want to do a presentation.

He's been traveling with me to events over half his

life and.

He said, You know, the very first thing I told

him is,

I think that's awesome. You'll do a good job,

but here's what we're not going to do where we're

not going to get you picked because you're my son,

but I'll do the same thing for you.

I do for everyone else,

and I did. That was my next piece of advice.

Was my first real piece of advice.

Was picked something shiny, and by Shawnee I mean you

know something new.

A little edgy an he picked 2.

Uh, an when he first told me about it inside,

I was thinking that's a pretty big bite,

but I didn't share that until just now with him,

but he jumped right in on it.

Franken, I would estimate in the first couple weeks.

He probably put 100 hours on this.

After that. You know he's probably been averaging 50 or

so hours per month or so and I would say

he's got a good solid 400 hours into it before

he got it to work.

And that was a couple months ago.

He actually got it to where he got SQL Server

running on one of our π three is.

So yeah, that was that was a very,

very interesting way that happened to.

I solved it while hanging out I.

It honestly looked like I was building a weapon in

a college that was that was really where it happened

is I...