Hello. I'm Kirk Kittell. Some people call me Captain. I live in St. Louis. It's an interesting place with good people, good beer, and big problems—if you haven't been here, you should visit, I can give you some tips.
As a professional, loosely speaking, I've spent over a decade as a systems engineer—sort of a hybrid semi-engineering discipline that dabbles in product definition (modeling, analysis, stakeholder wrestling, spec writing), making sure the interfaces to other systems work, and then proving the system works the way it's supposed to (analysis, testing, more stakeholder wrestling). It's an interesting discipline because you get to see how The Whole Thing works.
Unprofessionally, strictly speaking, I like to run, travel, read, and organize people to take on problems. I run a site called Chinese Word of the Day (@zhwotd on Twitter).
("Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll." is something I stole from the introduction to Generation of Swine by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Most of that book is collected garbage from his time writing for a Hearst paper, unfortunately.)
Connect with me at:
- hello@kirkkittell.com
- Mastodon - short-form general nonsense
- LinkedIn - muy profesional
- Goodreads - books
- Flickr - good photos
- Instagram - not-as-good photos
- GitHub - code
- Duolingo - language learning
- Tumblr - linkblog (that gets converted to Week in review posts)
- The Captain's Newsletter
- YouTube - videos
Some blog posts that worked out alright:
- AOL Instant Messenger is away [2017-10-07]
- Just one more ghost in Panamint City [2011-12-04]
- To the top of the Tusk [2012-02-21]
- Break it yourself [2018-03-28]
- Hop on: a desert cycling tale [2011-02-08]
- New Years on the top of the bottom of the sea [2012-02-09]
- Purpose first, technology second [2018-04-03]
- The machine doesn't learn anything [2018-03-24]
- Human is not database, database is not human [2017-11-07]
- Crazy People at the Naked Cabaret [2011-04-25]
- The fourth hill is harder than the seventh hill [2010-02-28]
- Tools as abstract excuses to create and understand [2018-09-04]
- The expert's new clothes [2010-04-14]
Affiliations present:
- Secretary (formerly president) for INCOSE Midwest Gateway, the St. Louis area chapter of INCOSE, the professional society for systems engineers
Affiliations past:
- Website manager for Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, an organization dedicated to sharing the legacy of Lowell, Massachusetts native Jack Kerouac
- Volunteer greeter/bartender at Venture Cafe
- MS in Aerospace Engineering (2006) and BS in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering (2003) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (and served on the Undergraduate Advisory Committee that changed the name of the department from AAE to AE)
- Attended the 2006 Summer Session Program at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France
- MBA, Washington University in St. Louis
- Volunteer tutor at 826 Boston, where I helped as an after school tutor at the Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute (you read that correctly) and helped the students at Mission Hill School in Roxbury publish A Place for Me in the World: People Talk About the Work They Love
- President, St. Louis Illini Club, the St. Louis area chapter of the University of Illinois Alumni Alliance
- President, International Space University USA alumni association (2009-2010)
- I used to run a lot and climb up on top of things
- I played bass guitar in Finite Element
- Website manager for INCOSE-LA, the Los Angeles chapter of INCOSE
- Vice President-Education, American Astronautical Society (2007-2008)
- Camp counselor, Ingersoll Scout Reservation (1997-2005ish), and keeper of ISR Staff history
- Eagle Scout, Troop 132, Lewistown, Illinois (1998)